A great time saver when working with your CRM solution is to invoke bookmarks.  This allows you to access specific information with one click.  The thing to remember about bookmarks is to keep them current.  You do not want to have a large collection of bookmarks because it makes it harder to find the ones you want.  The bookmarks you have should only pertain to current deals and situations you are dealing with currently or everyday tasks.  Once they are resolved or the deal is closed, you should remove them. 

Some solutions let you also bookmark items outside you CRM data.  That becomes useful if you are accessing things like Word documents or PowerPoint presentations.  This way you do not have to leave CRM to access this information. 

Utilizing bookmarks is a great way to drastically save time searching for the data or documents you need.

Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity

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:

Double click to enlarge

Example of drop-down words:

Double click to enlarge

Tags: crm, crm productivity

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

Double click to enlarge

How it shows on the opportunity

Double click to enlarge

How it shows on forecast reports

Double click to enlarge

Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity

It is the one year anniversary of the blog and what a year it has been. While there are differing opinions on how long it will take the economy to recover, what is certain is that businesses will remain lean for a long time to come. Many companies have continued to show profits even with reduced revenues because of the cost cutting they have done. It has shown they can do more with less.

In addition, our financial system is going through the painful process of deleveraging itself from years of excess. And like banks, we also need to deleverage ourselves where we can. We are online and connected to work, friends, family, and news 24 hours a day. We need to find places in our lives where we can simplify things.

The analogy I have used about shaving a Yak to explain why projects like CRM projects fail continues to be true (see October 6, 2008 post). We need to always remember not to over complicate things. Start off small and slowly add-on features as you need them. Don’t anticipate everything you need upfront. Look at today and ask yourself what is really needed to help our reps get back 10% of their time. What kind of tool today do they need in order to help them meet their quota? What kind of tool can we expect them to want to use?

Try to visualize what the feeling would be if you were standing in front of a Yak with a razor trying to figure out how to shave him. If you look at your CRM project and feel overwhelmed you need to reevaluate your strategy.

And remember, deleveraging is not just for our banks.

Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity

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

Double click to enlarge

Sample email to a customer with notification

Double click to enlarge

Sample email a person gets with link to record

Double click to enlarge

Tags: CRM Basics, crm productivity

One of the greatest tools for sales reps of the 21st century so far is web conferencing. Products like GoToMeeting, Webex, and Sametime dramatically changed how sales rep work. These products allow reps to avoid costly plane and overnight trips to show a prospect or customer their products and services. It has become the single most important technology in qualifying customers at a fraction of the cost it did before. While video conferencing has been around for a while it was too costly and complicated for sales reps that need speed, simplicity, and flexibility.

Any CRM solution you want to use should have direct integration with a web conferencing tool. The ones I have used like Relavis CRM and SalesForce.com have integrated these solutions directly into their activity management component. When scheduling a meeting within CRM you are able to hit a button on the form that will automatically create the web meeting, place all the connection and phone information into the invitation and mailed to the attendees. It is a great time saver for reps as well as allows you to track these meetings back to a specific lead, opportunity or contact. Web conference solutions keep track of number of attendees, length of time and you can record the entire meeting for play back later.

While I am sure many reps are now taking advantage of this technology with either corporate or individual accounts you should be tying it into your CRM solution so you get to create and track it in one place. It is an amazing time saver especially if you need to go back to review the history of the account. Or if a team member or manager missed the meeting and wants to review what happened.

Prospects and customer find web meetings far less intrusive on their time. It can be done totally at their convenience and at their desk.

Web conferencing should not totally eliminate visiting with your customers and prospects. Remember 90% of closing business is showing up. But it is a great tool for qualify and delivering information quickly and cost effectively.

Example of Web Conferencing Integration When Creating a Meeting in CRM

(Double click to enlarge)

Tags: crm productivity

One of the most basic features of any CRM solution is the ability to manage your calendar. Sounds simple, but with the way sales people work there is more to it than meets the eye. There is your CRM calendar, your Lotus Notes or Outlook calendar, your BlackBerry/iPhone/Nokia/Motorola/G1 calendar. While many companies have been trying to standardize many still allow a combination of devices. And even if you do need to use one type of PDA for business many reps will then have a personal PDA.

Besides the different phones and operating systems there are also the types of entries you want to keep track of. Lotus Notes and Outlook keep only scheduled activities on the calendar. That means things like phone calls will not show up. Many CRM solutions have their own calendar which allows you to see all your activity types and also synchronizes with your corporate calendar (less calls and to do’s). I have found it to be more work and not as reliable. You really want to use your corporate calendar and a CRM solution that uses all the native forms of it. It makes it much easier for users since they are already familiar with it. It allows them to work right in their calendar and still be using CRM.

