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| CRM software |
Your existing CRM
system could be one of the problems if it isn’t structured and integrated
to support these new customer-facing strategies. Companies need to make sure
that their processes and platforms support this new model,
If they don’t, their next customer meeting could be their last.
Your company’s CRM system may be hindering
your sales effectiveness and growth in three main areas:
1. You invested in CRM to produce better
win rates and shorten sales cycles, but your sales reps aren’t as productive as
you expected.
But in today’s B2B world, the quotas aren’t
the real problem—outmoded selling processes are. And if you want to change the
way your people sell your CRM system must support that effort with modules that
drive behavioural change as part of the sales cycle.
For example, sales reps react to the
commoditization of their product set by trying to increase their overall
volume. But the smarter move is to try to maintain higher margins, something
that a CRM system with a configure, price, and quote feature, like Peneza.com, will support. Without CPQ,
discounting and deal profitability aren’t well controlled and quotes are prone
to errors.
2. Your sales pipeline lacks high-quality
leads.
Gone are the days when marketing handed
over a list of leads to sales to start calling. The buyer already has a lot of
information before talking to sales, and you want to provide them with targeted
contextual content for all stages of the buying cycle. The only way to build
that modern customer relationship is for marketing and sales to work together.
Such collaboration must extend across both
process and technology platforms. An Aberdeen Group report on best-in-class
sales techniques found that a third of best-in-class companies have a highly
evolved, automated lead management process, compared with only 3% of all
others, and are far more likely to promote marketing-sales collaboration.
After deploying a CRM tool like Oracle
Marketing Cloud’s automated marketing feature, Thomson Reuters Legal’s
Australia division has realized a 10% increase in sales-qualified leads and a
30% decrease in opt-outs, a strong indication that it’s talking to the right
people at the right time.
3. Your sales team relies on intuition
rather than data.
With all the talk about big data and
analytics, it might be surprising to learn that the gut feel approach is still
prevalent. Many sales executives are still flying blind, particularly when it
comes to strategic organizational decisions,
For example, defining territories is a
delicate topic for sales teams, one that can trigger significant employee
turnover. Even so, companies tend to stick with existing definitions (or make
minor changes to current definitions), leaving some reps frustrated and
opportunities untapped.
