As salespeople, we know that your #1 priority is to close more deals. Save the analytics, forecasting, cost-per-lead calculation, and reporting for marketing; your job is based on your ability to increase revenue for your company. Putting aside natural salesmanship or tenacity, one important leg of the sales stool is visibility. That means visibility into the pipeline, visibility of key contact information, visibility of behavior and of the support materials you need to sell.
Technology can give salespeople a competitive advantage. Customer relationship management (CRM) programs like Salesforce.com and SharpSpring are built to make the life of a sales person more efficient and easier to manage. However, what we’ve seen happen is companies implement a CRM without sufficient infrastructure to support its integration and management, and it creates more harm than good. Technology for technology’s sake can be frustrating, and has the opposite effect on performance and productivity. If you don’t “buy into” the technology or have adequate support in learning how to use it, then you’re more likely to misuse or not use the program. Then data input and management begin to take up the valuable time that you and your team could be spending doing what you do best—selling.
So, what’s in it for you? Here are some basic reasons why you should be in love with your CRM:
Location.
Location. Location. CRM offers sales people one place to house all of the data you need. That means contact info, opportunity history, account details, relationship info, sales collateral…everything you would need to begin, continue or close a deal. So no more spreadsheets, email chains or digging through drives for sales materials; all of that would live in one centralized location.
A Digital Personal Assistant.
In addition to data, a CRM is perfect for organization and productivity. You or your sales team can manage your calendars, appointments, task list, set reminders, set up workflows, and send emails to prospects directly from the CRM. This way you can keep track of all your outreach attempts in one place, and assign yourself a follow-up task to nurture prospects.
Reporting Made Easy.
CRMs are designed to enable intricate pipeline management. You can see where contacts are in the buying cycle, allowing you to focus your energies on leads who are closest to close or who are in the best position to buy. Pipeline visibility will also help the “sounds good maybe later” leads from falling through the cracks—allowing marketing to slot them into a nurture track with a strategic and efficient outreach approach.
Having the right CRM tool can help sales teams sell and close deals faster. Which tool is right for your company is based on a variety of factors; the size of a sales team, budget, preferred marketing functions, etc. but the important thing to realize is that the future of sales includes technology, so to be competitive is to love your CRM. Are you interested in learning more? Contact us to talk tech today.
