You need to understand why you need a CRM and how it corresponds to your business’s primary goals. In this post, you’ll learn why a CRM strategy is important, and we’ll give you five CRM objectives you can set to achieve when using the software for your business.

Why do you need a CRM strategy?

Creating a CRM strategy ensures that you get the most out of your software. It clarifies why you’re using the software and how its impact aligns with your overall business strategy and goals. Plus, a defined strategy gets your entire organization on the same page and focused on achieving the same goals.

CRM tools do a lot. They give companies a centralized platform for organizing data and communicating with customers. And they allow you to manage relationships throughout the entire customer lifecycle, spanning interactions across several multichannel touchpoints.

With this robust functionality, countless benefits are available to those who implement a CRM. Creating a CRM strategy helps you find the gap in your current systems and processes so that you use the software in the manner that will have the greatest impact on the overall health of the business.

5 CRM objectives you can set for your business

Now that you know the importance of developing a strategy for your CRM, let’s examine some of the most impactful objectives you can set when adopting a CRM for your business:

1. Improve the buyer’s journey

The fundamental purpose of a CRM system is to improve the customer experience. Executing on this objective is the most sure-fire way to see positive results across your business. When you make improved customer satisfaction the main goal for your CRM, all other objectives work to support this goal.

One of the best ways to boost customer satisfaction is to offer a personalized experience. A CRM gives you unified customer profiles to understand all of your customers’ needs. You can use these insights to tailor every interaction and how you approach your products and services. 

With a CRM, all your customer data is easily accessible by the entire team so everyone can pick up on customers’ histories and preferences faster. This helps you increase the speed at which you respond to customer inquiries to provide a more positive experience.

2. Improve operational efficiency

CRM software makes your sales process much more efficient as you can save a considerable amount of time by automating repetitive administrative tasks. Audience segmentation, email follow-ups, post-sale workflows, and invoicing are just some of the tasks and processes that a CRM lets you automate.

Modern CRMs can further consolidate customer information gathered across the organization, including sales, marketing, and customer service, into a single dashboard, everyone in your business can enjoy streamlined communication and smoother collaboration. 

3. Increase customer retention

Your best customers are always your current customers. No matter your industry, it is always easier to encourage repeat purchases and/or expand contracts than it is to win over new prospects. By adopting a CRM, you can boost retention to maximize the average lifetime value of your customers.

The software makes it easy to track each customer’s interests and every interaction to gain a clear understanding of how to serve them best. As a result, campaigns can be aligned to each customer to encourage further loyalty.

For example, you can cross-sell and offer discounts based on previous purchases. Or, you could keep track of how long someone has been a customer and send them rewards when they reach key milestones to improve stickiness.

4. Lower your customer acquisition cost

Gaining new customers comes at a cost. With a CRM, you can get more return from every dollar spent on marketing to new customers to lower your average customer acquisition cost (CAC). There are several ways a CRM helps you achieve this.

To start, it can lower the cost needed to executive effective campaigns by automating repetitive tasks to free up time for your sales and marketing teams. The centralization of data afforded by a CRM also allows you to target potential customers with greater efficiency.

With a CRM, you will know exactly what stage of the purchasing process each prospect is in. You can use this to send marketing messages targeting their specific needs at that moment instead of sending generalized messages less likely to capture their attention.

5. Generate more sales

At the end of the day, your business needs sales to survive. A great way to increase sales is to ensure you direct your efforts toward selling to the right people. Not every lead will be a good fit for your business, and some will have a higher value than others. With a CRM, your sales team can ensure their pipeline is full of highly qualified leads and prospects. 

The data in a CRM system can be used to learn what your best customers have in common so that you can then prioritize the leads that share the same traits. This keeps the sales team focused on the best leads for the largest contract sizes. By doing so, you can close more deals with higher-value customers.

How to measure your CRM objectives

Goals that you can’t track and measure aren’t real goals. Therefore, every CRM objective should be tied to a specific performance metric that can be used to determine whether the objective is achieved.

