Sales managers usually have no problem grasping the value of
CRM. For sales people, however,
CRM is often viewed as a new burden, a hindrance and an example of the sales
manager shifting his work on to them even the “Big Brother” syndrome. In reality, it’s as helpful to sales
staffers as it is to managers, if used right. But perception is reality – so
sales managers need to help overcome preconceptions. In other words, sales
managers need to sell CRM to their sales staff.
Introduction
The way the concept of CRM is defined during the sales
process can sow the seeds of its ultimate failure. Because the decision makers
are often sales managers rather than actual sales people, the pitch is usually
made to them that CRM makes it easier for the managers to manage their sales
staff. Which is true.
But what’s in it for the sales staff? They’re the ones who
will spend extra time entering data into the CRM application. If the purpose of
the CRM application were to give their bosses more information with which to
browbeat them, why would sales staff use it?
Of course, CRM is much more than a management tool – and
it’s most effective when it has more data entered into it. That doesn’t result
in mere managerial success – it means success for the entire sales team and
success for the entire business. So how do you get past the perception that CRM
is an eavesdropping tool for sales managers and a burden on the sales staff,
and instead cultivate a view that CRM is a tool that helps everyone in the organization?
Simple. You have to sell the sales staff on CRM.
Six Ideas for Selling
CRM to Your Sales Staff
Here are six ways to position CRM to help you demonstrate to
your sales team that using CRM will make their lives easier and their
commission checks larger.
1. CRM is a memory
accelerator
With sales teams shrinking, quotas rising and sales pros
constantly begging for greater numbers of leads from marketing, at some point
the data becomes overwhelming. No one can hold all of the pertinent contact
information in his or her head, before it too becomes overwhelming. However,
once that data is entered into CRM, it’s there for good. Think of it as an
assistant for the sales pro’s brain. Worry less, sell more!
2. CRM organizes your
activities
Sales people have complicated calendars, especially if what
they sell has a long sales cycle. That can result in a homegrown reminder
system to help follow up with calls or collateral. But the homegrown system of
post its, yellow pads and Outlook calendars often start to groan under heavy
burdens. Increase the number of leads you’re working on by 30 percent, and watch
the leads and follow ups start slipping away? CRM is great for building a
follow up and reminder system into your daily process. They help standardize the
sales processes so that you never forget to schedule a follow-up call.
3. CRM Reduces Paperwork
CRM helps lessen the burden other reports have traditionally
placed on the sales staff. Examples include the weekly “call” reports, sales
funnel status update and forecast updates. When selling data is entered into
CRM, the application automates these activities entirely.
4. CRM lets you share
intelligence
Of course, sales people are fiercely jealous of the accounts
they’re working. However, it also makes sense to compare notes. If one selling
approach is working, why keep it under your hat? Tracking selling patterns
allows sales people to see what works for them, and what might work for others;
instead of having the sales manager impose a set of “best practices.” CRM also
makes it much easier to get productive when territories shift or when
responsibilities change; When changes are made, historical data is immediately
available to help get the sales pro who’s inheriting them up to speed.
5. CRM keeps you more
aware
If you’re in sales, especially on the B2B side, you may
already check on prospects by looking them up on LinkedIn. CRM is becoming
increasingly attuned to the social world – and instead of having to look up
prospect or customers’ social profiles manually each time, socially-enabled CRM
applications can pull this data into the customer record, doing your research
for you. More time selling and
less time Googling!
6. CRM ensures
recurring sales
While the immediate benefits to sales are nice, the
behind-the-scenes benefit to sales are great as well. The customer record is
useful to customer support, which can understand the relationship between the
customer and the company and use it to provide better service. It’s also a big
help to marketing, which can better segment the customer audience for its
messages and use the data to hunt down better qualified leads. Suddenly the
sales pro is not alone. The office team is helping take batter care of clients
and find new opportunities through automated marketing campaigns.
Strategies for
Selling Your Sales Staff
While positioning CRM’s benefits in terms that appeal to the
sales staff is an important first step, it’s not all there is to getting
complete buy-in. As in any sale, you’ll need to break through skepticism in
order to win your customers over.
Promote Successes
Nothing beats the skeptics better than real results. Keep an
eye open for early wins that resulted from the use of CRM. Keep an eye out for
the eager early adopters within the sales team, and watch their wins. When a
sales pro can point to a sale and describe how CRM helped get him closer to a
close, take notes and make sure everyone on your sales team hears about it.
Real Time Forecasting
Another area where CRM use helps the entire sales
organization is forecasting. The committed use of CRM by the entire staff leads
to more accurate forecasts, which can eliminate frantic quarter ends in which
the staff tries to make up the gulf between what’s been forecast and what the
actual sales numbers are. CRM use promotes real-time forecasting based upon your
sales process and what’s happening now versus what you hoped for 90 days ago.
The goal here is to back up your assertions of how useful
CRM is to ordinary sales staff not just for generating reports for management
but for increasing commissions for sales people.
Positive motivations
– like examples of CRM successes – tend to be more successful than punitive
motivations. For example, making CRM use into a monthly competition between
sales people – in which consistent users are rewarded with a prize at the end
of a sales period – can be an effective motivator.
Introducing sales enablement technologies like Smart Phone
or iPad apps that keep the sales data in the reps “pocket” are great rewards! These give reps a leg up on sales
information. They also make nice prizes for reps that embrace the system.
Punitive motivations
– like reducing commissions on sales that weren’t tracked through CRM – can be
effective, but they tend to reinforce the perception of CRM as a tracking tool
for management. A mixture of carrots and sticks may be needed to drive total
adoption, but try to lean toward the carrot side of the equation to maintain
staff effectiveness.
Conclusion
CRM has a many benefits for your business – and to everyone
within your business. But change is tough, especially when your sales staff is
already succeeding at what they’re doing and they perceive new technology as a
hindrance rather than as help. If you want them to help you as a sales manager you
need to demonstrate to them how CRM can help them boost their commissions while
making their lives easier. Just as in selling any other product, it’s important
to frame CRM in terms of the problems it solves for your sales staff.
Abridged from the full white paper by Chris Bucholtz for SugarCRM.
Click this graphic to download the full White Paper.
For more help with your CRM and your sales team, please visit Tech.Sell.
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