How to Use Sales Force Automation

The topic provides an overview of how an organization might use the functionality provided by the Sales Force Automation application. Each step below links to an additional information.

1. An organization defines goals for its sales force for a particular period (such as number of sales or value of sales).
   • Aptify provides the Sales Targets service to track sales goals and assist with performance evaluations at the end of the sales period. See Defining Sales Targets for details.
     
     
2. The sales team identifies sales opportunities and tracks their progress in Opportunities records. This includes tracking information such as its current stage in the sales cycle, the value of the line items being offered to the prospect, the probability that the opportunity will be won, periodic status reports, known competitors, and contact people.
   • Aptify provides the Opportunities service and related services to track all information related to a particular sales opportunity. See Managing Opportunities.
     
     
3. During the sales process, a prospect or customer may request a product or service not offered directly by the organization. In this case, the organization generates a referral request to identify qualifying partners. Then, the organization sends the referral to one of the qualifying partners.
   • Aptify provides the Referral Requests and Referrals services to automatically identify qualifying vendors and manage the communications between the partner and the prospect or customer. See Managing Referral Requests for more information.
     
     
4. When an opportunity closes, an account executive can update its information in Aptify to mark it as Won, Lost, Cancelled or On-Hold. See Closing Opportunities.
   
   
5. At the end of a particular sales period, a sales manager can update the applicable Sales Targets records with the actual sales amount and enter evaluation information. Then, the manager can generate reports to analyze and summarize sales performance.
   • See Defining Sales Targets for details. Also, see Sales Force Automation Dashboard and Views for information on the standard views and dashboard included with this application.