If your CRM objectives align with your business goals, the appropriate metrics for evaluating your efforts should be easy to define. For example, if you want to improve customer retention, you should focus on your churn rate and look for it to decrease. Or, if you hope to increase sales, you can track new and total revenue generated.

If you find that you’re not reaching your CRM objectives, you can then adjust your tactics to yield better results. Perhaps, you’re not converting enough leads, so you decide to change your automated email campaigns. Or maybe, you’re not retaining enough customers, so you choose to make a greater effort to understand where and when customer satisfaction is dropping.

Achieve your goals with Insightly

Your CRM strategy should be an ever-evolving process, with your objectives adapting over time as your business grows. No matter your size or the results you achieve, your success will always depend on giving your customers the best possible experience.

Insightly CRM was designed to give businesses large and small the ability to create world-class experiences without unnecessary complexity.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, or request a personalized demo to see how it can help you achieve your goals.

The post CRM Objectives: 5 Goals You Can Achieve with a CRM appeared first on Insightly.

A Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) is a tool to manage all of your organization’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. CRMs provide a firsthand understanding of your customer’s experience to help you match your products and services to their needs. 

Like any tool, you’ll get the most out of your CRM when you put the most into it. The first step in that effort is to be sure to choose the best CRM based on your needs.

If you’re unfamiliar with the CRM software market, you may feel overwhelmed. In short, it’s huge.You may not know that there are subsets of CRMs, so it’s important to align your business type and objectives with the right offering. Let’s begin with what is generally agreed to be the four classic types of CRM systems.

Type 1: Operational CRMs

Operational CRMs provide customer service or marketing support through automation and streamlining business processes. They capture customer interactions and track lead qualification and action marketing automation.

Operational CRMs collect data from different marketing sources like social media, emails, or website visitors. This data can help your marketing team quickly and easily qualify leads. Operational CRMs also add value by providing more upfront information for analysis. An example of an operational CRM is Spotio.

Type 2: Analytical CRMs

Analytical CRMs use algorithms and machine learning to analyze the data they gather to create optimal customer targeting. Analytical CRMs provide insight into data and then understand and anticipate the customer’s needs that humans would otherwise miss. 

This category of CRM provides higher levels of insight and analysis regarding customer data. In addition, you can customize and scale them to allow your business to add or remove modules to suit your needs. An example of an analytical CRM is OLAP.

Type 3: Collaborative CRMs

Collaborative CRMs are mainly for customer relationship management tracking. These CRM solutions allow you to manage and track interactions with customers who contact your company via resources like social media, emails, and websites. A tracking system can help your team share sales process and task status information, reducing the confusion on what they need to do next. An example of a collaborative CRM is Dynamics 365 Sales.

Type 4: Strategic CRMs

Business models that focus on repeat and loyal customer bases use strategic CRMs to learn more about their customers. They then use this knowledge to build and maintain long-term relationships.  

Like the other types, strategic CRMs collect, analyze, segregate, and apply customer information and market trends to develop better value propositions. The difference is, this type of CRM uses algorithmic and analytical features to focus on building loyalty. It also finds strategic opportunities for engagement consistently and for more extended periods. Most generic CRMs would be identified in this category. 

Legacy CRM: Salesforce

Salesforce is the grandfather of sales CRMs. It is practically a household word these days, but it is also famous for being highly complex and expensive to deploy. 

Salesforce setup is time-consuming. The system’s complexity will require specialized resources that are almost always unavailable internally. Also, it may leave you with limited options. Although Salesforce claims to be integrated, additional apps are more bolt-ons than enhancements. 

Salesforce uses its market dominance to lock you into a single CRM type. A single type of CRM means you will be stuck with a solution that will evolve slowly. That leaves you with a problematic tool to use and constricts you to its technology. 

One of its main drawbacks is its high initial price point and recurring costs. The pricing structure is as confusing as it is costly. Development and user interfaces can be tricky to use. There are steep learning curves and user adoption issues that both admins and end-users need to surpass to get the most out of it. This makes the total cost of ownership very high.

