Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Although CRM is an important tool to have in your company, it has been researched and proven that in over 75% of implementations a CRM has had no or little affect on improving the productivity or sales results of a sales force. However, when integrated with the full suite of Sales Focus International solutions, you have the most effective sales force management tools available in the market that is guaranteed to increase your business.
So what is the value of a CRM for your organisation?
Customer Knowledge is the most important asset of any organisation and one that executives need to ensure is centralized and retained. It defines the background or historical information on customer communication, not only from the sales force, but the organisation. Like a financial report, it can show you what has happened with the customer. It can provide you with reminders of when tasks need to be done in the future minimizing the loss of follow-up on opportunities, as long as the calls are made.
Sales forces in particular are one of the hardest knowledge areas to manage. They are fluid and past practices allowed people to become individual customer knowledge depositories in their own right. They have been seen as an asset to an organisation based on the depth of knowledge they retained about customers, industry and those unique elements that ensured they delivered the revenue. This was fine in days gone by when there was a high degree of stability in sales forces and less likelihood of them leaving.
In today’s market, good sales people are transient, loyalty remains only whilst employed with you and they are often considered high risk as they can depart with that knowledge leaving the company struggling to replace them. The knowledge of your customers and details of communication with those customers can be the difference between success and failure. Your ability to communicate with a large customer base as individuals is one of your competitive advantages.
Successful organizations realise that they must capture and manage that information on a daily basis and at no time allow the individual to be greater than the company. It is high risk business when individuals retain more knowledge on your customer base than the business.
To gain the most value from the installation of a CRM you must have in place the right sales culture, systems, knowledge management, ‘how to’ information and other impacts that will ensure the sales people gain value from its use. You must be able to validate the pipeline/funnel report to ensure you are dealing with hard facts, not speculation.
Many CRM systems are dormant or filled with ‘junk’, as the company sales culture and management processes were not in place that would allow for the maximum results to be achieved. Literally tens of thousands of dollars are lost from poor and untimely implementation of a CRM.
About the Sales Focus International CRM
As a web based tool you will have the ability to:
Sales Focus International CRM and our suite of products will ensure you gain full value and effectiveness with your sales force.
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