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Field sales, also known as outside sales, software is designed for employees who meet customers in person at their residences or places of business, engaging in door-to-door sales. It assigns sales personnel logical travel routes that maximize efficiency. These tools can guide team members through sales routes and inform managers of where their employees are at any given time. Field sales software can be used to log successful sales or transactions and monitor the activity of teams on the road.
Key Benefits of Field Sales Software
Field sales software plays into the world of greater sales software. While other sales software assigns employees digital territories to be contacted via telephone, email, or video call, field sales software is different in that it provides physical location territories. Field sales software seamlessly connects salespeople to their leads’ front doors. Certain tools can also integrate with or act as CRM software, harvesting contact information and serving as a hub for updates and field notes. Field sales solutions are useful for cold visits, order taking, and relationship selling.
Businesses that rely on in-person meetings to establish and maintain customer relationships, especially those whose transactions occur at the customer’s location, are the chief users of field sales software. Within those organizations, the heaviest use is by the salespeople themselves, who use it with their phones or other mobile devices. (Laptop computers, once the key tool of field sales personnel, have fallen out of favor due to weight and inconvenience but are still used.) Field sales managers use this software as well but do not live and die by it the way their teams do.
There are features that are only valuable to field sales personnel by virtue of their need to be mobile and sometimes disconnected from business resources. Inside salespeople typically don’t need to use a mobile device as a catalog or POS terminal, after all. Field sales software has the following capabilities:
Most of the issues with field sales software stem not from the software itself but from the devices that run it. These include:
Screen space — This has been a concern with field sales software since businesses started switching from laptops to phones and tablets. There are limits to how much can be displayed on a tiny screen and how easily it can be used. As mobile device makers provide larger screens for little added weight, this issue is rapidly disappearing.
Loss — It is much easier to drop, forget, or otherwise misplace a mobile phone than a laptop computer.
Battery life — Phones and tablets run dry on power quickly when they have to power Wi-Fi, video, and software. Chargers and battery packs solve this problem, but it remains an annoyance that must be dealt with.