Great Tools For Marketing & Sales Team - CRM Tools

 A CRM is a great tool for marketing and sales teams, but only if you can get your sales department's buy-in.

Choosing CRM software requires input from your sales team, as they will be the primary users of whatever program you choose.

Determine whether a particular CRM program will align with your sales team's existing workflow before buying.

The right CRM software can increase productivity, generate more leads and drive new sales; the wrong one can hinder operations.

This article is for small business owners preparing to buy and implement CRM software.

Choosing a customer relationship management (CRM) system like Salesforce is complicated enough as is, but without buy-in from your sales team, you could end up investing in a product no one wants to use. Plan ahead to avoid this pitfall, and involve your sales team in the decision. After all, they will be the ones who rely on the CRM software you use every day.


Grow faster with Salesforce CRM.

Grow faster with Salesforce CRM.

Visit Site

Why focus on CRM user adoption?

CRMs have been proven to make a positive impact on businesses, offering a plethora of benefits. These are some of those benefits:


Higher productivity

One study found that CRM software can enhance sales team productivity by 34%. CRMs can improve productivity by reducing the manual work involved in the sales process and, therefore, the time it takes to close sales.

Increased revenue

Businesses that use a CRM can boost sales up to 30%. Studies have also shown revenue boosts at the individual sales employee level and company level, seeing a boost of up to 41% per sales rep. 


Better customer service experience

A CRM improves the customer service experience by equipping users with the tools they need to have easy, ongoing and meaningful relationships with prospects and customers. CRM software can improve a sales team's ability to identify what products and services customers need and build strong, lasting connections.


Key takeaway: CRM software can improve productivity, generate revenue and improve customer satisfaction once it's part of your team's workflow.

How to drive CRM adoption in your sales team

Employee pushback to CRM adoption is usually the result of poor implementation rather than unusable systems. If you build your adoption process with your sales department in mind and follow the right steps to get buy-in early on, you can avoid future pushback and ensure widespread usage of your new CRM. Try following these tips to get your sales team on board in no time.


1. Choose a CRM that aligns with the sales department's current processes.

Unfortunately, some SMBs adopt technology without much thought about how new software will affect daily routines and processes. Without a comprehensive understanding of your sales department's current process, who does what, and how job roles will change with a new CRM, you run a high risk of user pushback. It might be easier to make the final CRM purchase decision within a small group, but failure to consult senior managers in the sales department can have long-term consequences.


Zach Hendrix, co-founder of GreenPal, experienced this type of pushback after the acquisition of a new company, when implementation of a CRM didn't go as planned. After a costly implementation process, he found that the sales department wasn't using the system at all, opting to maintain their own records across a combination of legal pads, Post-its, emails and spreadsheets. In short, it was a mess.


"We basically purchased the software and paid an IT professional to install it, and [the] result after six months was that nobody used it," Hendrix told Business News Daily. "In retrospect, what I didn't realize was that I was just adding one more task to our salespeople's list of things to do. It was like … 'OK, on top of everything else that you're already doing, put all of the information into the software so we can track it later at some point if we want to.'"


Hendrix didn't give up, of course. He analyzed his first approach and tried a different angle.


"Ultimately, after trying several different solutions, we went with a cloud-based CRM," he said. "To ensure a successful implementation this time around, I broke down the existing tasks and workflows that our salespeople [were] already conducting and replaced [those] tasks with new software-related tasks … we ended up getting the needed buy-in because we replaced one by one the analog tasks with digital tasks." .

Comments

  1. Great Content. It will useful for knowledge seekers. Keep sharing your knowledge through this kind of article.
    Microsoft Dynamics CRM Training in Chennai
    Microsoft Dynamics Training in Chennai

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Small Business Guide to Charitable Giving and Tax Deductions

The Wolf’s Lair Attempts Transition From Tourist Trap to Educational Site