Selling with CRM – Be SMART!

When most people think of CRM (if they don’t scratch their heads and say, “Uhhh, what’s that?”), they think of SAP or Salesforce. Oracle’s or Microsoft’s particular solutions may also cross their minds if enterprise sales are a part of their lives. Countless other smaller vendors offer products that fall into its realm, but there are a few key points to keep in mind:

• A Customer Relationship Management system is just a database
• More than one business has been run successfully (to a point) with a spreadsheet for CRM
  • Interactions between businesses and customers are increasingly complex and multifaceted, meaning that the days of the Rolodex are over.

CRM systems are like snowflakes: no two are alike. However, all are designed to provide data to sales teams, marketers, and business leaders that lets them (1) Create strong relationships between companies and their potential customers, More than one business has been run successfully (to a point) with a spreadsheet for that (2) manage the sales cycle (3) improve sales approaches, and (4) measure the most important metrics a business can report. Multifaceted, meaning that the days of the Rolodex are over.

Many companies are finding it increasingly difficult to justify a large and expensive direct sales force, cold calling, chasing leads, following up, and otherwise selling and marketing. Most system can keep a large, traditional sales force organized, ensuring that one customer only gets one call a week from a telemarketer or the purchasing manager at a potential client doesn’t get three calls from three different salespeople when he sends an email with a simple product inquiry. The real beauty of the modern CRM platform, though, is its ability to short-circuit much of the arduous work of a sales team and aggregate data in such a way that it supports more modern approaches to inbound marketing and lead generation that doesn’t require countless hours of cold-calling.

A system as such should, in fact, coordinate the work of product management, marketing, and sales teams in a company such that the age-old marketing versus sales versus engineering rivalries go away and a business can focus on its product and its brand.

A growing number of these certain applications are incorporating robust business intelligence tools, as well. These components not only facilitate the analysis of sales and engagement data from a myriad of sources but also guide business stakeholders in key decisions regarding expenditures, features, and messaging.

CRM applications are increasingly social, often incorporate powerful analytics and business intelligence, and are available in such variety that any business can find an appropriate platform to better manage its sales and product development cycles.More to the point, there is little excuse not to use one of these tools which have become essential to effective communications, lead generation, lead nurturing, pre-sales efforts, and customer service.