Managing field sales in the COVID era

Things are slowly opening up. People are slowly getting used to the new normal. And if you manage a sales team — you are probably still debating if it is a good team to restart your field sales activities. The answer is probably, DON’T DO IT. However, we know that you have promised your boss that you would achieve at least 50% of the sales target you had promised her at the beginning of the year. And you have promised your team that you would not put them under risk — come what may. How do you strike the right balance between both?

The answer: taking all the necessary precautions you can from your end to ensure that you are putting your team in minimal risk while also being able to keep your boss from micro-managing you. We at Fieldproxy understand the pain you feel — and have come up with COVID specific features that keep your frontline teams & customers secure, safe & protected

ONE: Contact Tracing

Fieldproxy’s sales agent app gives a real-time view of where the locations the sales agents have been throughout the day. This data helps us look back at the data to look at those agents who have crossed path with others in the system who may have tested COVID positive at a later date. It would also help us identify those sales agents who visited COVID hotspot areas — and more proactively encourage such agents to stay at home even if they develop the slightest of symptoms

TWO: Customers Self Ordering

In case there are customers, retailers or distributors whom your field sales team visit to collect orders — you can reduce the risk of COVID spread by only limiting the visits to key locations or customers. For other customers or retailers, you can enable self-ordering from the Fieldproxy app. Your users will be able to see the list of products and place orders — that are then immediately visible to your field sales team or the relevant user than handles the account.

This significantly reduces the number of visits required by the sales team to service the customer. You can also actively communicate with these customers through the platform.

THREE: Wellness Surveys, Compliance & Accountability to SoPs

Work from home is no more something that is looked down upon as an excuse a lazy employee comes up with. The new normal encourages people to actively work from home — especially if they are feeling the wee bit sick. And as a leader, it is your responsibility to ensure they do not go out in the field even if they have the slightest of symptoms. With Fieldproxy, you can set up custom wellness surveys that help you assess employee wellness while respecting their privacy. You can survey your workforce, and gain insights into wellness data through simple, secure dashboards.

New COVID-19 processes will also require retraining of the field sales team to adhere to certain processes. This is to keep both your team and others around them too safe. Confirming compliance will require diligent tracking and a real-time view up and down the chain of command which help leaders make better decisions faster. Execution data captured in stores, distribution centres, warehouses and delivery vehicles — about cleanliness, stock counts, consumer and vendor sentiment, cleaning supply levels and essential — and can be easily set up in Fieldproxy

FOUR: No Touch Attendance

Say goodbye to finger-based attendance systems. Especially with your office most likely closed — your existing attendance systems would have gone for a toss. With Fieldproxy, you can easily capture attendance with a simple one-touch check-in. You can also geofence the attendance to ensure the user is in a specific location before marking their attendance. Besides, there are other HR based modules too that can be developed and integrated with your internal systems

FIVE: All of the above, plus much more!

While the above are COVID-19 specific features, there is a lot more you can do with Fieldproxy that helps you get work done by your field teams

• Managing your field team is as simple as adding a sticky note. Drag & Drop a sticky note to assign a new task to your field team

You can also capture any data in the way you want. The product is tuned to the way you and your team works and not the other way round

What’s more : You have custom real-time dashboards that give you live visibility into what you do

And your sales agent knows where to go when to go and what to do!

We know you need to go out to get work done — and we are here to make it easier. In case you do manage a field team and you are planning a return to work safely — do reach out to us here. We shall be happy to learn more about your plans to go back on the field and how Fieldproxy can ensure that you can integrate COVID-19 compliances seamlessly within your existing workflows.