The major advantage to Salesforce is also its major drawback: it’s a popular solution so theoretically you can hire people who already have experience in using it. However, it’s so highly customized by each organization that going from one Salesforce instance to another is akin to starting over. 

Niche player CRM: HubSpot

HubSpot’s primary focus is on marketing and marketing automation; its CRM came later. 

HubSpot is often perceived as a closed system that does best when it is not subject to integrations. As an example, companies with multiple and intricate sales technologies may not find it easy to integrate their complex environment with non-HubSpot technologies. 

A common concern about HubSpot is that it lacks flexibility and robustness when it comes to customizations and sales reporting. When identifying duplicate accounts and contacts, data synchronization is another example of its inflexibility.

Also, keep in mind that if your business or organization is in growth mode, it’s likely that you will outgrow HubSpot at some point. Thus the process of selecting and implementing a new CRM will be on the horizon for you again. 

How to choose the right type of CRM

While classic one-type CRMs noted above perform well within their strength areas, they can get you and your team stuck in a data silo. Whether it’s technological, price, or people-based, sooner or later, you’ll end up with a solution that doesn’t meet your needs. 

Legacy and niche solutions come with their own set of problems, including the risk of difficult user adoption, counter-intuitive UX, costly time, and investment losses due to additional customizations. 

You know you need to choose a CRM that will grow with your business, integrate easily, and not break the bank. It’s time to explore a modern, unified CRM as the answer to this need. 

Why modern unified CRMs are the answer

Modern CRMs save you time and money because they are easy to set up, so you don’t have to engage with expensive integrators to implement your CRM. Implementation is quick, so you won’t need to wait months to experience the benefits of your new system.

The six main reasons to choose a modern unified CRM are as follows: 

1. Improved collaboration and automation – Modern CRMs like Insightly ensure that your sales, marketing, and customer support teams find and work on the information they need. Winning a customer’s business and loyalty takes a united effort, not a siloed one. With modern CRMs, you can give your teams the ability to work in a united and carefully tracked manner due to the enhanced collaboration and automation. 

2. Maximized marketing automation – Most marketing teams juggle multiple tasks and projects at the same time. Marketing automation can allow you to maximize your marketing team’s time and effort. For example, by using Insightly Marketing, your team can create and recreate campaign structures quickly instead of having to reinvent the wheel. In addition, they can rapidly deploy workflow-based processes like web-to-lead forms that automatically generate new records and update data fields to ensure proper categorization. Easy-to-create workflows can trigger drip campaign emails that keep prospects highly engaged. Marketing reporting is easy as well, and is visible to all other teams. 

3. Streamlined sales automation – Unnecessary data entry means sales teams waste time and energy instead of concentrating on deals and the pipeline. Modern CRM sales automation can streamline sales aspects such as lead nurturing and routing. Insightly Sales makes lead-building email outreach campaigns easy for your team to manage. New leads receive emails automatically within moments of requesting information. All additional emails will seamlessly go out throughout the buyer’s journey without creating new manual task bottlenecks that are inefficient and prone to error.

4. Concise customer service automation – Closing new business is the goal, and it’s just the beginning. There’s so much more work to do to communicate the needed handoffs to deliver on promises and serve the customer. It’s vital to get these tasks right so you can retain your newly-won customers. Insightly Service, which is built on the same platform as Insightly CRM and Marketing, includes key features like an easy-to-access blade showing knowledge sidebar, macros, and full history, making it easy to share information and communicate quickly. It also includes quick visibility to SLAs, so reps can stay on track. Convenient dashboards and reports help managers analyze workflows and deploy resources more efficiently.

5. Deeply integrated – Modern CRMs like Insightly are more agile than legacy CRMs because they allow you to quickly build sophisticated integrations with the applications you already use in your organization, like Google, SAP, DocuSign, and much more. Imagine building workflows and integrations without writing a line of code. Insightly’s AppConnect is a no-code solution, so you don’t have to hire developers. AppConnect uses drag and drop functionality, automated error handling, built-in versioning, plus instant deployment and provisioning so your team can build and run sophisticated integrations efficiently.

