What Is CRM | Understanding Customer Relationship Management

What is CRM and is it still relevant and effective in today’s business world? Find out more about the importance of CRM and a few tips and tricks of this business strategy in this article.

What Is CRM: A Basic Guide to Customer Relationship Management

 1. Is CRM Dead? How Sales Reps Can Get The Most Out of CRM | Podcast

Let’s face it, CRM sucks to use, especially if you’re a sales rep. But, we use it because we have to. I promise that statements like that won’t last though. Something has to happen to make CRM valuable and I’m not talking about SMART CRM as that is more of the same.

We need to not just give to CRM, we need to get from CRM. The next evolution of CRM is a system of growth and it combines CRM with AI and sales technologies to help sales teams sell more. Click here to check out the podcast.

2. Are You Making These Costly Mistakes With Your Salesforce CRM Metrics?

The Salesforce CRM is a powerful platform that delivers mountains of valuable sales data. But are you using that data effectively?

Jason Jordan, a partner at Vantage Point Performance, says his research reveals that only 17 percent of the metrics sales leaders measure can be managed directly.

The result, he says, is that inside sales teams waste a lot of time worrying about the wrong metrics and fail to focus on the high-impact activities that drive performance. Click here to read more about these costly mistakes.

3. CRM’s Not Dead Yet – How Sales Reps Can Get the Most Out of The CRM

You know as much as I do that achieving quota is tough. Okay, it’s real tough and the numbers show it. According to Miller Heiman, quota attainment is at an all-time low at 53% in 2017. That’s down 10% from just five years ago. You and I both know there are a lot of reasons for this but one reason that we found of interest was time management. Sales reps are not spending their time selling, and they are spending even less time with their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. So, what’s the deal– is CRM dead? Click here to read more on how sales reps can get the most out of CRM.

4. Inside Sales Reps: Take Notes in Your CRM

You just hung up the phone with a lead or client and you start to list all the details from the conversation into your CRM notes section. You scheduled the follow-up, you write up everything the two of you talked about, summarize emails sent, faxes and possible purposes.

When all is said and done, did you know the average sales rep spends roughly 7.5 minutes after each call taking notes on what was discussed? Click here to read more on how to take notes in your CRM.

5. Is CRM Dead? – Infographic

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, the foundational system for sales teams, has reached a tipping point. New research shows that sales reps spend very little time selling (36% of their time), even less in the CRM (18%) and too much time in spreadsheets managing CRM-related tasks. Click here to check out this infographic.

6. CRM Adoption – Why Some Inside Sales Reps Don’t Fully Utilize a CRM

Leads are fickle things. Who of us hasn’t been on that call when things went south?

Why are leads so hard to convert to sales? There have been many studies that talk about that, but I wanted to talk about the nitty-gritty reasons why we often don’t get the results we expect; CRM adoption.

This article talks about CRM adoption rates, and both point to a larger problem: Salespeople not fully adopting the CRM or not utilizing it in the way management has instructed. Click here to read more about CRM adoption.

7. CRM Isn’t Enough – Here’s What’s Next

Everybody’s using Customer Relationship Software (CRM) today. Everybody. And although it’s become such a commodity, average sales quota attainment has fallen each year, for the last five years.

Why?

The CRM’s ability to deliver on its promise of improving the sales process has stalled. It’s not built to address the challenges of today’s complex buying environment.

In our connected economy, buyers educate themselves through online information, peer references, and crowd-sourced reviews. They are making decisions in a non-linear and recursive way, and the approval process varies by company.

Many buying decisions can be made with no sales rep involved at all.

The CRM software organizes sales efforts in a linear construct, following a single-threaded, phase-based path towards a close.

So how can a sales rep train in a single linear selling process possibly know the course of action that will suit individual prospects the best? Click here to read more about what’s next after CRM.

The goal of customer relationship management is to improve relationships with customers and potential customers, which is a universal goal across all businesses and industries. This is why CRM is an important business strategy that should be utilized with the proper tools and knowledge. We hope that this article has helped you answer “what is CRM?” and understand how to maximize its potential in your business.

Do you have more questions about CRM? Ask us in the comments section below!

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