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Six Ways CRM Can Increase Your Sales

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is helping companies all over the world. CRM helps companies increase sales, improve customer service and enhance marketing. EduComp is putting together a group of publications on CRM and how it can help your organization. This first document focuses on CRM and how it increases Sales. Further publications will look into other disciplines, and into specific industries.

1. Pipeline Management
When you think of salespeople managing a pipeline what comes to mind? Salespeople choosing wisely which tasks to do first; which deals to work on, which deals to give up on, and when it is time to stop working on current deals and prospect for new blood?

Todays CRM systems allow for just that. If your salespeople have multi-step sales cycles, multiple priorities and deals, responsibilities for lead generation as well as pipeline management, CRM can help them choose which tasks will lead them to greater commissions, and the company to new customers and increased profits. Managing sales cycles For companies with complex, multi-step sales cycles, effective CRM solutions allow you to create your sales process within the application. This allows for your sales reps (and sales managers) to know which steps of the sales cycle have been completed, and which ones have not. It allows you to request or even require your reps to input the sales situation into the system. You can choose the information to be input based on specifics like:

Length of your sales cycle Nature and size of your deals Types of qualifying criteria you should use Your industry The number of players involved in your deals Sales team size Sales team experience Management team experience Comfort level of your organization

So a CRM system can help with quality control of sales cycles, allowing you to monitor your leads through specific sales stages. The next question becomes, are your reps spending time on the right sales cycles? Or enough time knocking on doors?

2. Activity Management
Sales is a profession where time and priority management usually make or break the success of the person. There is always another place for a salesperson to spend time. Some of these are:

Working with the research person at a large organization asking for yet another piece of info (who oddly enough has the title of assistant to the assistant to the assistant analyst and claims to be in charge of the buying decision) A networking event that might yield a great contact, but take all day Cold calling from the phone book Follow up calling from a marketing campaign Driving to office parks and dropping brochures Working on a marketing campaign that may or may not get funded Writing a white paper or article on your industry that may or may not get published Researching prospect web sites Planning sales cycles (but only for qualified leads) Researching and studying new products Buying lottery tickets

Juggling all of these and more is a daunting task. Prioritizing A CRM system can help the sales rep to prioritize tasks. So you think, well a Palm Pilot can organize tasks as well, right? Yes it can, and so can a very basic contact management or activity management system. So can a spreadsheet. A powerful CRM system can go to the next level by letting you look at tasks based on whether a task is for instance:

Associated with a sales opportunity Efficiently moving a sales cycle forward An appropriate marketing activity Fitting into an overall strategic initiative

CRM allows you to look at your tasks daily, weekly, monthly and even annually. Are there enough instances of networking each month? Why are there 40 activities affiliated with that dead sales lead? If you want to cold call three mornings next week, you better reconsider that marketing meeting, etc. Too many people (salespeople and others as well), use a calendaring system as a time filler. Not as something that can help you intelligently manage time and priorities. EduComp recommends that you use your CRM system as a priority setting tool, and many CRM systems help you do that. Well organized business people know about advanced planning and blocking out time for important tasks. A well utilized CRM system cannot figure out all of your prioritizations for you, but it can help. One big thing that a CRM system allows is for you to input the time blocks, repeat them if necessary, remind you that they are coming and tell you if you are attempting to schedule something that is in conflict. For instance, you may want to make sure you cold call for 2 hours on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, attend 3 networking events per month, and have a planning meeting the first Wednesday of each month. Once tasks are input and/or completed you can run reports to quantify results. More will be explained in the reporting section of this document, but for now, would it help you to know:

How many touches does it take with a prospect to get a sale? Which sales reps close deals most often once they receive a lead? How many new opportunities has a certain rep found this year? How many closed? Where are my leads coming from? Which lead sources turn into closed deals? If a train leaves Boston at 2:00 pm heading west, and another leaves Chicago

Qualifying As mentioned above in the Pipeline Management section, you can input sales stages into your CRM system. Additionally, you can input qualifying criteria. So some companies put in a list of questions, all of which must be answered appropriately before the salesperson can either move to the next step, request company resources, even travel to the prospect site. Would you like your sales reps to consider a standard set of criteria in the early stages of the sales cycle before spending more time on a lead? Would you like to feel comfortable that reps were spending time on the best leads, and dropping the bad ones to make time for marketing and prospecting?

