Long-Distance Relay: A CRM is Worth It
How can you get a big CRM payback?
Topic question: How can you make a CRM provide a big payback?
See term 2.5 Sales management from The GMs Index for relevant Approved Resources
The 3 unanimous lessons
- A CRM definitely increases sales and margins in all sectors
- Get compliance by making the CRM reports the basis of recognition and reward
- Use the CRM to build customer-to-company relationships, not just to track sales
Members
Nathan Bares, Susan Dineen, Bob DeVita, Patti Epstein, Kevin Hickman, Bryon Johnson, Tony Lawson, Bill Mitchell, Kristi Thering, Derrick Van Mell, Pete Vogel
Workgroup discussion questions
- What have been your biggest success or failure with a CRM?
- What’s your CRM’s most valuable output?
- How did you get people to enter information?
Selection, features and start-up
- Degree of integration
- There are CRM differences among sectors, sales cycles and for bid vs. negotiated sales
- There’s a difference between simple lead-tracking and fully integrated CRMs
- The CRM apps are improving, becoming simpler and sturdier
- Training and acceptance can take a year. Contests and awards can help.
- Take advantage of salespeople’s natural competitiveness
- It must be ridiculously easy, particularly for inputting notes. Use a mobile app, reminders
- Use only 3-4 reports
- Be able to tag prospect by sector, stage and likelihood
- Use a disciplined selection process (see 1 Applicationsfrom The GMs Index)
The sales manager’s perspective
- A CRM is an excellent way to keep individuals from thinking the “own” the relationship
- Getting contact information into a system protects against loss from manager succession
- Sharing information helps build a culture of collaboration
- Managing the pipeline: define sales stages and a few measures, such as conversion rates
- Include influencers (including other prospects and customers) in the CRM
- Using the CRM to inform sales meetings makes non-compliance obvious
- Celebrate successes to highlight how the CRM helped individuals succeed
An integrated view
- Being able to integrate all or most customer communication is essential
- The CRM pipeline should integrate with operations and customer service flows
- The R in CRM is Relationship, not just sales
- While healthcare doesn’t have sales, electronic medical records and telehealth are analogous
Forecasting and analysis
- Selecting the key reports and KPIs will keep the organization from drowning in a “data ocean”
- Center members have used the CRM to forecast and stabilize sales over the year
- Be sure to validate data with other system’s data (e.g., ERP, production reports)
The Workgroup set “analyzing success and failure” as the next topic.