6. Easy to implement and onboard new people – Legacy CRMs are complex and challenging to implement. They require a deep knowledge of the technology and often require third-party consultants to help, and that’s just with the install. The extreme amounts of documentation and training options demonstrate the complexity in deploying and rolling out to end-users. Modern CRMs like Insightly are built with the user experience in mind. They are designed to be intuitive and to perform like common consumer apps that are already familiar to users. They eliminate the need for long and complex implementations and get your team up and running as quickly as possible so you can experience CRM success in no time.

Where to start?

Not sure where to start? Get your personalized demo of a modern, unified CRM today to see it in action.

The post The 4 types of CRMs and their differences appeared first on Insightly.

A unified CRM is what’s required to thrive in a competitive landscape. The tools and data integration that it provides enable all of the company’s teams to seamlessly achieve synergy. They enable you to gain more insights and deliver a better experience.

Let’s dive deeper into the ways Insightly’s unified CRM software can have a transformative impact on your business.

What is the CRM process?

The CRM process can be best described as a business strategy that enables companies to better identify and interact with current and potential customers. 

The idea here is to improve personalization for every customer interaction for enhanced customer experience and loyalty through data analysis and segmentation tools.

The same approach is also leveraged for prospects to convert them into paying customers. The five core steps of the CRM process signify a collaborative effort between the key departments in a company.

The 5 steps of the CRM cycle

1. Increase brand awareness

Typically the marketing team’s domain, the first step in the customer relationship management process involves introducing prospects to the business. It requires in-depth research on the audience’s demographics and interests.

Audience personas are created based on this market research to launch marketing campaigns that will theoretically have a greater chance of resonating with the audience.

2. Acquire more leads

The lead acquisition step is generally handled by the sales or marketing teams, or in some companies, both. This is essentially an effort to get prospects to engage with the business. 

For example, the marketing team might offer downloadable content as a lead magnet to website visitors if they provide an email address. The sales team could then pull that data from the CRM to proactively target prospects to convert them into customers.

3. Convert leads into paying customers

Reps nurture leads to get them to convert to paying customers in this part of the sales process. They usually rely on lead-scoring data in the CRM to identify prospects that may have the highest probability of a sale and follow-up diligently with the lead.

Converting prospects into new customers is more of an art than a science. Sales reps must be skilled at building trust to inspire confidence in the leads to convert them into paying customers.

4. Retain customers with customer support and customer success

The job doesn’t end when the lead converts into a customer. Providing them with exceptional customer service is key to ensuring that they remain loyal customers.

The most widely used metric in customer service is CSAT or customer satisfaction. This data is used to track trends and identify and fix any issues impacting customer service.

5. Extract more value per customer with upsells/cross-sells

Upselling and cross-selling are great opportunities to proactively meet the needs of your customers by utilizing the data in the CRM. Companies should be mindful of the fact that customers’ needs may change over time. 

This can be achieved by leveraging purchase data to provide personalized recommendations on the products and services that would provide further benefit to the customers.

Why the CRM process is flawed

Not all companies are created equal. The customer journey will always be different for every company. What works for one may not necessarily work for the other. This crucial fact tends to be overlooked by the CRM process. 

What ends up happening is that the data gets compartmentalized in different tools. It turns into a mess as data discrepancies inevitably occur when all teams are not entering data into the same system.

This causes friction between various teams, including sales and marketing, since they effectively work in silos with complex ad hoc data sync processes.

Employees thus end up not trusting the data as it doesn’t provide them with a holistic view to make empowered decisions. They come to question the integrity of the data because it doesn’t appear to be cohesive and comprehensive.

They also find it difficult to achieve synergy with colleagues on other teams. Alignment across teams is crucial to close more customers and to improve retention.

A real-life CRM process example

A legacy CRM is effectively used as a suite of apps by a company. All of the sales, marketing, and service data is collected and managed in separate silos. 

