Three Signs Your CRM System Isn't really working

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.