3. Sales Management - How can I help?

Successful sales managers realize that they are only as good as their team. From top to bottom, sales managers and people above them are continually asking How can I help? when it comes to their sales reps. They will have a hard time helping the team if they do not know:

The strengths and weaknesses of their sales team

Where they are being stymied Where they spend their time and effort Which deals they focus on What confuses them What stops them from spending time on the right tasks

The first way a CRM system helps a sales manager is allowing him or her to input a recommended sales methodology. This way, sales reps are giving a path to follow when it comes to deals, all the way from initial contact to close and follow up sale. The amount of detail is up to you, but most companies find a balance for their companys environment and industry. Once that is accomplished, managers can monitor reps and their deals, watching where deals get log jammed. If most of your reps have the same slowdown area, perhaps they could use specific training, or your product weaknesses get exposed at that stage or your competitors have figured out a way to put themselves in a positive light at that stage. If one rep has a problem at a given stage, individual counseling may be the answer. Tracking sales steps also helps with tracking activities in general. Not only can you tell where sales reps are being held up, but you can see how much time they are spending in certain areas. The rep who claims to be cold calling diligently can be called to the carpet if their calls logged numbers are on the bottom of the heap. Tracking also helps the sales manager expose deals that are sucking up resources. Just because a deal is stuck in the early stages for a while does not mean the rep is acting inappropriately. It is often the case where there is no action on a deal coming for a quarter or two. The only inappropriate action is spending a lot of time or resources there, and tracking can tell you that. Tracking also assists in the forecasting process. This can help you predict cash flow, and either inventory or service needs or both.

4. Remote and Synchronization Capabilities

EduComp generally advises companies not to base CRM, or any technology decisions, based on the latest wiz-bang technological advancements. However, if your sales reps, or any key personnel travel, remote capability is not a technical cool thing for the IT guys to talk about between foosball matches. Remote and sync capability is a requirement for these portable sales teams. Think about the sales rep waking up in Des Moines. He/She needs to call on 6 customers in the next three days. Now, assuming that laptops are within the budget, it seems silly not to equip this person with every tool they have at home. The sales rep on the road with a viable CRM system can:

Review the accounts he/she is going to call on that day Review the sales history, all prior interactions with your company including customer service calls for current customers

Contact the sales manager with questions and have a productive conversation since the manager can see the same information Plan the sales call based on where the deal is in the sales cycle Report back and sync back from the hotel room after the end of the day Even work on the airplane on the flight home

Before you say that the salesperson needs some time where they are not working, ask one if they would rather work in a hotel room in Jackson Hole, or be at the office on a night that their family is waiting at home. Many people love to catch up on work in airplanes, or on a train or bus, allowing them more time for family and leisure. Now, web capabilities are not required for everyone. And that is a place to be wary of the wiz-bang selling. If youre equipping a call center with CRM, your sales reps are local and dont take laptops on sales calls, or need to work at home, you probably do not need remote capabilities. Also, some people can work without the true web or true thin client abilities. Many users can work effectively with a high speed connection securely connected to your server. In this case, the software is not really thin client and does not need to be. Finally, sync capabilities are more important than true web and true thin client. True web allows you to access your server data from a laptop, which is important. However, this alone means that the laptop does nothing when not connected. Synching allows you to work online OR offline. Synching is what helps your company. Just about any software package can be accessed remotely at this time. Many require a small footprint on the client side. The value is being able to work online or offline, and synching back the data.

Bonus Section A Few Words About Resistance

Once a long-time CRM administrator was asked What was your ROI on your CRM project? His reply? We had a sales rep leave two months ago. His quota is $2 million a year and he went to a competitor. We have all of his contacts, appointment notes, plans for upcoming sales, activities, opportunities and forecasts. Even if he didnt input all of his information, in my mind, we just made $2 million dollars. Sales reps, especially quality ones, especially seasoned ones, often resist CRM systems. And guess what? Many of them wont improve their sales very much if you force them to use a CRM system! But guess what else? If they dont use it, your project will probably fail. Give or take a few percentage points, you are going to have three types of sales people; The top 10%, the bottom 10% and the great mass or 80% in the middle. The top players will succeed regardless. The bottom players will fail regardless. If the middle 80% can increase sales by as little as 10%, think about what that would do for your organization! The truth is, that the top players HAVE to use the system. You can potentially have successful CRM without them, but it is pretty difficult to tell a pretty good rep that he/she has to use the system when his/her hero doesnt!

