A multi-firm sales agent’s day ends in the car, between the last visit and the drive home. The requests gathered on the round reach the company by phone, by email from a personal mailbox or as a WhatsApp message, and customer service turns them into quotes. When a request is vague, the same quote gets prepared two or three times. A CRM for sales agents exists to close that loop, and it works on one condition: logging a visit must take less time than a phone call to the office.
Why don’t sales agents update the CRM?
Because they see it as a form of control that takes time away from visits: they update it when entering data takes seconds and returns useful information before the appointment.
A furniture manufacturer with a few hundred employees and a network of stores across Italy has used a CRM for almost twenty years. A few years ago it added a second CRM alongside the first, synchronised every night with the ERP, but nobody opens it. In the discussion with the customer the reason came out clearly: the sales staff do not want to report on their visits because they feel monitored. Without a sales director who insists on the data, they added, the CRM stays empty.
The result is a subscription paid for a tool that produces no information, and a management team that cannot read how visits are going. The same customer pointed to the most workable route. A short report dictated in the car, straight after the appointment, is far more likely to be completed than a form filled in at a computer in the evening.
The visit note dictated in the car
In the app, the note opens from the record of the customer just visited. The agent dictates the text and the note is saved on the record with date and time. The area manager finds it in the customer’s history without asking for a report. Dictation also works for the follow-up email to the customer, which is filed automatically when sent from the app. Calls made from the app go into the history. Automatic call transcription, on the other hand, requires a dedicated telephony module, worth assessing when the network works mostly by phone.
In a CRM for sales agents, resistance therefore has two components: time and the sense of being monitored. An app built for work on the move reduces the first. The second depends on what the agent gets in return: the payment status of the customer about to be visited, for example, makes recording useful to the agent as well.
Field testing starts with one agent and a month of real orders
A paint manufacturer selling to builders’ merchants, with about 250 items in its catalogue and a network made up mostly of multi-firm agents, had already tried two CRMs. In both cases agents had to switch on a tablet and fill in the order in front of the customer. It took too long. After a few weeks the network went back to paper. Statistics on quotes had lost credibility too, because nobody knew which records were complete.
The SugarAI demo started from the order, the step on which the use of a CRM for sales agents depends. From the app the agent opens the customer record, duplicates the previous order, adjusts quantities and discount and sends the PDF. The app also works without network coverage, because it keeps a local copy of the data and synchronises changes when the connection returns. Notes and email text can be dictated. The area manager sees the orders from their area without having to ask for them by phone.
Three days of prototype and a month of testing
Aesir proposed a three-day prototype. Half a day goes to analysis, a day and a half to customisation and one day, split into two halves, to working with an agent who acts as a pilot. A month of field testing follows, before the decision on rolling out to the network. Integration with the ERP stays outside the prototype, and at this stage only its analysis is carried out. The customer accepted this approach because it allowed the CRM to be tried on a single agent and timings to be measured in the field.
During the month of testing, two figures are measured. One is the time needed to record an order from the phone, the other the share of visits with a note entered on the same day. Customer service, for its part, counts the quotes redone because of incomplete requests. These numbers, gathered on real orders, show whether the third experience with a CRM will end differently from the first two.
Insight: a multi-firm agent works for several companies and divides the day between them. In a CRM for sales agents, adoption is won on the minutes an order and a visit note take, because those are the minutes the agent takes away from the other principals’ customers.
How are emails from agents using a personal mailbox archived?
They are archived with a dedicated address placed in blind copy: the email is filed on the customer’s record, provided the customer’s address is already in the CRM.
A manufacturer of building finishes, part of a group, works with more than twenty multi-firm agents, roughly one per region, and has never had a CRM. Requests reach a two-person customer service team by email and WhatsApp. Agents change: two have recently retired, taking part of the customers’ history with them. Most agents write from their personal mailbox.
During the demo Aesir showed the CRM’s archiving address. It works with any email program, webmail included: it is enough to add it in copy or blind copy, and the email is filed under the contact’s record. The advice given on the call was to archive the emails that matter, because the CRM does not replace the email program.
The customer’s objection came at once: with agents always on the road, remembering an extra address for every email is unrealistic. There are two alternatives. An email sent from the CRM app is filed automatically on the customer’s record. For those who write a lot from a computer, a company mailbox with the Outlook add-in sends and archives with a single command. The decision on how many agents get the CRM, and with which profile, is still under discussion.
Who sees a multi-firm agent’s customers in the CRM?
The agent sees their own portfolio, the area manager their area and management the whole network, with permissions set module by module.