Thus, in reality, these so-called “integrated” CRMs are actually “assembled” CRM software where features and functionality were added over time in response to customers’ needs. 

These solutions don’t fit the customer journey, particularly for companies that offer multiple products and services. The many teams that work on them use different tools that all do the same thing but don’t allow for seamless data integration. It’s impossible to have confidence in the data when it’s scattered everywhere. 

There’s no continuity between the various tools in the CRM system, which prevents them from having an up-to-date and comprehensive view of the customer journey.

This will prevent, for example, the hardware and software sales teams in a company from leveraging the upsell/cross-sell opportunities that may exist with their customers simply because their data is all over the place. 

Trying to fully integrate the scattered data is an expensive and time-consuming proposition, often making efforts to achieve that futile.

A better, adaptive approach to the CRM process

1. Start with the customer journey

The customer journey is a vital part of any CRM integration. Most solutions go about it the wrong way by forcing the customer journey to adapt to the CRM process. 

Think about it, what works for a customer who wants to buy hardware might not work for someone who’s buying software. The same CRM strategy can’t be used for both.

It should be the other way around. The CRM process needs to be flexible enough to adapt to the customer journey. This increases the potential of converting leads and enhancing retention regardless of what stage of the sales pipeline they’re in.

2. Integrate with your existing tools

A single customer view that centralizes all customer data is a powerful tool to achieve synergy. Its integration with all of the existing tools that a business uses is also of vital importance. 

Insightly AppConnect is a tool that allows for integration automation. Companies can use it to link and integrate Insightly’s unified CRM system with the other apps they use in their organization. 

This allows for powerful new workflow automation between applications. AppConnect also features over 500 pre-built connections to popular business apps.

Even non-technical users can build seamless integrations by using its simple drag and drop interface without writing a single line of code.

3. Take a unified approach

Companies can both extract the most from their CRM implementation and improve customer service by adopting a unified approach that no longer relies on redundant tools and the compartmentalization of data in silos. 

They can achieve synergy and data integration by unifying the marketing, sales, support, and project management on a single platform. All of the teams work together with a holistic view of the customers’ needs and expectations.

​​One of the biggest benefits of a unified solution for teams is that they can complete many tasks in one single system. They no longer have to switch between multiple applications to use various tools just to access data, a task that unnecessarily slows them down. 

Insightly puts this unified approach at the heart of its CRM solution. Teams’ productivity increases through automation. With business intelligence built in, Insightly can also be used to create data visualizations and real-time data dashboards for unmatched visibility.

Insightly unifies your CRM process

Insightly empowers organizations and even small businesses to align sales, marketing, and support teams so that they have complete visibility over customer relationships. They can use that insight and knowledge to improve customer service. 

Automatic lead routing ensures that leads are routed to the right person in real-time. With workflow automation, companies can create complex, multi-step business processes to better serve their customers. It can even execute custom business logic to sync with external systems from the likes of SAP and Oracle.

AppConnect ensures that the ecosystem of tools that a company uses every day isn’t disrupted; rather it’s integrated seamlessly with the CRM. AppConnect comes with more than 500 pre-built connections to the most popular business software apps. This makes establishing seamless integrations between the CRM and apps very straightforward.

Interested in learning more about how a real single customer view can enable you to improve customer retention and to better connect with them? Try Insightly for free to feel the unified CRM difference for yourself.

The post The CRM process is flawed. Here is why. appeared first on Insightly.

This misalignment has led to tension between sales and marketing teams. It also leads to companies missing revenue targets. Because of this, many companies have made strides to align marketing and sales teams. You may hear these referred to as revenue teams. By putting sales and marketing in lockstep, these companies keep the bottom line top of mind.

If you’re a marketer, navigating a move toward marketing and sales alignment can be a challenge. You may need to make changes in your day-to-day work. Here are a few ways marketers can work with sales teams to achieve better alignment and exceed revenue goals.

Why marketing and sales alignment matters

Marketers and salespeople working together smoothly and aligning their operations can create advantages for both teams.

