One of the better ways to generate qualified leads is to do outbound calling with the goal of setting up a meeting with a sales rep.  There are marketing companies that specialize in this and only charge for the meetings they setup.  The charge could run as high as $800 per meeting.  A cheaper and more effective way to do this is to hire a part-time person and give them a script to follow.  We tried this with a college student and our results were better than when we hired an outside firm to do it.  It allowed us to closely monitor the feedback she was getting and make appropriate adjustments to her approach and calling script.  It did not matter that she knew very little about what she was talking about.  Being polite, brief and sincere was the key in getting people to take the meeting.

Tags: CRM Basics, Marketing

Early user involvement in any new system dramatically increases the overall success, none more so than with CRM.  Get key user feedback early on in the process by involving them in some of the requirements meetings and turning a few of them into power users who support the main role out.  Picking on the most successful sales people usually does the trick.  For one thing, they like the idea of having a system that easily shows others how well they are doing.  Furthermore, making them one of the people other sales people go to when have questions about the new system provides added stardom and recognition to management.

Another easy thing to do is provide a button on your CRM solution that allows for easy feedback of bugs, and enhancement ideas.  People want to be part of creating something new for their company.  Find a way to let them.

Tags: CRM Basics

Sales & Marketing Business Brief offered 4 selling strategies to focus on in 2010 given the state of the economy.  While they seem obvious, I thought it was worth restating.  Times are tuff and being remaindered of certain strategizes never hurt.

1. Maximize your lead pipeline: Now is the time to perform an audit of your sales from the past two years to determine who your high-probability buyers are now (based on SIC, region, executive title, etc.). I would also evaluate who were you most profitable and highest revenue clients in the past.   Once the audit is complete, frontload your pipeline with those leads to give salespeople the best opportunity for success.
2. Sell value over price: Many companies try to win buyers back by offering one-time discounts and bargain-basement prices. That short-term strategy does little to promote customer or brand loyalty. Now’s the time to reinforce the long-term benefits of doing business with your company — and keep salespeople talking to prospects about the return, rather than the investment of doing business with your company.
3. Embrace new marketing channels/modes of communication: Cell phones, e-mail, social networking, web marketing, text messaging, BlackBerrys — they have all changed the way prospects communicate. Sales organizations that capitalize on them will be in a position to gain an edge over competitors. Some companies use Twitter to maintain contact and promote new offers. Others use Facebook or LinkedIn. Many salespeople ask prospects how they prefer to communicate upfront, so there is no confusion about the best way to contact them.  The key is to find small, low-cost ways to use technology and new modes of communication to improve your relationships with buyers.
4. Differentiate your offer: Right now, there are more companies competing for fewer buyers, which mean it has never been more essential for salespeople to convey what separates your offer from competitors’. Sales organizations should be developing their own competitive analysis in light of the fact that prospects now have instant access to competitive prices and low-ball offers thanks to the Web. Creating and regularly updating your own competitive analysis allows salespeople to control the process. It also keeps them on top of what other competitors are offering, as well as where an incumbent supplier may be coming up short. One other approach: Create a sense of urgency by quantifying the cost of not doing business with you.

Tags: crm, Marketing

I have been going to a new gym close to work for about 6 months.  When I went during the first week in January it was more crowded than I had ever seen.  I did expect a small bump with people trying to get their New Years workout resolution off to a good start.  I mentioned to the employee at the desk that I guess this will last for a few months and he said, “Not a few months, 2 weeks”. 

It shows how quickly people give up on things that require more effort at the beginning.  If you can force yourself to stay with your workout plan, in a pretty short time frame you will find a rhythm and start seeing results.  That fuels your desire to continue and push even harder. 

The same is true for CRM.  It is harder at the beginning.  You have to do more work in the beginning and not really seeing any immediate results.  Once the reps and the system reach a more critical mass many of the benefits are seen.  The reps would have figured out how to use the system based on how they work, more mundane tasks are completed and a lot of useful data is now easily available.  The results and benefits are now being seen.

It is just a matter of getting all your CRM users through the New Year Resolution collapse.

Tags: CRM Basics

How would you like to reduce the number of clicks a rep does during the day by 25%. That can equate to 100 or more clicks in just a day. It is a huge productivity gain for both neophytes and expert users.

Key words/drop-down phrases are the answer. They are easy to setup, dramatically reduce the amount of typing a rep has to do, and enforces consistency. It allows a rep to use two clicks to enter a full phrase or word. Therefore, unless the word they wanted to use had only one letter they are ahead of the game. As a byproduct, it allows you to enforce consistency for reporting and analysis. You do not have to worry about people entering things all different ways.

In the end, you want reps to quickly record the information and move on. Drop-down key words and phrases allow you to provide that. Many CRM solutions have this available. You just need to ensure they are turned on, have the right information and show the reps how easy it is to use. Imagine 100 less clicks each day, 2100 a month, 25,200 a year, all per person. Worth the effort to put in place? I think so.

