Kyle
Anyone who owns or runs a business with an outside sales force has undoubtedly experienced cheating sales people. You know the type, the ones who come in for the sales meetings, report that they’ve seen a bunch of clients and that none of them were interested in your services. For all you know they could have been sitting at Starbucks all day, running around doing personal errands or even worse, at home sleeping.
Business owners and operators with outside sales forces have probably tried a few CRM solutions, but even those can be ineffective. Sales people forget to update them, or they fudge their entries just to prove they’re doing a great job.
Not all sales people are bad, of course you know your top producers, they’re out there making sales.
A startup in Nashville aims to help those with outside sales forces. CallProof keeps call logs and appointment records and can allow a manager to monitor the progress of their sales people, even if they’re using their own phone (with permission of course). This way you can see if your sales people are making a bunch of one minute phone calls or they’re actually going through the sales process.
With CallProof you can also see if your sales people are making appointments. CallProof isn’t just about the underperforming or lazy sales people. Managers can use the data provided by CallProof to help coach their sales people as well.
Robert Hartline the CEO and Co-Founder of the Nashville based startup, created out of necessity. He was actually one of those managers managing an outside sales force for a wireless company. He created CallProof to make sure that sales people were doing the necessary activity to actually produce results.
We got a chance to talk with Hartline in the interview below.