Improved lead management 

Your junior sales team likely spends the bulk of their time qualifying leads. They use an integrated CRM, online research, email, and phone conversations to determine if leads have the potential to turn into customers. Instead of following up on low-quality leads, sales can use this time to start to warm up leads who fit their ideal customer profile.

This gap begins to close when sales and marketing work together to create lead scoring and grading models to qualify leads. Once sales and marketing agree on lead qualification criteria, they’ll reduce friction between the teams and start improving lead conversion rates. It may take some time and testing to figure out the best lead qualification model, but as long as sales and marketing are working in tandem with each other, they’ll be able to find what works best faster. 

Sales can leverage marketing programs

Once these leads are qualified, sales teams are responsible for converting them to customers. Here’s where marketing can help. Marketers have content, programs, designs, and events that can be repurposed into sales collateral. Sometimes there is a dedicated product marketer who focuses on using marketing to enable sales. This is especially useful during a sales blitz, an outbound sales campaign common with account-based marketing (ABM).

A marketing blog post can become a case study. A webinar can become a product tutorial. A trade show can be a way for a potential customer to meet your team. By repurposing assets, marketing provides sales reps with more tools to help them guide customers through the buying journey and close deals.

Integrated programs have the best chance of success

Companies are moving to hyper-targeted, integrated campaigns. If your company is using account-based marketing, the buy-in of sales and marketing is crucial. ABM campaigns require sales results, account management expertise, agile digital marketing, and creative thinking. Your marketing and sales leadership must be in lockstep as to how the campaign will operate, who is responsible for each aspect, and how to measure its success. If your marketing and sales teams aren’t on the same page, your ABM campaign will struggle—or fail outright.  

How marketing can better understand sales

Even when teams are integrated, there are still fundamental differences between marketing and sales. There are a few things that marketers can do to better understand salespeople and improve the value they deliver to sales. 

Sit in on sales calls

The best marketers do this regularly. By sitting in on one with sales each week, marketers can get insight into the results of their programs. Learn more about the characteristics of a good (or bad) lead, what the biggest concerns are, how they describe a problem they are trying to solve, and if your marketing materials resonate with prospects.

Understand the sales funnel

Marketers know how the sales funnel works: leads get qualified, turn into prospects, then opportunities, then customers. Yet, sales teams know the ins and outs of their funnel specifically. Perhaps there’s a smoking gun that can tell a salesperson that someone is a great potential customer. Conversely, there may be a red flag that tells a sales rep that someone should be disqualified immediately. Are there specifics that impact your company’s sales process? As the marketing team learns these, they can focus on generating leads that are a better fit for the funnel.

Integrate and align your customer relationship process

We all know there’s a slew of sales and marketing tools out there. Yet, what about tools that align the goals of marketing with the goals of sales? A unified customer relationship management (CRM) system, like Insightly, is the first step in orienting marketing and sales results. Sales management uses a CRM to organize and manage sales processes and customer interactions. Marketing can use CRM data to extract customer insights and learnings to inform programs and initiatives. 

Review sales results 

We all know the sales process doesn’t end when we generate a lead. Your sales team is likely using their CRM to collect and crunch plenty of sales-related information. This shows how leads move through the funnel and how they convert to customers. 

Three ways marketers can become indispensable to salespeople

Once marketers understand how the sales process works, there are a few easy ways we can help sales close more and bigger deals.

Provide them with content to help warm leads and close deals

Create a comprehensive content plan that includes blog posts, tutorials, videos, and other agreed-upon resources that sales management and account executives can share with prospective customers. Also, figure out the best ways to repurpose materials in different formats so that you can maximize the value of every piece of content you produce.

Offer social media training and reviews

Many sales managers rely on social networks like LinkedIn to help them qualify or prospect. Marketers can offer reviews and recommendations to sales’ social media accounts, as well as provide a plan that includes post content and suggested language.

Create loyalty programs to improve customer engagement

Marketing doesn’t end once the deal is closed. Implementing best practices in customer engagement can improve customer experience. This gives salespeople more leverage in offering benefits to customers. 

