HOW A CRM CAN DRAMATICALLY IMPROVE BUSINESS
Although CRM stands for Customer Relationship Manager, it means different things to different people. CRM’s are constantly evolving and are seldom used to their full potential. They are tremendous tools to collect data, keep contact, track progress and help analyze the information. Of course, as Sales Managers your main purpose is to generate revenue and profit and close more deals. However, no matter what you think the CRM does, the emphasis is on Customer focus.
We must start out with the people, the process, and the customer before even thinking about getting a CRM. If there is no formalized Sales process, and the people are not convinced that a tool will help them and NOT just help management, the CRM will become a very expensive data dump, and nothing else. All aspects of the Enterprise must be committed to making it work, and participants in the development and use of the CRM. It is NOT just for Sales and Sales Management.
As a consultant this is the type of scenario that often happens.
Sales Manager Bob bought a CRM one year before I started consulting him. After 1-year Bob felt that the CRM was an unnecessary expense. There was no increase in revenue, the pipeline was filled, but there did not seem to be anymore closing of deals. Before eliminating this tool, I asked Bob a few questions:
1. Is there an in-house champion that helps people with utilizing the CRM?
2. Do you have a Sales Process that is Customer focused and has your CRM been customized for the Sales Process?
3. Is the CRM integrating your sales, marketing, and customer service operations?
4. Do customer support people have access to the CRM to help track work orders and progress?
5. Are there enough defined steps in your Sales Process, where you can see and help your sales people through the next step?
6. Is the CRM cumbersome where the sales folks must copy and paste from Outlook to the CRM?
7. Is there a dashboard of data and information that will help you manage and lead your Sales people?
After many long discussions with not only Bob, and the different departments we decided to take the following steps.
1. Develop a CRM Team with the different departments to gain advice on what will promote cooperation and work flow ease internally, so the customer benefits.
2. Be clear on what information is needed by every department for prospects and customers to make the CRM important to every discipline.
3. Clearly define not only the Sales Process, but the internal processes needed for a sale to be completed, and for customers to be maintained.
4. Make sure that the CRM is easy to learn and use, particularly by the Sales people.
It really took almost another year before the benefits of the CRM started to be seen. The first benefit was seeing cooperation and work flow improvements through the departments. It made Bob’s job a lot easier. Bob was now managing the process more than the people. This gave him better insight in what and how to coach his salespeople and name the roadblocks that stop salespeople from closing the sale. Revenue increases in the second year were 48%.
Sales Coach AZ 