Another factor to be aware of is the I never needed one syndrome. Managers who have been around for a while, who did not use CRM systems sometimes do not enforce the rule of reps inputting info. The message for them is:

These systems are now helpful, not encumbering. We have enough reps, spread out geographically, that we need ways to have consistent performance across reps and territories. This will help. We need to predict cash flow, and inventory and labor trends We need to have our reps effective on the road. (Favorite of Sales Managers:) This can help give YOU control over your sales reps, your destiny and your commission. For current customer add on sales, it will reduce the chances of ill timed service calls, marketing campaigns, bill collections, etc, made by other departments. We need to even out forecasting. This means that we need consistent measurement of what is considered 50% likely to close, 75%, etc. (Should be the Favorite of Sales Managers:) Our competitors will use them and eat our lunch.

Finally, if the data your sales people use legally belongs to you, it is your data. This is not something that the salespeople want to think about, or hear about, but it is true. Having a CRM system, like it or not, safeguards your organization against people taking key information if and when they leave your organization. Like our friend at the beginning of this section, this part of CRM alone can save your company a ton of money.

5. Improve Other Areas (to help sales)

Improving Customer Service, creating better Marketing and improving overall operations are obviously goals unto themselves. This section focuses on how improvements in these areas can relate to sales.
Information Sharing Between Departments (and Systems) This issue is the Key for organizations that want to achieve excellent customer service. So many businesses have multiple people, or multiple systems (web sites, automatic answering services) that need critical customer information. How many times have you talked to person A at company X, and they are close to solving your issue. You call back the next day and person B has no idea what you are talking about, and oh by the way, never heard of person A! This is less common now than it was 10 years ago, but it still occurs. Many larger companies have improved customer service by implementing processes that are supported by CRM systems.

In the above example, the company could be a B2C company, with you being the C. What about the B2B with complex sales cycles and even long, complex add-on sales cycles. Do you segment customers into service levels? Wouldnt it be nice to give Gold level service to a normally Bronze level customer while you are in the middle of a huge add-on sales cycle? Would you want the call center to know about this? What about consultants or technicians on-site? What about being lenient on a $10 policy decision for

a widget replacement during the week the $100,000,000 widget sale was about to go down? Solid CRM means everyone in your company being able to see up-to-date customer information. Right now. Accurate. Any terminal. Any media. Any employee or business partner. The ability to see history, interactions, status, products owned, everything. The information sharing is also between systems. Current well developed CRM applications integrate easily with your billing system, collection systems (if you have one), inventory, order placement system, etc. Additionally, CRM should integrate with your email system, fax systems, file management, etc. Bottom line: Sharing information about customers will help sales. First by avoiding pitfalls like the one described above, and second by developing your companys reputation as one that delivers excellent customer service.
Customer Service Best Practices It is imperative to treat customers the same way each time they contact your organization. How many times have you spoken to one person at a company and received an answer, only to call back the next day and receive a different answer? This is aided by sharing information about customers, as discussed above. But more so, publishing customer service best practices, and implementing them similar to sales cycle methodologies, will go a long way to having happier customers.

Having standard responses and procedures for handling customer issues and questions helps you achieve:

Shorter training time for new Customer Service Reps Quicker problem resolution (more problems solved, shorter on hold times, etc) More accurate problem resolution More one and done calls vs. calls needing follow up Consistency to help your reputation

Marketing Having a great sales system will help to increase sales, as will better customer service through information sharing and application of best practices. The third major way CRM can help your sales team is by giving them more material to work with.

While companies will vary by industry and philosophy on marketing budget as a percentage of expenditures, virtually all companies spend some amount on marketing. Effective marketing gives your sales reps qualified leads, which can:

Increase sales per rep numbers astronomically Increase average deal size Decrease the length of sales cycle Position your reps more effectively

CRM allows you to market effectively and then measure your results. Do you want a marketing campaign based on the phone book? Would it be better by SIC code? How about SIC code and company size? What about active customers vs. prospects vs. companies you have never contacted? What about only current customers with a certain criteria, like product owned and company size? Then the next step is to set up a campaign to a target audience, potentially with multiple phases, execute the campaign, and measure results. CRM allows you to achieve marketing excellence, which will increase sales.

