• 4S Sales for Sales People

• Effectiveness, Performance & Interactive Sales 

• Business Analysis & Order Tacking on the Fly

Time is of the essence and this is what makes 4S different.  With 4S, sales people actually perform operational data analysis while searching for product information, taking orders, and even interacting with customers.  All these capabilities are tightly integrated into 4S Sales,  there is no waiting time,  no browsing through multiple menus to obtain relevant data. Consultative selling becomes second nature.  The sales person can even provide business information to customers who do not have the same  ready access to the transaction history.

The 4S Sales module is especially well suited for companies that have a catalogue of products that customers buy in a business-to-business mode on a regular basis. So, if a significant part of your revenues comes from repeat business, with evolving or identifiable customer buying patterns, 4S Sales will help you improve sales and meet corporate financial objectives.

4S Sales has been successfully deployed at client company sites specialized in the distribution business.  Sales managers use the software on the road daily, while office-based telesales people run the program from their desktop PC’s.  A travelling sales manager can use his laptop and modem to connect to his home office, and telesales personnel work directly with the corporate data server, thereby ensuring the exchange of the most current information.

4S Sales brings sales and decision support to the operational level of sales people in the field.  The concept of “empowerment” seeks to push decision-making power and initiative to the operational level, closest to those who do the work and interact directly with customers.

But in order to be as efficient and as effective as possible, sales people need instant access to salient information, in order to make those thousand daily micro-decisions that will make a visible impact on the bottom line, for instance, through timely and cost efficient shipments, increased sales to satisfied customers or targeting new prospects for given products. Information is power. It is a key component in any effort to enhance the sales potential. 

The objective of 4S Sales is to give the sales people further responsibility and to facilitate empowerment through information in other words, to foster “In-Powerment”.

Implementing 4S Sales is straightforward, because it doesn’t require changes in current IT systems, and only requires basic information regarding customers, products and invoice lines. Such information can be enlarged depending on available data and the requirements of each individual business. Sales people enjoy using 4S because it is primarily designed for them and their own needs.  4S Sales features can be quickly mastered, so that sales managers may focus on applying very effective sales techniques, made possible with the use of 4S Sales. 

• Catalogue for fast product information search (multi-criteria)

• Client and product specific price lists and discounts.

• One click order entry from electronic catalogue & search engine.

• Real time display of gross margin % by line, orders and client

• Cross-functional customer information (accounting, invoicing,
  order administration, logistics, marketing).

• Specific supplier or brand information.

• Individual product inventory stock levels.

• Promotions, new, replaced or phased out products

• Reporting and links with MS™ Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook

Beyond these basic features, some more advanced capabilities contribute to make 4S Sales a unique software product.  These advanced features are related to empowering the sales force in customer negations by providing sophisticated data analysis capabilities, usually available only to senior sales or even top management.  The sales people only have access, however, to data pertaining to their own customers.

Before becoming a software product as such, the concepts at the core of 4S were designed and implemented on a custom basis for various companies.  Having capitalized on the accumulated experience acquired mainly with distributors and wholesalers, EFFIS has developed a set of standard software tools which are easily customisable to cater to the specific needs of each enterprise.

The “HP Foods” example, a subsidiary of the Danone group, headquartered in England, is especially telling.  An important part of the activities of that subsidiary concerns itself with the distribution of exclusive and non-exclusive brands, serving a large customer base of resellers and wholesalers as well.

The company’s product catalogue also contains a fairly large number of product references, including food products such as sauces and condiments, used in ethnic cuisines, mostly Chinese, Indian and Thai.

The HP Foods salespeople who have been using 4S Mobile since the beginning of the year 2000 are highly satisfied with the system.  Time dedicated to order entry has drastically decreased, and there is no more manual re-keying, all orders being directly entered with 4S.  Moreover, the hours, previously dedicated to finding information and to administrative tasks, has nearly entirely vanished.  Time spent with customers and earmarked for actual selling, has thus largely increased, which has fostered the development of new sales dynamics between the sales force and its customers that goes way beyond traditional order taking.

The director of sales highlights the fact that all the necessary information for salespeople is entirely integrated, and only one click away, thanks to 4S.  Be it product, customer, prices, inventory, orders, invoices, sales history, and more, all such information is readily available.  4S is also used at HP Foods as a “call management” tool, enabling salespeople to drive, if not take control, of customer interactions during sales calls.  And simple sales techniques at the core of 4S user training sessions, when systematically applied with 4S, make it possible, day-by-day and order-by-order, to quantifiably earn more revenue and margin.