If one were to ask, what’s CRM? I would say something along the lines of, “CRM is the strategy of leveraging customer and market interactions across an organization to optimize communication and build longer term, more profitable relationships.” Seems pretty complex right? That’s what I thought before I had an opportunity to dive right in and see how it works. I think it’s safe to say that the main people that use a CRM application are not the technical experts that have the working knowledge to apply changes to functionality on the fly. They are unable to install their ideas for workflow enhancements, and find it’s predictably distracting to track down the right IT person and the approving manager who will listen to their suggestions. Seems like too much effort for little reward.
To most sales professionals, CRM is our pen and paper; our hammer and nail. It’s the number one asset we utilize on a daily basis. It’s because we are so reliant on this tool, all of us CRM super-users find opportunities for simple change on a weekly basis that could potentially save the user time — and we all know time is money. These simple changes often times can be applied with ease. Not only will they make users more comfortable with the system, and deliver productivity improvements, but will allow the everyday users and opportunity to take some pride in their handy tool.
Let’s take a look at a few changes we’ve made to our own system and the impact it has made. Granted all the information in a lead or contact’s profile is important, it’s not always visible or available without clicking and opening the profile in its own window. This could be anything from the person’s email address, job title, or status. Many times, especially when there are multiple contacts for an organization, it’s imperative we know their job title in order to know who to try and contact. This information is only available through opening and closing each profile. It was time for a change. Now with job tile as a category that is visible on the main page, we are able to identify the correct contact and stop with the opening and closing of multiple profiles.
Another example of a simple change we’ve implemented involves how we organize some of our contacts. By adding a Categories folder to the Sales tab, we have created a functioning way to organize contacts based upon a specific need. For example, say we want to create an email marketing list, but only with executives in finance. We now can identify these individuals, place them within a database with other finance executives; therefore, making it easier to create an email campaign, conduct follow ups, and revert back to for later use.
To quote from an earlier entry entitled, Sales Enablement: User Acceptance Means More Sales, “The fundamental purpose of a CRM initiative is to drive sales performance and foster profitable customer relationships… If the individual receives value from the CRM system then they will use it. If they don’t, they won’t. Salesperson acceptance is embedded in individual self-interest.” Company-wide acceptance is needed in order for CRM to be fully realized and utilized. In order to drive user acceptance, it’s vital to build a bridge of communication between users and administrators with a goal of creating an easy to navigate system.
In essence, it’s important to understand who uses it. By taking the time to listen to user feedback and suggestions, incremental changes can be implemented. Over
time these changes will not only save time and optimize revenue, they will also provide users with a sense of ownership. It could be beneficial at the next sales meeting to sit down with the CRM users and find out what they think. I’m sure they will all share some thoughts on how an already effective system can become more efficient. Collect and implement 10 of these ideas a month from the user community, and your organization will undoubtedly build longer term and more profitable client relationships.
Tags: CRM application, Sales, Technology with Methodology, Tim Fargo, TopLine Strategies
[...] apply to people that rely on this tool the most. As you may have read in the previous blog post, “Perspective From the Everyday User…”, I stated that it can sometimes be difficult for end users to make changes to CRM without having to [...]