In order to make using CRM easy and part of your day to day routine you need to have all activities show up on all the clients/devices you use. This means there will probably be some IT involvement in making it happen. The good news is it does not take a lot of effort. Lotus Notes and Outlook calendars have synchronization between Blackberry and Windows Mobile calendars. Some CRM solutions like Relavis CRM allows you to easily track not only synchronized activities but Call’s and To Do’s in the same native calendar view. Dynamics CRM keeps track of it in a separate section plus those calls will not be synchronized with your PDA device. Integration with iPhones and other devices is available but not yet widely used with CRM.

Finally there are the issues around seeing your team’s group calendar. It is important in order to better track and work together as a team. While Lotus Notes has group calendaring built in Outlook requires a third party tool.

To really empower your CRM users try to do what is necessary to keep all their calendars in sync so they can be just as productive out of the office as they are at their desk.

Tags: crm, CRM Basics, crm productivity

There is a new acronym you might not be familiar with in the world of customer satisfaction.

Customer Experience Management (CEM) is about moving beyond traditional CRM, which for the most part is about automating customer touch points, and addressing a full end-to-end customer experience. CEM is about emotions. According to thought leader Colin Shaw you are trying to address two key questions: “What’s the experience you’re trying to deliver?” and “What emotions you’re trying to evoke.

To do this you need to go beyond conversation logs and call reports. You need to get more in the head of your customers. You need to know what is stressing them out. What is keeping them up at night? What challenges and obstacles they are facing?

I do believe that sales reps know a lot about their customers at a micro level. But we need to get a macro level understanding of the customer. Social media technology is paving the way for vendors to better understand, address and work with their customers on a more macro level. I plan to go into social media in a future blog.

But to address how you can start today working with your customers on a macro level here is a simple way to get started. Define a Business Objectives and Relationship Rules section on your Organizational profile. This is where you define things such as: customer’s business objectives; customer’s relationship expectations; and your objectives with the customer. This will allow you to chart a much broader strategy in helping your customer achieve their short and long term objectives. It is not just about your product line. It is about you caring and taking an active role in helping move your customer’s total agenda along wherever you can.

Supporting this within your CRM solution allows your entire team and company to always be aware of what everyone’s expectations are for the relationship and what everyone is looking to accomplish.

Below is a simple addition you can easily add into your CRM solution to start to track this information. It is just the beginning of a broader strategy and technology you might eventually consider to share ideas and issues, solve problems and co-design design new products and services with your customers.

Organization Profile Example

(click to enlarge)

Tags: crm, crm productivity

One of the best productivity features I have used with CRM is the bookmark. It allows you to create bookmarks on any record, document or website. I used it extensively when working on proposals or documents so I can easily locate them. You avoid having to go to Word or Excel and looking for the right document and version in the open/file pop-up box. I would also bookmark my most active contacts and opportunities so I never have to go through more than 1 click to bring it up. As I finish with a document or contact I will remove them so that I continually have what is requiring my most attention over the immediate days and weeks to be 1 click away.

While operating systems allow you to setup bookmarks, having it within CRM allows you deal with it all in open place. It also allows you to have them available on your mobile device, if supported.

There is a saying, “It is the little things in life that are the most rewarding”. I find this true when working with not only CRM but any system. The little shortcuts and simple features end up saving you the most time. It is the 80/20 rule. 80% of your productivity savings is accomplished by 20% of the features.

Sample of a Bookmark in a CRM Solution

(click to enlarge)

Tags: crm, crm productivity

One of the most overlooked components when trying to manage a complete picture of your customers is your post sales activities. This includes all project services that were part of your deals. It is important to track these projects in CRM so anyone looking at this account can see what projects were completed or in progress. It allows others in your organization to leverage post sales activities in deals they might be working in other divisions or locations. It also helps transition teams be consistent.

Tracking your post sales projects helps new reps be credible when talking to the account for the first time. What can be more embarrassing than not knowing your company has a services engagement currently active in the account.

Project management with CRM is not meant to replace software like Microsoft Project. It is only meant to be used as a place holder and track some basic information. Most customers will attach the detailed project plan to the CRM project record. You can also track all your activities against the project.

Post sales activities should round out your 360 degree view of your customer. Many CRM solutions will have a component for it. If your does not you can create a new activity type and use that as your place holder. I have included some basic information you might want to track on the project record. Again, remember this is not meant to replace project management software, it is just a way to account for your post sales activities within CRM.

Sample Project Management Record

(click to enlarge)

Tags: crm, CRM Basics, crm productivity