The insider’s guide to choosing the best CRM for your sales organization entrepreneur how earn by blogging blog

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes.

“I remember the first time I got my own CRM system, nearly 10 years ago” recounts author and sales coach Adam Metz. “It cost a few hundred dollars all in and it was actually a desktop app that synced to the cloud once a day for backup. It now seems kind of quaint, but, it helped me start my book of business that today has over 10,000 contacts in it. I can say that I’ve had a personal conversation with almost every single one of them. And that’s thanks for the most part, to good data management.”

There are two main reasons CRM adoption fails for sales teams trying to increase their performance. But first let me get the basics out of the way to get everyone up to speed on the terminology and what a CRM is.

What is a CRM and why use it? A CRM or Customer Relationship Management tool is software used by sales and marketing teams to track the interactions you’ve made with your contacts and customers, and manage follow-ups.

From something as simple as tracking when you last emailed them or sent them a birthday card, up to what they ordered, where they are in the sales cycle when deciding to purchase from you. This all sounds easy when you have 5-10 customers (and it is). However, it fast becomes unmanageable when you have 100, 500 or more customers and you are talking to different people within those companies. As companies and sales teams grow 65% of businesses adopt a CRM within their first 5 years. In fact investing in CRM technology became a top priority for organisations last year. In larger organizations a CRM ensures all departments, finance, support, marketing and sales all have the same information and makes customer interactions more efficient and effective.

The CRM software market is expected to grow to a $36.5 billion market worldwide in 2017 – According to Forbes, Businesses all over the globe are leveraging the power behind this system!

Case study PHA MediaAward winning London PR agency PHA Media knew from experience that things could quickly get out of hand with their new sales team if a sales process was not put in place.

“Within a few weeks, it was clear that managing and following up all leads in a timely fashion would be impossible without a CRM”. – Charles Howard, Business Development Manager

Charles wanted to keep their sales team focused on the sale so they needed a tool which allowed them to predict revenues and manage follow-ups in a timely manner. Prior to using a CRM, they had no way of knowing who had previously reached out to prospects. This was also a real pain point for the team as it often led to extra admin work – checking if other colleagues had reached out and when. The resulting sales process resulted in an 84% increase in lead traffic for the company.

In a sales team, a CRM can assign territories and customers to individual sales people. This ensures no one else is trying to sell to the same people. The right CRM will also guide a sales person on their sales process. It ensures customers are always followed up with and more deals are closed as a result. Research from The Bridge Group of 355 leading B2B sales teams revealed that “sales development reps who make 12 contact attempts (instead of the average 8) perform 16% better!”. Without a tool to manage those interactions opportunities will be missed.

Your CRM will deliver a ROI of $8.71 for every dollar spent. – Nucleus Research.

Management can get insights into the sales team and deal pipeline for the future and look for opportunities to optimize the sales process. There are as many different versions, iterations, add ons and names for CRMs on the market as there are different types of industries. But at the core, nearly all CRM software have the below features in common.

Do you need a CRM? Think for a moment, can you remember the names of all your customers and prospects? As a general rule, you need a CRM if you can’t remember the name of every customer and prospect you deal with. It means you are starting to let opportunities slip through the cracks and forgetting to follow up in time..

5 signs you need a CRM

1. Leads and opportunities are not followed up and lost.
2. You begin to get bad customer or potential customer feedback.
3. You lose important data. Well, you know it is somewhere but you can’t remember where.
4. The sales cycle has too many touch points to keep track of.
5. You can no longer remember the history of leads and customers.

6 steps to selecting and choosing the best crm for your business. Before you start. The #1 reason CRM adoption fails! It is easy to buy software for your business. It is less easy to get everyone to adopt and use it day to day. Low user adoption is one of the biggest (and expensive) reasons why software fails in an organisation. Salesloft report CRM adoption rate at less than 50%. One of the biggest reasons users do not adopt and use a CRM is due to neglecting to clearly define the business objectives for the CRM.

85% of companies that buy CRM software to automate sales do not pick the right tools because they fail to define business objectives or to develop processes for meeting objectives. – Gartner analyst Robert DeSiste

1. List out the top 3 business objectives you want the CRM to help you achieve.Bedrock Data suggests the following business objectives: A. Improve the efficiency of your business. B. Expand the number of customers you have and the business you do with them. C. Enhance the performance of your sales, marketing and support teams. Select 3-5 CRM applications you think might be a good fit.
2. Do a google search and ask around your network for recommended solutions.
3. Choose a list of core features and evaluation criteria. Check our list below or use this ready made list.
4. Obtain the total price for delivery (Inc all setup, integration, onboarding costs and training).
5. Score each CRM on how closely each CRM feature matches your criteria. Research and get a demo or webinar from each.
6. Count up the results using this score sheet and select the winning CRM vendor.

Due to the length of the content I need to link out to the rest of this.

Read the core features of a great CRM http://ift.tt/2oe8AQf

And lastly The 12 reasons CRM adoption fails http://ift.tt/2nyPuB4

Any features you think are missing from the guide?

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