In our ever-increasing world of technology, the use of systems is commonplace.  It now seems that we are permanently connected and contactable 24/7 with all the information we ever needed being available.

Our world has gone from regional - to national - to global, and the changes in technology have delivered new markets to all businesses in bountiful supply.

Identify the Business Changes

A Business can evolve and change its approach sometimes to adapt to new ways of thinking, sometimes to accommodate economic pressure. The days of driving to every meeting, or sending letters has been replaced with email, chat or video.  This means that your sales team can be smaller and get more done by adopting new ways and new technology.  Assigned territories may have grown and field sales teams may have shrunk as a single salesperson with the right systems and processes can now easily manage a larger area.

The approach to business is continually changing and the salesperson is no longer the broker of all the information for a potential customer.  A customer or buyer who is likely to be interested in products or services from your organisation has probably done some research and is self-educated in terms of what services are on offer.

A Connected Data Approach

For decades data silos have been common in a business with different departments maintaining different data, but by adopting a “connected data” approach with location-based tools, visualising of customer and prospect data is possible.  Having access to your web traffic’s visitor data can help generate leads and will help you build a strong sales message by location and type.

Being able to search for business data that is outside of your business systems can also help build opportunity by location.  Use of data feeds, and tools like Google My Business can help your team search a local area that may be interested in your product or service.

Here is a simple example of using connected data: -

Imagine a member of your sales team has an appointment with a customer or prospect on a business park.  The business park has 300 businesses, but you only know of one. By using an integrated data feed, or Google My Business, your team member could prospect by location with the aim to create more engagement from the same business park.

As a sales manager you may want to create efficiency in you teams, reducing time on the road or driving costs. With location-based tools and connected data you can build effective route planning for each day based on a set of appointments from a CRM or Office 365.

Why Marketing Is Sales, and Sales Is Marketing, and Both Are Service

The days of a marketing team generating all the leads and then passing them to Sales has pretty much gone. In our new connected world, the data from marketing, sales and service can be easily used by your sales team to improve customer service. Imagine the following scenario: -

A sales team member has an appointment booked but only has access to sales data, however, the customer has open issues with your company.  The salesperson turns up unprepared and the meeting does not go well.  This type of scenario is not uncommon, but with technology now more available and far more cost effective, all organisations like yours can benefit from making their data count as an asset.

As a sales manager there are other scenarios and I’ll cover one more. When using connected data across your enterprise, your salespeople can generate opportunities from known data likes a service or support case that directly links to a customer.  Having the ability to get a 360-degree view of a customer in a location or territory can enable your sales team member not only to account manage but identify opportunities to upsell and see that upgrades may be required.  Having the ability to see all related data and being able to see what is happening in a territory, drives customer engagement and satisfaction.

And Finally Let’s Report It

Finally, I’m going to highlight the analytics part of a geospatial system in sales, as having the ability to visually present hot spots with heat maps and clusters by type, gives you as a sales manager the ability to see which sales territories, areas and teams are performing best.   Data in this way can be presented in many different ways. You can have layers that show by product or service or even by value, these can be easily created to see if given products perform better by given locations.

Your Customer Holds All the Cards

Building great relationships with people and understanding the needs of your customers is very important. The more technology we all consume in our day to day lives, the more we all seem to demand great human interaction and great service.   The world of sales and service has changed, and customers now expect personal engagement tailored to their needs.

From experience, I know that having effective territory management can help your organisation and your team achieve more.

By making use of geospatial systems in business you will be able to help deliver great sales engagement and customer service. Being able to plan territories effectively and target subsets of data that is presented visually by location helps you achieve this.

In summary geospatial enables your sales reporting and sales team to get more value from data captured and having connected systems give this in real time with minimal effort.

Bio – Alistair Dickinson CEO Mapsimise

‌After 21 years helping organisations with technology, I’ve seen and worked on many projects. As CEO of Mapsimise I’m still very hands on working with all team members and not sat in an office making spreadsheets and crunching numbers.  I’m happy to work on the support desk, take calls and discuss how our tools and technology can help businesses like yours.  You can find me on Linkedin, Twitter or email me directly.  I’m very jeans and t-shirts and still wear Nike Air trainers to the office which I’m told is cool…