More firms than you would ever imagine both small, medium and larger organisations, still have little or no visibility and control over their sales revenue.
They often fall into two camps, either they have no CRM system at all and rely on a myriad of spread sheets and disparate reports to attempt to manage the business.
Or secondly, they have a CRM system but it has never been fully adopted by management or sales to effectively manage their customer engagement.
Often the CRM is little more than a glorified address book of contacts rather than a vital tool to track the business in real time and capitalise on the many opportunities currently being lost to deliver value to customers.
One key aspect that is often missed by sales management is defining for their salespeople what a valuable customer insight actually is and how it should be captured in the CRM.
This results in the sales managers not gaining any valuable information or visibility from the customer visits their salespeople make.
From the salesperson’s perspective the logging of information into the CRM is seen as an administrative duty to cover themselves rather than a way to capture key business insights and enable them to keep on top of all their current sales pipeline opportunities.
So, why not take a fresh look at what you are doing to improve the effectiveness of your management & sales team by reviewing these 3 points below.
Do an honest self-appraisal and see where you can improve.
- Proactive Sales Approach.
- Are you leveraging customer information as well as you should? Proactively plan & accurately target your products & services, rather than just trying it randomly with a few people that are front of mind.
- Do your ‘Customer visit reports’ provide objectives for each visit and drive salespeople to capture key business information?
- Protect Your Assets.
- When a key staff member leaves, are they walking out the door with your business in their head, not retained in the company?
- What would it mean to your business if you lost a key customer or contract just because no-one else knew what was going on?
- What has a customer been promised, what is yet to do? A central CRM system collects, manages & retains a key corporate asset –
- Improved Customer Experience.
- In a world where customer experience is a key differentiator, how are you managing?
- Can you make sure all your staff are ‘in the know’, ensure anyone can manage issues with ease & that no-one drops the ball at every customer touchpoint?
- Putting CRM in everyone’s hands helps you commit to your company’s promise of quality service.”
The focus here is on how to drive growth via Customer Engagement to create consistent sales results, something many organisations are challenged with achieving.
I’d love to hear your comments on what you have done so far that’s working for you and what challenges you face now to take this to the next level.
Committed to Your Continued Sales Success!
Peter
