If you’ve been in the sales game for a decade or more, you’ve seen a tremendous amount of change in the technology area. Remember ACT! Contact Management Software? Goldmine? These early sales contact management solutions dominated the market and virtually every sales person alive during the late 80’s and early 90’s had their hands on this products.
Then Pat Sullivan, a founder of ACT!, launched SalesLogix, a more advanced and expensive solution for larger sales teams that established the Sales Force Automation category.
Of course, Salesforce.com then broke new ground with Cloud based CRM. And that’s when things really broke loose. Since then there has been a proliferation of various solutions, Cloud CRMs and very high end client – server solutions too.
But what has all this innovation led to in terms of benefits to your average sales team?
Lauren Carlson, with Software Advice recently posted a great chronicle of the development of SFA (Sales Force Automation) technology that really hits home the value proposition.
Sales managers, business owners and sales people wondering how the investment in CRM, SFA or just contact management will pay off or perhaps just trying to find the right solution in the forest of options would do well to give it a read.
Read Lauren’s article “SFA 15 Years Later: Now Every Rep’s Best Friend” here.