Read something worth your time today

Most SFA apps, on paper, do roughly the same things. And yet adoption rates remain stubbornly low. The feature set is rarely the problem.

For the first few weeks in a new sales head role, you will be functionally blind to what is actually happening in the field — even with reports, dashboards, and weekly calls.

Every evening, hundreds of field reps type out their day into WhatsApp and hit send. It feels like reporting. It is actually data destruction.

Below 50 reps, WhatsApp groups and Excel can hold together. Above 100, the same system starts producing blind spots and missed revenue at a rate impossible to ignore.

Primary sales is easy to track. Secondary sales — what moves from distributor to retailer, outlet by outlet — is where most FMCG companies lose the thread.

Having an SFA app does not mean you have accurate field data. It means your team has a place to submit inputs. Those are very different things.

The idea of running a structured SFA workflow on a messaging platform sounds like a compromise. It is worth examining whether that instinct is correct.

Target reviews are the first thing most incoming sales heads want to do. It is also, in most cases, the wrong starting point.

You bought the software. You ran the training. You sent the reminders. Three months later, compliance is at 30%. The problem is almost certainly not your team.