New report from SMA and AutoPylot Technologies exposes the high cost and low quality of CRM data reporting, opportunity for performance gains with automation

Atlanta, GA and Sonoma, CA, 18 October 2022 – The Sales Management Association, a global, cross-industry professional organization for sales operations, sales effectiveness, and sales leadership professions, and AutoPylot Technologies Corp., the leader in auto-logging and capturing phone calls and text messages to drive sales productivity, announced today the availability of a new report, Managing Salesperson Activity: Emerging Trends in Tracking, Analytics, and Return-On-Effort.

The report highlights how firms effective in tracking selling activity by sales process step are 35% more likely to meet sales objectives, compared to their less effective peers.

Today, the costs associated with CRM data collection are high and the returns minimal.

  • Sales activity data (calls, meetings, emails, etc.) are mostly self-reported. At least half of firms rely on salespeople to self-report most sales activity data.
  • Self-reported data comes at great cost in diminished selling capacity. On average, firms’ salespeople spend nearly 6 hours per week reporting activity. One-quarter of firms’ salespeople spend 8 hours or more.

Companies effective in tracking sales activities, and in particular activity by sales stage, have more predictable results.

  • Firms that track sales activity by sales process step are 35% more likely to achieve sales objectives than firms ineffective in doing so.
  • Firms that are “somewhat” or “very” effective in general sales activity tracking enjoy a 26% improvement in productivity over their ineffective peers.

Automating the sales data collection process drives quantifiable individual and company productivity gains.

  • The future of sales interactions will reflect a permanently broader set of communication modes (text, social media, etc.)
  • Email is the communication mode with the most complete tracking data, thanks to the addition of automated email logging capabilities by leading CRM systems.
  • Whereas voice calls, a fundamental sales communications mode, had the second highest gap between ‘importance of tracking’ and ‘completeness of tracking’

“This report underscores the importance of correct and complete CRM data to drive sales success for an organization. By automating sales data capture, firms can create an overall more productive environment for their sales team, allowing them to do what they do best – sell,” said Sales Management Association’s Robert Kelly, the report’s lead author. “Automated data capture also creates an opportunity to improve both the quantity and quality of data and overall business intelligence.”

“Frustration with the CRM system is a consistent theme across industries and markets. Many times, ?it comes down to salespeople being forced to regurgitate customer interactions into the system,” said Jeff Brown, co-founder and CEO of AutoPylot Technologies. “In the AutoPylot mobile app, we built a product that salespeople want to use because it simplifies their customer interactions while automatically capturing the data sales management expects in the CRM.”

To access the report, visit: https://www.autopylot.com/sma-report-download/.

 

About AutoPylot
AutoPylot Technologies Corp., part of the Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub, was founded in 2021 to automate the collection of customer conversations and convert them to business intelligence. Co-founded by Boris Medak and Jeff Brown, AutoPylot builds on more than 10 years of experience from Boris’ first company, KnowMe, Inc.

About Sales Management Association
The Sales Management Association is the world’s largest cross-industry professional association for managers focused in sales force effectiveness. Its members include sales leaders, as well as managers in sales operations, sales enablement, commercial effectiveness, and other functions that support the sales force.

 

Contact Information

AutoPylot Technologies Corp.
Steve Shaw
Chief Marketing Officer
sshaw (at) autopylot.com

Sales Management Association
Bob Kelly
Chairman
rjkelly (at) salesmanagement.org