How salespeople can help marketers

Sales teams can also help marketers improve programs, which in turn generate better leads. Here are a few specific ways that salespeople can provide insight to marketing.

Help marketers build an ideal customer profile

An ideal customer profile is a comprehensive account of your company’s perfect customer. Ideal customer profiles are crucial for account-based marketing and targeting enterprise-level customers. An ICP relies on sales information to understand the process by which the ideal customer goes through the sales funnel. Marketers can integrate both quantitative and qualitative sales results into the profile. 

Identify customer advocates

Customer testimonials strengthen marketing. There’s no better way to convince a new customer than the recommendation of a current customer. Along with customer success, salespeople can help marketing identify strong customer advocates who can be quoted on the website and speak at marketing events.

Measure marketing return-on-investment

You don’t know if your marketing program is successful until you get regular feedback from sales and see the final bottom line. Request regular reporting from the sales team on the results of marketing programs, including revenue generated from specific campaigns. Incorporating this assessment will ensure that marketing programs align with sales success. A unified platform for sales and marketing, like Insightly, can help to keep both teams in sync from lead generation through conversion and ongoing customer engagement campaigns. 

Conclusion

We are all striving toward perfect sales and marketing alignment. Consider the value that each team can provide to one another when interacting and planning your joint revenue efforts. What tools, processes, and elements of culture can help your sales and marketing teams to better collaborate and tackle challenges? 

The post How marketers can work more effectively with sales appeared first on Insightly.

While sales is still the driving force behind most qualification efforts, organizations today need to work closely with marketing in order to properly qualify leads. One of the reasons for this shift is the need to adapt to the rapidly evolving customer journey.

In this post we cover the basics of sales qualification, why it’s important, and how to qualify leads in a way that makes sense for your business.

Sales qualification terminology

The first step in any lead management process is developing a shared terminology. The definitions presented in our previous article about lead disposition are probably a good starting point:

• Prospect: Anyone in your database who has ever expressed a basic level of interest in your product or service.
• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): Prospects whose activity indicates that they are more likely to become customers based on prospect scoring (as compared to other prospects).
• Sales qualified leads (SQLs): MQLs that have been reviewed and passed to sales for follow-up.
• Opportunities: Converted SQLs who have expressed a willingness and ability to buy.

For the purposes of this article, let’s add one more:

• Unqualified lead: Anyone who doesn’t show a clear need for your company’s products and/or services, or meet other sales qualification criteria.

Your definitions may differ from the ones above. The main point is to align your teams with a shared understanding of key definitions and their meaning. After all, it’s hard to qualify deals when no one speaks the same language.

Why is sales qualification important?

You might be wondering why sales qualification is even necessary. Isn’t the point of business to provide your goods or services to as many customers as possible?

Not every person who comes to your website or calls your business is a good fit. Prospective customers realize that they have wants and needs. However, they do not have perfect knowledge about how your solution can fulfill those wants and needs. Therefore, sales qualification is an essential process that helps you to:

Create order and avoid chaos

A good sales qualification process—especially one that effectively uses lead scoring—makes it easy for staff to identify prospective customers who are likely to convert. Instead of staring at a massive database of hundreds of raw contacts, sales qualification winnows the list to a manageable size to ensure your team is working on best-fit deals.

Increase return on advertising spend

Marketers spend a lot of time optimizing digital advertising campaigns and website content to maximize engagement. Downloading a whitepaper, requesting pricing, or subscribing to a newsletter are a few common ways that prospects may engage. However, not every person who provides an email address is ready to purchase—or ever will. Sales qualification provides marketers essential feedback for understanding the types of campaigns and initiatives that deliver high quality leads.

Provide a better customer experience

Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Imagine that you have a need, and you come across a service that you think meets your needs. You ask to speak to a sales rep, who fails to ask any meaningful questions and then begins pressuring you to make a purchase. This doesn’t create a good customer experience. Therefore, sales qualification is a fair and prudent way to ensure a positive experience for everyone, especially for the customer.

