Sales Reporting Opportunity Cost

Here’s an interesting discussion I had the other day.  A company with a field-based salesteam bought salesforce.com a while back with the usual lamentable side-effects.

Then they wanted their post-sale delivery people to fill out a new form on potential lead opportunities that their privileged access detected at client premises.  This was as well as their standard visit reviews, which can easily extend into 5 pages of typing, taking up significant time.

“Not more bloody paper!”

It’s a familiar collective cry.  So then they thought why not re-engineer salesforce a tad, pop in a few new fields and get the guys to input direct to screen.

Licence costs, bespoking traumas and management overheads all combined to render this a no-no.  Hardly surprising.  Yet the big killer was when they worked out how much time it’d physically take to fill-in the required info; it could add up to well in excess of an entire day each month.  And when they realised that this would be at the expense of a chargeable billing day, the lost cash loomed large in their minds.

Glad I’m able to help…