6. Sales Reporting
Reporting is for bean counters, right? WRONG. Sales is a numbers game. How many phone calls? How many appointments? How many new leads generated? How many direct mail pieces and follow up calls to create x number of leads? How many deals closed? How many closed vs. leads generated? The list goes on. If you have more than 2-3 sales people in your organization, and/or spend any significant money on marketing, and/or have more than 2-3 people that deal with customers, these questions are critical to your universe. Or they should be! CRM allows your company to track ALL relevant activities and slice and dice by:

Activity per sales rep Activity per customer service rep Number of marketing pieces Activities for a customer or prospect Calls from a customer, customer type Service calls per customer Leads generated Length of time to get from lead to closed deal Number of deals closed Etc

Wouldnt it be nice to know this? Most managers and C-level executives want this type of information. CRM gives you this, as long as you have people inputting the information, and you set up your system to gather the information properly. Then, this information can be used to adjust strategies and procedures.

Summary
It is clear, that if implemented correctly, CRM can increase your companys sales and customer retention. Using CRM correctly is based on planning, determination, more planning, and utilizing expertise to avoid wasting time and money. Stay tuned for more publications from EduComp on how CRM can improve your universe.

Give Sales a Boost with CRM

There can be few businesses both large and small who have not seen their sales impacted by the tough economic situation over the past few years. While the fate on the economy is beyond most peoples control, there are still areas in which a business can help improve sales. One of the most significant of these is Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Although it will no doubt seem obvious to some, it is amazing how often a business loses sight of the fact that its customers are its most important and valuable asset. This is where CRM really comes into its own By managing the relationship with its customers, a business gives itself the ability to build brand and customer loyalty which in turn will boost sales. A business can do this by listening to its customers and keeping accurate records of feedback as well as purchase history. This significantly increases the likelihood of cross sale opportunities and follow up purchases. Using this as a basis, there are a number of ways a business can use CRM to further boost its sales.

Using a robust and user-friendly system to store customer details is one of the key elements in CRM. The ability to quickly access customer details will enable staff to be in a far more informed and therefore stronger position when dealing with customers either in person or on the telephone as information can be quickly retrieve. This leads to a much more close customer relationship as it is based on detailed knowledge so customers can be treated as individuals. A detailed customer database can be used as a channel along which marketing and advertising initiative (plan proposal programme) are passed. This leads to a much more targeted approach that in turn will increase sales with the minimum financial investment. CRM is therefore a win-win for both business and customers as the customer is only alerted to products that will interest them and the business does not waste money on irrelevant campaigns. This level of detailed customer information will not only lead to closely targeted sales campaigns, but will also increase customer retention. CRM does this by helping a business provide a much more targeted level of service which makes the customer feel valued and understood. This will not only boost sales by creating more receptive customers, but it will also mean less money will need to be spent on replacing lost customers. Of course, this is not to say a company should stop looking for new customers. In fact, with CRM the opposite is true. It can boost sales by allowing a business to search organizations current customers belong to and target non-customers with the knowledge that many will share the same tastes and needs. This can be an extremely cost effective way of increasing a customer base as success rates will be much greater based on the CRM data already held. Using and maintaining a detailed customer database will mean that a business is in a strong position to monitor trends. Using customer details, changes in buying habits can be used to predict future trends and therefore

place the business in a much stronger position. If a business is in a relatively small sector, these trends become even more important and by keeping a close eye of changes in customers habits a company can place itself in a position to offer the right products at exactly the right time.

By using CRM, a business can boost sales by getting to know their customers as individuals and not just as faceless numbers. This means that they can offer appropriate products at appropriate times, keep an eye on retention of customers, target new customers based on current relationships and create targeted and specific marketing campaigns all while offering their customers a heightened level of service.

