One needs to bear in mind that today’s office – the modern office – encompasses a lot more than an upgraded PC, generators to cope with load-shedding and cloud-based data storage. A really modern office is not contained within the physical boundaries of your head office at all – and it should be able to connect to your sales team at all times of the day and night.
This is according to Duaan Dekker, Marketing Manager at Field Office.
“This has become especially pronounced in businesses that employ sales forces. Increasingly, sales teams need to be connected to the office and a phone call to their office will not suffice when they need access to product information, prices or detailed customer info. They don’t have the time to wait for someone to sift through that information and give it to them. They need it on tap whether they are in the office or whether they’re out there visiting their customers. The modern sales team needs instant, accurate information at all times and no matter where they are.”
Dekker explains that no matter how “modern” your office equipment is, no matter how much RAM your PC has or how fast your new ADSL line is, it will mean nothing if there is no sales management system in place to gather, order and make available useful information for management and the sales team.
“It used to be acceptable for sales people to haul loads of paperwork around and then spend at least one day a week on admin. How lucky is the truly modern office that this is now a thing of the past.”
Why is it that sales based businesses need a modern office and why do they need to radically change the way they operate? “Because customers expect instant service and expect sales reps to be fully up to date with information about each individual product, stock levels and all other relevant product information; and because sales managers also expect their sales teams to be accountable to the business and to be in constant communication with them,” Dekker says.
“Thankfully, technology has come to our rescue. It is now possible to harness the power of mobility, to empower both management and sales teams alike with powerful tools to compete in today’s demanding environment … all because of modern sales management systems such as Honeybee.”
Sales organisations can have much more effective control of a sales force, while empowering that sales force at the same time. They relieve the tedium too because all the ‘grudge’ admin jobs are handled automatically.
The heartbeat of today’s office – the modern office – is technology when it is used properly to empower the people attached to that office so that they may work more effectively and easily while providing management all the information it needs.
“Add to this heartbeat an exciting sales-throb because, through this technology, the business itself is able to flourish and grow because everyone is freed up to do what they do best, and everyone can see what is really going at all levels and stages of the sales process,” Dekker concludes.
