Change the way you see your CRM

I've been in some form of sales for my entire career, and I can tell you that there is only one thing that is on a sales rep’s mind every day – how to sell more and meet (and, hopefully, exceed) their quotas. Unfortunately, CRM software isn’t the best tool to aid this process with an out-of-the-box setup.

You have to put in the time to make the most important events in your business trackable. Most of these apps just add more workload to the typical sales rep’s plate if the managers missed the ball on what’s important.

One of the biggest issues with CRM systems is that they take time away from actual selling. Sales reps want to focus on building relationships, closing deals, and hitting their targets. However, the administrative tasks and data entry required by many CRM systems can be time-consuming and frustrating. Instead of spending time on revenue-generating activities, reps find themselves inputting data, generating reports, and navigating complex systems.

Sales professionals often feel that CRM systems were designed for sales executives and managers rather than the people who do the actual selling. Instead of just going through their lists and calling people, sales reps now have to use their CRMs to record activities. How many people they dialed, how many emails they sent, how many minutes they logged and much more. Even with the CRM recording some of that data, your reps still have to report to you at the end of the day, week or month. Moreover, lots of sales reps have been trained in the old days and they still keep their separate sheets with sales numbers, which doubles the work.

Many CRM programs today make the same mistake: they force your employees to manually enter data. Either because the apps don’t support importing, merging or updating data, it’s annoying and a major waste of time and money. This manual data entry takes away valuable time that could be spent on actual selling activities, leading to frustration and decreased productivity.

So, how can we address this issue and make CRM systems more user-friendly for sales reps? Here are a few suggestions that are simple and effective.

First, rely on the reporting of data that comes with your CRM. Don’t ask your reps for additional reports, data sheets, or numbers – ever. You can see all of their calls and interactions from your dashboard. Project those numbers onto a TV or another live dashboard and create a transparent and competitive salesroom. Browser-based software has beautiful in-browser dashboards that everyone on a sales team can see. They can even provide gong sounds that go off when major positive events happen in the CRM. Set expectations, make them public, and measure them.

It is important for you as a team leader to be direct and upfront with metrical expectations. These expectations should be broken down by time, such as daily or weekly. The shorter the better. Always be conservative and hopefully use proven metrics, if you are not a startup. CRM software is the means to an end for every sales rep to meet their base obligations to the business. For example, if you expect 40 emails to be sent per day per SDR, you expect a person to have around 20 emails sent by lunchtime. Let all of the reps who share the same job see the data of their peers so that they can monitor how they are doing. You can probably squeeze out another 20% of productivity without adding an additional hire by working off of the reports.

Dashboards don’t have to be pretty; as long as the data is there, you are golden. For the example above, you would track the number of emails sent and the talk time and have your CRM update these events in real time.

Second, make sure your data is good. You get what you pay for when it comes to buying lead prospecting data. If you buy or create lead lists, then your sales reps should not bother with updating the most basic data before dialing or writing emails. It is by far one of the easiest ways to reduce friction and make your reps hate the app less.

Third, explore the possibilities. No matter which application you pick, they come with lots of different plugins and add-ons to suit your specific sales team. Having a phone system integrated into your CRM is a good idea.

Finally, and related to the previous entry, remove all hurdles that make selling more complicated. You may want to know the data behind each call, but try setting two or three goals and measuring those goals only. Not to forget the management piece, always give people feedback after several consecutive days of low metrics are noticed, but only after you verify the data first.

By addressing these issues and implementing these solutions, we can make CRM systems more user-friendly for sales reps and help them focus on what they do best – selling. Let's work together to transform CRM from a source of frustration to a valuable tool that empowers our sales teams to achieve their goals. #Sales #CRM #SalesProductivity #BusinessGrowth