CRM is, without a doubt, one of the tools that has the most impact on sales effectiveness.
To facilitate and optimize your commercial approach, you have invested in a CRM platform.
This platform is intended, among other things, to improve
✅ The visibility of your commercial activity (who, what, when)
✅ Its predictability (forecasts)
✅ Its effectiveness (qualification, opportunity and alert management, conversion rate, hunting and gathering, retention)
✅ Your planning (actions to be taken, execution, recruitment needs).
The CRM, therefore, is not a simple commercial tool, or even an IT project with no impact on your business conduct.
It is a business platform that, when used properly, serves many departments within the company (management, finance, pre-sales, operations…).
Its optimal use is necessary if you want to achieve your goals.
Know how to recognize the signs that will help you adapt to the platform and ensure its best use immediately!
Often heard:
➡️ General Management
🔺“We have a CRM but our sales people don’t use it enough”.
🔺“I only rely on the forecasts that come from the finance department”.
🔺“CRM data is inaccessible from one subsidiary to another”.
➡️ Sales Management
🔺“I systematically adjust the percentages and data that my salespeople enter into the CRM – depending on their temperament (optimistic or pessimistic)”.
🔺“We don’t have set rules about how we manage opportunities (date of entry, percentage of success, status)”.
🔺“I personally compile and update the CRM data before communicating one figure to my management … which can be a challenge when I am stuck in a traffic jam while my management expects immediate feedback”.
➡️ Sales reps
🔺“It is a management tool, not a sales tool”.
🔺“Information is updated the day before sales meetings”.
🔺“It’s an administrative job”.
➡️ Finance department
🔺“The information from the sales people is not reliable”.
🔺“Our budgets are based on our own financial projections”.
🔺“Information from the CRM is not usable”.
➡️ IT Department
🔺“The technical implementation was a success”.
🔺” The functionalities are operational “.
🔺“We have followed the specifications established jointly with the sales department”.
➡️ Marketing Department
🔺“We use the CRM and its functionalities for all our campaigns”.
🔺“We have dashboards that provide us with information on their performance”.
🔺“The leads we communicate to the sales department are not sufficiently followed up on”.
➡️ Operations and pre-sales
🔺“Sales reps should stop wasting time on this opportunity, our solution does not fit the client’s needs”
🔺“If we had an access to the CRM, we would have been able to plan ahead and dedicate enough resources to deliver the deal as negotiated by sales reps”
🔺“We are being asked to work on opportunities that don’t appear in the CRM”.
👉 In the above cases, one might ask the question: “What is the purpose of our CRM?“
Recognizing one or more of these comments should be reason enough to consider that the CRM is not providing the expected benefits and you need to take action without delay.
💡 That being said, let’s keep one principle in mind: the tool is not the practice.
Indeed, “just” improving the use of CRM is not a guarantee of commercial success.
The use of the platform can hide necessary points of improvement that concern your practice and your business strategy.
Copyright ©
