I do not know about you, but I don’t like waiting in lines. I cannot move forward to do, what I came to do, until I get through the line. We all know the frustration at a store when no one seems to know if or where the line starts. As a skier, I wait in lift lines so I can then go skiing.
What I don’t like even more than waiting in line is waiting in inefficient and free-for-all lines that are not organized with a beginning and an end. When I experience these free-for-all lines, I immediately look for a solution, to coordinate and communicate pathways forward and watch to define ways to improve the line. To improve efficiency by defining the starting place, communication and destination. Once I’ve achieved this goal, I get to ski.
Just like lines, CRM solutions can delay what our teams came to do, which is to connect customers, especially if the focus is to track activities and not focus on revenue. Like lines, CRM’s actually helps coordinate and communicate and get efficiently through to the destination; driving revenue. Here are 4 Secret CRM investments, after purchasing the software, that are required to help sharpen sales processes and decision making that deliver revenue for your company.
Database: Prospects and clients are the life blood of a businesses. If you cannot identify and contact your existing and prospective clients, how can you expect to grow? Database management is difficult for every business and every business struggles with their databases. This is reality however the best companies have strategies deployed and make investments because their database is their most valuable tangible asset.
Real World Example: Experienced this issue at every company in one form or another. Most small businesses do not have a database and need to create plans to grow their opt in database. Many brands also miss opportunities and do not leverage their reach. American Idol television show ran from 2002- 2016 on Fox and had ~100 million viewers and had audience participation by voting starting in the semi-finals each year. Fox averaged 7.5 million text votes annually and never captured those consumers phone numbers! Nor did they run an opt in campaign. Think about the revenue opportunities and possibilities that were missed and the impact that database would have today!
Follow-up: Your CRM allows managing and tracking information. The team does the hard work to find a prospect account, enter the key contacts and when they will be interested, and when their contract expires or an upcoming event. This event date is the follow up date. Unfortunately, it is typically kept by each team member on a spreadsheet or reminder notification.
Real World Example: Recently, a team member received a lead from our ABM campaign and pitched our platform to them. The regional retailer with 350 stores decided, after exploration, they wanted to take a wholistic approach, and added it to the next years strategic projects. So the next year came. And along came the larger project. Our team member missed it because they did not follow up because they did not use the CRM system to remind them. You know the rest, as the team missed the opportunity, revenue implications were significant.
Revenue is the goal: Using a CRM solution provides great datapoints and ancillary information to assist in better understanding of the predictive health of an organization. This includes sales metrics, marketing metrics and supporting ratios to define what it analytically takes to close a deal. I believe in tools and metrics yet these are only one part of sales and revenue generation. CRM metrics must focus on the goal: Revenue!
Real World Example: Asked by a peer to review their monthly reporting and key performance indicators (KPI’s). After reviewing their data, which was detailed and focused on metrics; included analytics that compare various KPI's to create insightful ratios (Lead/closes; spend/lead, proposals/close, etc.). What they missed are revenue indictors. Specifically, there were 4 things missing:
§ How do the pipeline prospects match or fit with the ideal customer profile?
§ How are the prospects engaging or consuming content in multiple channels?
§ How are prospects demonstrating intent? How did closes demonstrating intent? Do they match?
§ What are their best reps are doing? What are the best reps ratios?
Finally the report lacked any commentary to discuss how they were achieving results and in particular relevancy: What's working and What's not working?
Buy-In: Business tools are important and help a business grow. However, not getting buy-in and participation, it is doomed to fail. This must include buy-in by the Senior Leaders of the organization. If they do not support and use the tools or the reporting functionality, the teams will not see the value and not use it either. Not to mention the lost contacts and information not captured. This is detrimental.
Real World Example: The CEO’s primary responsibilities include making major corporate decisions, managing the overall operations and resources of a company. One CEO I worked for came from Sales and wanted to be active in strategic deals, which was appreciated. This CEO refused to use the CRM outputs, reports and status updates. He’d rather just come in cold to help closing deals. What his lack of buy-in told the team was the CRM was not important, should not be used. This did not end well for CEO or the entire company.
These core four CRM when done correctly will-like ski lift lines-produce the results you want. We get revenue.
If you would like me to review your CRM tool and the reporting your using, for free, simply reach out, we'll provide some analysis for you!
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