Sales force lacking intelligence?
June 22nd 2006

Most UK mid-size industrial firms have yet to see the benefits of investment in sales support technologies and are failing to build an intelligent sales process around them, says a company which makes sales intelligence software.

After comissioning a survey of senior managment in some 60 UK SMEs with extended product ranges and large customer bases, Vecta Software found a majority were missing sales opportunities.

Three quarters of those surveyed had invested in disparate sales support technologies (from enterprise-wide systems such as CRM to desktop PC packages such as Goldmire) but that two thirds believed that their sales teams were still 'comfort selling' to known customers without identifying new opportunities. They believed technology investment was having little effect on the quality of salesmanship.

The research revealed management fears that the outlay had not led to more systematic selling practices, greater understanding of customers or prompted better product knowledge. Nearly half of interviewees (42%) said that the sales team routinely asked the 'wrong' questions of their customers and prospects.

Vecta chief executive, Martin Mackay says the solution is a new generation of sales intelligence tools that can analyse customers' buying patterns and provide genuine advantage by drawing on data either from existing acconting applications or ERP software. Data is converted into meaningful intelligence and automatically delivered to internal telesales and field-based sales teams laptops or PDAs.

Based in Oxford, Vecta serves over 240 major companies worldwide.

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