Example of drop-down key phrases:

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Example of drop-down words:

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Tags: crm, crm productivity

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of segmenting your customers. It is one of the most important pieces of information for the sales team and the company. By staying diligent, it will allow your sales and marketing teams the ability to do very focused marketing. It also makes sure you are staying focused on your core customer base as well as spot new types of customers.

Segmentation options should be centrally maintained to ensure consistency. To make it easy for reps and marketing it should be a pick list to choose from when entering or editing a new customer or company record. Below is an example of how it would work. Most CRM solutions allow for some level of segmentation. However, company policy drives it.

Once entered, doing mailings and events to specific segments are easy. But you also get to see pipelines and forecasts in terms of your segments. This allows the sales team and management to be more proactive based on certain tends you are seeing in specific segments.

As I mentioned while most CRM solutions will support this field it takes a strong company policy to ensure people are properly entering it. Making it a required field when creating or editing a customer record will help.

Segment Pick List Example

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Tags: crm, CRM Basics

I have always believed the key to success with CRM lies in the training and follow-up support you give your reps. Yes, it is important to deliver a tool that is easy to use, has features that help increase productivity and integrated business processes that reps and support people need to do their jobs. However, without providing the right training and a place they can go to get questions answered you will fight a losing battle. The first 30 days will determine the success or failure of your CRM solution. It is during this time opinions are formed, and stances taken. The mob will be forming for better or worse. Whether you have the perfect system or not with training and support, you can overcome most of the problems. You want to overcome the usage of the system very quickly. It is easy to fix features and functions in the solution. A bad perception of use is not.

The best training you can provide is scenario based. How do you see a rep using the system from the time he starts his/her day. How does he use the system when he gets a new lead? This really helps put context around the new solution. People like routines they can follow.

You only retain about 25% of classroom training. Therefore, it is important to schedule 4 weekly 1 hour sessions where users can log in and ask questions that they have from the week. You should schedule these sessions for the first month. I would also add in advanced topics and shortcuts in weeks 3 and 4.

Doing remote follow-up training is very inexpensive and easy to accomplish. It could literally be the difference between success or failure.

Tags: Add new tag, CRM Basics, Training

It is not exactly hedging but adjusting your revenue based on past rep performance is a way to ensure you are not over or under stating your revenue targets too much. How this works is simple. You assign each rep a weight factor based on how they have forecasted in the past. Do they have a tendency to overstate and under deliver or understate and over deliver? Each rep likes to handle how they report their deals differently. So for example, a rep that usually is under their revenue forecast by 10% you would assign a factor of 90%. If a rep consistently is over their forecasted revenue you can assign 105% factor.

When running forecast reports you will want to see two columns for revenue. One is the stated forecast on the opportunity and the other column will show the adjusted based on the factor of the rep. To get the adjusted revenue numbers just multiply the revenue of the deal by the rep factor. This is easily done automatically for you when creating or updating your opportunity. It should be carried as an additional field on the opportunity for easy reporting. For companies that use sales forecasts for any type of capacity planning this will help get it much closer.

Remember the past is a window to the future. Always try to leverage the past to better predict your future business.

Rep Factor is part of their profile

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How it shows on the opportunity

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How it shows on forecast reports

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Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity

When tracking an opportunity in CRM most systems allow you to track not only the sales cycle step but what your feeling is on closing the deal. This is very important and shouldn’t be overlooked. When looking at deals in a forecast, rating them by Gut is at least as important if not more as where you are in the sales step. Many times you can be early on in the sales cycle and the rep can get a good sense of the likelihood of winning the deal. Also if this is an existing customer with add-on business, you can have a large spread between sales step and gut.

Tracking Gut along with the sales cycle provides the team a really clear picture of the opportunity. It allows you to better balance resources and ensures you have the right strategies in place.

Forecast Report with Gut factor

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Tags: crm, CRM Basics

One of the best things about using a good CRM solution is the ability to easily keep your team as well as management informed about what is going on with your customers.  It ensures that everyone is on the same page even though they were not part of a meeting or away working with other customers.  It ensures consistent messaging which is one of the top objectives for most companies. 

CRM should automatically inform your team or anyone else you want about customer interactions.  You should be able to simply fill out a call report or opportunity update and the system will automatically notify your team.  The email that everyone gets should allow for a brief note you can add and a link to where the information you updated is stored.  No one should have to deal with searching their inbox for customer information that was forwarded to them.  It should all be stored in one central location, associated with a customer, and a link to it.

Some solutions take it one step further by allowing discussion threads.  This allows people to easily participate remotely and foster a more collaborative environment. 

If your CRM solution does not have a notify function that integrates with your email system, it is worth having IT put it in.  It is not hard to do but will require some small workflow coding and integration with the companies name and address book. 

It does require a little Shaving of the Yak but well worth the effort.

Below are examples on how to integrate notifications and the email people would receive.

Sample Call Report with notification

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Sample email to a customer with notification

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Sample email a person gets with link to record

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Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity