The Business Case
Many types of businesses have Sales Representatives who interact with customers and clients alike to sell a product or service. Once the customer is quoted for the product and service and they agree to the quote, the communication between the Sales Representative and the Project Coordinator begins. This post will explain the communication challenge between the sales representative and project coordinator and how to use Teamup’s unique features to get their jobs done well.
Sales Representatives need to know their customer’s order is taken care of, while the project coordinator has the responsibility to not only meet the expectations of the customer and Sales Rep, but to follow the company’s policies and procedures.
The Challenge: Key Statuses
Here is a list of key statuses both the Sales Representative and a Project Coordinator utilize when discussing job statuses and updating the status of the job from the start to finish.
- Quote Customer
- Received customer PO/Contract
- Coordinator Processed Order
- Received Product
- Review by Master Scheduler
- In-Progress
- Tech/Sub on-site
- Partially complete
- Problems
- Complete
Managing these status can be done in a variety of ways dependent upon the software systems and what resources are available to pull the needed data.
Common Solutions
- Excel spreadsheet
- hand-written list of all projects with statuses
- exporting information from the business’ ERP system and matching to a status
These are then used for conversations about each project or printed out for participants at project meetings. Problems with these solutions include:
- Maybe outdated
- Require physical presence or only accessible in certain locations
- May require additional system and manual processes to make the info available to relevant parties
Teamup Solution
A shareable calendar between Sales Representatives and Project Coordinators can be more efficient and help streamline the communitcation among the parties. First, the Sales Representatives keep track of what they quoted on their individual calendar. Once they receive a PO/Contract from the customer, they add the project to the coordinator’s sub-calendar and upload important information that the business requires.
From this point the project coordinator can begin to process the order and update the statuses as the order moves along the order status workflow. In addition, the comment section in each event can be utilized for issues, or clarification on the job expectations.
The sales representatives can simply check the calendar to see the latest project status at any time. With the Teamup mobile app on their smartphone, they are able to respond to customers with status inquiries instantaneously regardless where they are.
Setting up the calendar
Each project coordinator and each Sales Representative have a calendar. This will help each Sales Rep know who is coordinating the particular job and their availability. A project can be assigned to the calendars of both the Sales Rep and the Project Coordinator.
Setting up customized fields, specifically the job status
Sales Representatives are busy, and need quick answers on job statuses. On the image below the focus is setting up a unique customized field to capture all key statuses. Depending on the operational needs, other similar businesses may prefer using less status options.
Key Features Used
- Customized event fields for key statuses as noted above
- Enabling Comments
- Uploading documents within each project
- Assigning one event to multiple sub-calendars
Pains, Gains, and Impact
With Teamup, the service business is able to achieve the following:
Eliminate Pains
- Time consuming spreadsheets created by gathering data from different business systems in preparation for weekly meetings, and/or last minute meetings.
- Confusion between the sales representative and sales coordinator on tasks to be done and status of each project.
- Locating important documents to make a project complete.
Gain Benefits
- Status of each project.
- One place to save all required documents.
- Streamline reports.
- Real-time visibility for all orders.
- Ability to create comments.
- Clearly documented comments and discussion notes to keep people and tasks on track without emailing back and forth.
Impact
- Streamline the communication among sales representatives and project coordinators in a small business. The size of the applicable group may easily scale from a dozen people to hundreds.
- Managers access to the workloads of Representatives and coordinators on one page with the ability to zoom in and zoom out on any time scale as needed.
- Many projects are documented, depending on the size of the business, it may range from hundreds to thousands per year.
- The bottom line: More efficient operations, improved employee productivity, better business results.
Are you looking for ways to streamline your team communication and increase operational efficiency? Give Teamup a try. Getting started is easy and free. Or dive in and explore the key features!