Confidentiality is the concern agents raise most often when a company introduces a CRM for sales agents: who owns the information collected and who can read it. In SugarAI each user has a supervisor and a permission matrix for each module. The agent sees only the customers assigned to them, the area manager sees their agents’ orders even without owning them, and management sees everything. An agent can be given read-only access to some modules, or have the permission to delete removed.
When an agent leaves, their customers are reassigned to the successor with the full history of visits, quotes and orders. That is when the effort of recording pays back: the customer’s history stays with the company, and the new agent picks up from the last visit.
Each agent has a personal user account, active on computer and phone at the same time. Order entry can be handed to the back office, while the agent remains the owner of what is recorded in their name.
The financial relationship with the agent also relies on data. The European directive on self-employed commercial agents requires the principal to supply a quarterly statement of commission setting out how it was calculated. Commissions stay in the ERP, while the CRM makes sure that orders and customers are attributed to the right agent from the moment they are entered.
Price lists, stock and unpaid invoices come from the ERP
In a CRM for sales agents, the value the network perceives comes through integration. The catalogue with its price lists and stock availability comes into the CRM from the ERP, so the quote starts from the correct price. If the discount exceeds the threshold set by the company, the quote is blocked and requests the supervisor’s approval, which can be granted from a phone. The PDF is generated from a company Word template and keeps the history of revisions.
Turnover and unpaid invoices also reach the CRM from the ERP. Before the visit the agent knows whether the customer has overdue invoices, information normally requested from the accounts team by phone. The article on credit management explains which indicators to follow for late payments.
On the technical side SugarAI talks to the ERP through documented APIs and webhooks, or through scheduled exchanges, every night or every few minutes for orders. The data rule should be set at the start. A prospect stays in the CRM. With the first order the customer record moves to the ERP, which from then on is its source, while in the CRM the record becomes read-only. Orders pass to the ERP only once they are confirmed.
CRM for sales agents: what to check before rolling the app out to the network
The table compares the moments of an agent’s day with and without the CRM app.
| Moment | Without a CRM | With the CRM app |
|---|---|---|
| Before the visit | A call to accounts to ask about unpaid invoices | Turnover and overdue items on the customer record |
| During the visit | Order on paper or on a slow tablet | Previous order duplicated and adjusted, even offline |
| After the visit | Request to customer service by phone or WhatsApp | Note dictated in the car and quote from the right price list |
| Email to the customer | Personal mailbox with no trace in the company | Sent from the app or with the archiving address in copy |
| Change of agent | History in the memory of whoever leaves | Customers reassigned with visits, quotes and orders |
Before extending the CRM to the whole network, it is worth checking:
- how long an order from the phone takes, measured with a real agent;
- whether the app works without network coverage and how it flags data still to be synchronised;
- which data flows down from the ERP: price lists, stock, turnover, unpaid invoices;
- who governs the customer record after the first order;
- how emails from agents using a personal mailbox are archived;
- which permissions the agent, the area manager and management have;
- what happens to the history when an agent leaves;
- who in the company reads the data collected, and how often.
A CRM project with Aesir: analysis, app and integration
Aesir Srl runs SugarAI projects from the analysis of the sales process to customisation and the training of agents and area managers. Aesir is a Gold Partner of NTS Informatica for Business Experience, and with other ERP systems available connectors are used or new ones are built. The platforms we select process data in EU data centres with certifications from the ISO/IEC 27001 family and requirements in line with NIS2: the same standards applied to our own infrastructure. For companies already using the CRM with another partner, the article on changing CRM partner explains what is kept in the transition.
Frequently asked questions about a CRM for sales agents
Does the CRM app work without a connection?
Yes, the app keeps a local copy of the data and works offline. Changes made offline stay flagged and are synchronised when the connection returns.
Do multi-firm agents have to use a company email address?
They can keep their personal mailbox and archive the important emails with a dedicated address in blind copy. A company mailbox with the Outlook add-in makes archiving quicker for those who write a lot from a computer.
Can discounts granted by agents be controlled?
Yes, the company sets a threshold above which the quote is blocked and requests the supervisor’s approval. Approval can also be given from the app.
Where is the best place to start with a network of agents?
The soundest path starts with a prototype of a few days with one agent and a month of field testing. Rolling out to the network comes afterwards, with training shaped by what the test revealed.
Let’s talk
A CRM for sales agents collects reliable data when every visit gives something back to the person recording it, starting with the customer’s payment status. The rest depends on management reading that data and bringing it into sales meetings. If you would like to explore the subject or assess the situation in your own company, you can fill in the form at the bottom of this page or write to support@aesir-tech.it: we will arrange a free consultation and start from your numbers.