How to Use CRM to Add Value to Your Sales Team

This is a Guest Blog Post by Chris Tully.

Your customer relationship management (CRM) software system is filled with details about the people and companies most important to your business. But are you using CRM to add value to your sales team?

If you haven’t set up a CRM system to actively monitor and effectively track the steps your sales team takes with business opportunities, then you’re both walking around with your eyes closed. You can’t see what the sales team is doing – and neither can they.

If It’s Not in CRM It Didn’t Happen

About one-third of small to mid-sized businesses I encounter don’t have a CRM system. They are still managing the business on email and spreadsheets. About half of the remaining businesses have purchased CRM software but haven’t fully implemented it. Still others use their CRM for marketing or customer service, but not sales – missing the value of integrating the functions.

In my opinion, if sales activities are not visible in CRM they didn’t actually happen. I’d go so far as to say that if your sales team closed a deal that was not in CRM, hold back the commission. That may sound draconian, but I believe you’d only have to do that once to make the point.

Sales CRM is highly effective for the money. You and your team have the ability to see leads as they are captured, follow the progression of contact and communication through your sales stages, and easily record results. This allows the sales leader to be a more effective coach, gives immediate visibility to results, and provides some insurance if one of your salespeople leaves.

In the bigger picture, capturing all stages of the sales cycle allows you and the team to analyze what works best and recreate the most successful steps – continually refining and improving your sales effectiveness and growing your business.

CRM Guides the Sales Path

Clearly defining sales stages is valuable for your team. For example, Salesforce CRM software allows you to customize the objectives of each stage, enabling a sort of “guided path” to follow. Within the software, there are a series of questions that have to be answered positively before someone can progress. Seeing the hurdles that have to be cleared to reach those objectives can only help your sales force improve.

A good CRM helps the team better quantify sales leads. They can build a qualification score to see how strong each lead is (or becomes) by assigning points as the deal progresses. For example, is a compelling event driving the customer’s decision on the deal? Is an economic ROI stated or implied? Has the decision maker gotten involved in the evaluation of your proposal? All of this allows you as a leader to monitor progress and assess effectiveness.

The more disciplined your sales team is in following an effective, repeatable process and quantifying deals against the rubric you set up, the better they will be as salespeople and the more you’ll increase your company’s sales.

CRM Engagement Is Key to Adding Value

In order for your sales team to embrace CRM, the system has to:

• Be easy to use
• Add value by supporting and guiding the sales process
• Be the “ground truth” of all sales reporting to and by company leadership

Promote engagement by taking two giant steps to successful CRM implementation: get used to asking questions of your sales team that can only be answered by referring back to the CRM, and make your CRM the source for all sales reporting in the company.

You’ll be able to quickly customize reports to illustrate specific sales performance indicators, and visually represent the team’s up-to-the-moment performance in the key metrics you choose to display on your dashboard.

Choosing a CRM System

There are at least 10 good cloud-based CRM systems out there that can meet the needs of most sales teams. There are also sites to help you decide which system to choose. Final choice will be your personal preference, but from my perspective you can’t go wrong with Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive.

Selection and implementation are important. However, engagement is what will make or break CRM effectiveness. The single most important quality of a CRM system is that it adds value to your sales team – it should make their work easier, and help them be more successful.

Chris Tully is Founder of SALES GROWTH ADVISORS. He can be reached at (571) 329-4343 and ctully@salesxceleration.com“For more than 25 years, I’ve led sales organizations in public and private technology companies, with teams as large as 400 people, and significant revenue responsibility.I founded Sales Growth Advisors to help mid-market CEOs execute proven strategies to accelerate their top line revenue. I have a great appreciation for how hard it is to start and grow a business, and it is gratifying to me to do what I am ‘best at’ to help companies grow faster and more effectively.Let’s get acquainted. I am certain I can offer you an experienced perspective to help you with your growth strategy.”

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Scaling a Hypergrowth Enterprise – Part 3 (Scalable Customers)

This is the third in a series of Posts on scaling a hypergrowth enterprise.  I was the co-founder and CEO of CyberRep, a CRM and call center company which grew revenues nearly 160x (16,000%) to over $80 million over a 9 year period.  In Part 1 of this series, I talked about People as the first of 5 key elements for scaling a hypergrowth company, the other four being Culture, Scalable Customers, Process, and Capital.  I examined Culture in Part 2 of this series, and today we will discuss the 3rd element, Scalable Customers.

SCALABE CUSTOMERS

All customers are NOT equal.  Some are much better fits for your company than others, in terms of how they treat you, their level of dependency on your services, and the degree of difficulty in servicing them. You want to serve customers who are growing fast and who will have more and more needs as they themselves grow.  A “scalable customer” is one which grows and takes you along for the ride.

Partner Mentality – The best kinds of customers take a partnership approach to your relationship (as opposed to a vendor-vendee mentality).  They rely on you for true “value add” solutions that go beyond just providing the bare minimum of what they need.  They rely on you and have a high degree of dependency.  These kinds of customers will continue expanding their scope of business with you, as they grow.  Note:  An added benefit of a customer with a partner mentality is that when things get rocky (and they inevitably will from time to time), they will be more apt to work through the issues with you, since you are a valued “partner” and not just another vendor.

Customers who grow fast – Try and find customers who are in hypergrowth mode themselves.  Whether they are in hot market segments or expanding via acquisition, these customers need you the most because they have challenges supporting their growth.  For example, my company supported Nextel and Microsoft (MSN) in the early 2000s when both companies’ user bases were exploding.  The more customers they added, the more customer service they needed, and the better we performed, the more business they gave us. They expanded astronomically with us.

Know when to say “No” to revenue – It hurts to turn away revenue, BUT it’s required if you want to build a hypergrowth company.  Saying “no” is really tough.  It is tempting to want to do any kind of work and take on more than you can handle, or to take on a client that is not “scalable,” but you have to stay disciplined in your business acceptance.  By pursuing the revenue YOU want, and focusing only on clients who will grow with your company, you can marshal your scarce delivery and other resources on becoming an expert at your craft and improving your service offerings with these scalable customers.

Thanks very much for reading.  I’d love your feedback and thoughts, so please Comment below…and please sign up for my Blog too!  (See the Signup box on the sidebar of my Home Page)