A sales portal enables your internal sales groups and external third-party partner organizations to gain access to and manipulate the sales information (e.g., sales offers, product descriptions, video, FAQs, etc.) to successfully conduct sales activities. There are many types of sales management portals depending upon who utilizes them. The following discussion provides an overview of various types of sales management portals.
Content Management System
Content management portal enables organizations to easily create, manage, and update their content without needing to deal with the tedious task of maintaining a content management system. For example, Salesforce Knowledge Manager and Adobe Business Portal are examples of content management portals. Content Management Systems are designed to automate the sales process by managing the lifecycle of product information, developing standard technical documents, and collecting and securely storing transaction data. Some CMSs such as Salesforce Knowledge Manager and Adobe Business Portal require an in-house team of sales professionals to oversee its maintenance. A content management system automates the sales process by controlling the lifecycle of product information, managing routine workflows, and centralizing work processes across multiple sites.
CRM
Customer relationship management is another type of sales portal software. It automates and coordinates all customer interactions with the sales team, client, and organization. This type of software can be used for things such as: gathering customer information, analytics, lead generation, and other related tasks. CRM requires a trained employee to oversee the entire CRM project.
Marketing Team Portal
The marketing team can also use sales portals to provide direct access to business decisions and improve the effectiveness of the overall marketing mix. Marketing portals allow sales people to access company and channel intelligence and integrate it into the sales process. Marketing teams may use marketing applications such as: email, browser, and web search tools, data feeds, and social media marketing. Marketing teams often have to coordinate with other departments and the corporate sales force.
Real Estate Sales Portal
Real estate sales are usually done on a closed deal basis, which means that only the buyer has final authority for all actions associated with the purchase. Salespeople must first apply for permission to view, review, and access information about a particular property before they can begin negotiating a deal. Using a Sales Portal, sales people can enter information about properties as well as track deals that have passed through various stages of the buying process.
Sales and customer service are integral parts of business
Business owners should invest in sales portal development because it not only streamlines the sales process, but also provides customers with a way to interact with their representative. In the long run, investing in sales portal development means that the business owner is not only receiving value for their investment, but also seeing value for their money. This allows a business owner to make investments in the future, even if the current trends do not favor the type of investments they are looking to make. By streamlining the sales process, sales team members are better able to maximize the potential returns on their services.