ting activity in one fell swoop and hand it or email it to the customer and the principal. No need to finish the last 5% of work “at the office”
•Having all their information in one place, catalogs, products, customers, quotes and orders
•Having a way to just get on to the In the past 20 years software and hardware development has improved enough to make once expensive and high maintenance software available to smaller companies. One of the ways it is delivered is through online hosting services. With the coming of cell phones and laptops, hosted services have bridged the communication gap to allow the road warrior to work anywhere, from abroad to the office. Now, with the internet, reps can access their data from any location without the overhead and headache of maintaining their own systems or remote connection software. It’s a different world where high powered sales force automation software is available to users at every level of functional need and price point. How does that affect reps and agencies in their day to day activities? Let’s make a wish list for a sales force automation system that would satisfy a rep’s needs and let’s see if it’s reasonable to expect that a hosted system could deliver that at an acceptable cost.

Judging from my past experience as a CFO for manufacturing companies, reps and agencies have a demonstrated need for:

•A way to complete all sales quoting activity in one fell swoop and hand it or email it to the customer and the principal. No need to finish the last 5% of work “at the office”
•Having all their information in one place, catalogs, products, customers, quotes and orders
•Having a way to just get on to the n

ces have bridged the communication gap to allow the road warrior to work anywhere, from abroad to the office. Now, with the internet, reps can access their data from any location without the overhead and headache of maintaining their own systems or remote connection software. It’s a different world where high powered sales force automation software is available to users at every level of functional need and price point. How does that affect reps and agencies in their day to day activities? Let’s make a wish list for a sales force automation system that would satisfy a rep’s needs and let’s see if it’s reasonable to expect that a hosted system could deliver that at an acceptable cost.

Judging from my past experience as a CFO for manufacturing companies, reps and agencies have a demonstrated need for:

•A way to complete all sales quoting activity in one fell swoop and hand it or email it to the customer and the principal. No need to finish the last 5% of work “at the office”
•Having all their information in one place, catalogs, products, customers, quotes and orders
•Having a way to just get on to the

ifferent world where high powered sales force automation software is available to users at every level of functional need and price point. How does that affect reps and agencies in their day to day activities? Let’s make a wish list for a sales force automation system that would satisfy a rep’s needs and let’s see if it’s reasonable to expect that a hosted system could deliver that at an acceptable cost.

Judging from my past experience as a CFO for manufacturing companies, reps and agencies have a demonstrated need for:

•A way to complete all sales quoting activity in one fell swoop and hand it or email it to the customer and the principal. No need to finish the last 5% of work “at the office”
•Having all their information in one place, catalogs, products, customers, quotes and orders
•Having a way to just get on to the

fy a rep’s needs and let’s see if it’s reasonable to expect that a hosted system could deliver that at an acceptable cost.

Judging from my past experience as a CFO for manufacturing companies, reps and agencies have a demonstrated need for:

•A way to complete all sales quoting activity in one fell swoop and hand it or email it to the customer and the principal. No need to finish the last 5% of work “at the office”
•Having all their information in one place, catalogs, products, customers, quotes and orders
•Having a way to just get on to the

ting activity in one fell swoop and hand it or email it to the customer and the principal. No need to finish the last 5% of work “at the office”
•Having all their information in one place, catalogs, products, customers, quotes and orders
•Having a way to just get on to the next sale, knowing everything has been done
•Spending as little time as possible on paperwork
•Having tools that help them to keep from making mistakes
•Professional looking quote and order forms bearing the rep’s name and logo
•24/7 access to the information
•Having an easy way to update and resend quotes
•Having a way to track “whose court the ball is in”, customer, rep or principal
•Having history on everything ever done with a customer

Benefits of having a system that could do all this would be improved communication with principals and customers, streamlined sales processes, getting a clear view of the sales pipeline and gaining a competitive advantage over reps still doing things the old way. Finally, you’d own all the information in it forever; it would not be in the control of a principal. In fact, it could also help in securing desirable lines of product since you could demonstrate success in your markets and show that you can efficiently and effectively serve just the kind of customers that principals are looking for. Side benefits are that you don’t have to buy or insta