“If it’s not in your CRM, it doesn’t exist”.
How many times have you uttered these words to your sales reps? And how many times has your CRM continued to go underused, or unused altogether?
Don’t make the same mistakes in 2015. Make it your New Year’s Resolution this year to encourage the adoption of your CRM system among your sales reps. It’ll pay off in the long run with a more insightful and profitable sales process. If you fail on this resolution then you might be at risk for the following 3 consequences.
1. You cannot track and progress deals
Your CRM system shouldn’t be perceived as a sales manager’s tool for managing sales reps. At least not entirely. Companies that use the system to track when their reps are logging in and tracking email activity are missing the point of the CRM entirely. Your CRM system is much more than a babysitting tool for your sales reps.
Use your CRM as a tool to keep track of deals and help your sales reps see them through to close. If your reps aren’t using your CRM, you cannot successfully track how their deals are progressing. You won’t be able to provide insights on what next steps should be taken. And the deals will expire, costing your growth efforts.
2. You miss out on insightful selling
Customer Relationship Management. Users often times forget what their CRM system stands for. Besides for a tool that makes the sales process easier and more efficient to manage for sales reps, it is also a way of engaging and providing customer service. Sales that are recorded in your CRM provide key insights about the customer, what was purchased, how long the sales process took, what the major pain points were, budget issues, and contract negotiations, to name just a few. Armed with these insights, sales reps can then re-target their customers for a repeat sale.
Customers that are engaged using the CRM are likely to spend 20-40% more the next time they make a purchase with that company –According to Cloudswave.
In addition to providing key insights for reps to work repeat sales, your CRM system allows you to identify key points in the sales process that need more nurturing. Let’s take a look at an example.
Your prospect is in the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey. They are just beginning to realize they have a problem that needs to be solved. After speaking with your sales rep a couple of times, the rep identifies that the prospect’s pain point seems to be the lifespan of your business’s product. You tell them that your product, a medical billing software application, uses the most cutting edge technology, but aside from that, medical billing software is a necessity for physician practices now and in the near future. How can you claim this? You provide your prospect with a useful report that proves the viability and necessity of your product—“The State of Medical Billing Software Technology in the Future of Healthcare”.
Because all of the interactions between the sales rep and the prospect were documented, your team was better able to provide the prospect with the right insights to help them through their pain points.
3. You lack pipeline accountability
Sales pipeline accountability begins at the top. Sales leaders and managers need to create a culture that adheres to using the CRM system as a part of their sales reps’ jobs. There shouldn’t be a question of whether or not a rep should enter a deal. Every opportunity should be documented. Even if the opportunity falls short, the documentation provides learning opportunities for future deals.
Failing to create a sales culture that adopts the CRM system creates a culture that is hard to manage. Sales reps will be harder to train and coach and future deals will suffer as a result.
Adoption of your CRM system is a must in today’s increasingly complex sales environment. Instead of an annoyance, your CRM system should be considered an advanced technological tool that provides data and insights into how your customers make purchasing decisions.
Can you continue to let deals slip through the cracks because they were mismanaged? As you and your team analyze your strategies for the new year, think about the benefits that utilizing your CRM system will have for your sales growth efforts.
Use our LeadGen eBook to learn more about lead generation strategies and sales prospecting tips that will help your sales team use their CRM system.
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