Customers are a company's most valuable asset. Keeping these customers loyal and happy requires more than just delivering a quality product; it requires realtime insights into buying behaviors and trends to anticipate the customer's needs. But with today's multiple sales channels--online, direct, OEM, and resellers--this can be a complicated process. Customers can use one channel to purchase a product or service and use another channel for a different need, leading to missed cross- and upsell opportunities, and impacting revenue potential. To increase sales and remain competitive, enterprises must manage and coordinate leads through the sales pipeline across all channels and not only close the deal, but also turn each sale into a profitable, ongoing customer relationship. Leading CRM solutions provide the core elements needed to coordinate lead, opportunity, and account management across a multichannel sales environment. Channel partners can collaborate on everything from customer-needs assessment and competitive analysis to product specification and quoting requirements, driving higher customer conversion rates and increased profitability, while reducing cost of sales. With collaborative, multichannel selling anyone interacting with the customer will know the customer's purchase history and preferences, no matter which channel they used for purchasing or when the transaction took place. Technology is now available for companies to advise customers on the best solutions, stay focused on the most profitable opportunities, and improve the bottom line.
Sponsor text:

The core processes within the sales cycle--manage, qualify, advise, and close--are ripe with opportunities to increase sales force effectiveness and turn valuable leads into profitable deals. By examining how these processes work at a hypothetical real-time enterprise, which we'll call Global Business International (GBI), we will see the advantages of collaborative, multichannel-selling solutions. Manage GBI wants to streamline the lead-to-conversion process to ensure no customer slips away during the sales cycle. The first step in accomplishing this goal is to move from reactive to strategic territory management, enabling GBI sales managers to optimize territories and assign new leads quickly. GBI sales managers access online, real-time multidimensional analysis of criteria like forecast type, industry, product, currency, opportunity status, and region. Armed with this information, sales managers can allocate resources more effectively to maximize revenue, while keeping customer response levels high. The GBI sales force uses precision forecasting to accurately predict revenues for different sales channels based on credible, real-time information. Sales management can now identify and minimize risks that can impact revenue projections by evaluating the utilization and performance of the sales force, and by interpreting the behavior of prospects in the pipeline. Managing the front end of the sales process ensures that valuable leads are turned into lasting customer relationships. Qualify

In the qualify process GBI funnels a lead into the channel. The lead is directed to the channel that best serves the customer (e.g., online, telesales, direct, or indirect). At the same time, information to better understand the customer's needs and requirements is gathered and the sales strategy is planned. And, with a rapidly expanding business, GBI sales representatives are empowered to access enterprise information and seize sales opportunities quickly, without relying on downloads, plug-ins, or physical restrictions. Whether visiting a customer site, waiting for a connection at the airport, or driving to the next appointment, mobile users are only a click away from the information they need to gather new leads, assess initial needs, and qualify customers. By providing untethered access to relevant customer intelligence and easy synchronization when connected, GBI sales representatives are able to maximize their effectiveness and responsiveness to customer needs, improving the company's competitive advantage. With global access to real-time information, GBI ensures that its sales force turns every qualified lead into a promising customer relationship, no matter where the customer is located. Advise GBI understands that the more a company knows about its customers, the more the company can influence buying decisions and increase sales, which is especially important in a complex, multichannel selling situation. Customer satisfaction is increased as GBI sales representatives effectively recommend offerings that are relevant to customers' most current needs. CRM solutions that enable enterprisewide collaboration will empower the entire sales team with the same 360-degree view of every customer. Armed with a comprehensive understanding of its customers, GBI can: Personalize offerings to close more business, faster Identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities for targeted selling Manage the simplest to the most complex customer relationships Deliver the products and services customers want, when they want them, through the channel
that serves them best Customers typically know their own requirements, but have no way of knowing the vast array of offerings available to them from each vendor. By pointing customers to products that meet their specific needs, GBI sales representatives recommend products and services that are more likely to generate a purchase and create a positive experience. With CRM, GBI offers truly superior customer service and differentiates itself from the competition in a cost-effective manner. Close After GBI identifies a lead, qualifies the customer, and recommends products and services, it closes the deal with on-target pricing and product offerings. GBI standardizes and improves the quoting process with capabilities that include product configuration, upsell and cross-sell offers, and integration with order-management business processes. Predefined templates save time by allowing sales representatives to print or email quotes directly from the order capture screen and moves the customer one step closer to closing the deal. GBI then finalizes the order, confirming that all information about the customer and the sale is accurate. The contract is made official and GBI begins to nurture the customer relationship. Said again, customers are a company's biggest asset. And leveraging the right multichannel CRM technology can ensure that a company improves the customer experience and increases sales.