Scale business

Processes help you scale and grow. Therefore, a sales process that qualifies prospects is vital for attracting and converting the right customers, even as your market share expands. Qualifying one customer is easy. Qualifying 10,000 customers is not easy, but a well-defined sales qualification process can make it more manageable.

Sales qualification frameworks

Sales qualification frameworks create a structured approach to qualifying prospective customers. One of the most widely-used approaches is the BANT framework, as pioneered by IBM in the mid-20th century.

BANT definition: A set of four criteria (budget, authority, need, time frame) that helps sales professionals objectively evaluate the viability of business opportunities.

With BANT, the prospect is evaluated across four key criteria:

Budget: Does the prospect customer have a budget, and does it fit with your pricing model?

Authority: Does this specific person have the authority to make the decision to move forward?

Need: Is there an actual need that your solution could fill?

Time Frame: By what specific date does the prospect hope to solve his or her problem?

Although BANT is arguably the most well-known sales qualification framework, there may be other frameworks that better fit your business. Spend time researching sales qualification frameworks and find one that makes sense for your industry and business model.

Sales qualification questions

So, how can you know that prospective customers have the right budget, authority, need, or time frame? Ask them.

Sales qualifying questions form the foundation for determining if a prospect is a good fit for your business. By asking the right questions at the right time, you put yourself in a better position to understand the person’s situation, challenges, goals, and objectives.

But, what types of questions should you ask? Should you ask them all at once? Email or phone call?

Although there are no one-size-fits-all answers to these questions, here are some recommendations to get your creative juices flowing.

Where to ask

Take a fresh look at your customer journey map. How do prospective customers typically interact with your company? Does every customer require an in-depth demo process, or do most customers just want to go through a self-service checkout process? Your business model, product or service type, and customer buying process will play a major factor in determining “where” to ask your sales qualification questions. Other than the obvious channels (such as phone and email), what are other ways to collect data about the prospect’s needs?

Here are a few ideas:

• Optional form fields, such as revenue size or number of employees
• Chatbot prompts that ask targeted questions
• Exit intent banners on your website
• Surveys that are powered by automated marketing emails

When to ask

As illustrated by the previous examples, the sooner you can begin to build a unified view of the prospect in your CRM, the better. However, some prospects are less willing to reveal information until a person from your sales staff proactively reaches out.

Developing an effective lead scoring program simplifies the decision to initiate outreach. Once a prospect has exhibited the proper level of “interest” by visiting certain webpages or engaging with a predefined number of emails, a lead scoring system will automatically adjust the prospect’s score to a higher level. Data enrichment integrations and social media discovery features in your CRM may provide additional context. Deals that reach a certain threshold are then flagged for further review and passed on to sales. In this model, data serves as the foundation for knowing when to ask.

What to ask

Questions asked via a chatbot could be quite different than those asked during a 30-minute phone call. It all goes back to the purpose of the question. Earlier in the process, you may just be looking for basic insights about the prospect. However, as the relationship advances, you may need to ask numerous open-ended questions that get to the heart of the situation.

Let’s use my marketing consulting business as an example. Using BANT framework as a guide, here are a few questions that I might ask a prospective client during an initial consultation:

Budget

• What types of marketing programs are you currently running?
• Are you working with another marketing consultant?
• Do you already have an established marketing budget?

Authority

• Who else at your company will be involved in this project?
• Do we need to include anyone else in these conversations?

Need

• What are the goals that you’re trying to achieve?
• What have you tried in the past?
• What is your vision of success for marketing?

Time Frame

• How quickly are you looking to move forward?
• Should we plan to kick things off next week?

It’s time to build a better sales qualification process

Implementing a scalable sales qualification process can be beneficial for both your company and the people that you serve. Your sales and marketing teams will find it easier to identify and convert likely customers into paying customers. And, the prospects who decide to convert will go into the relationship feeling confident that your solution adequately meets their needs.

Recommit to building a stronger sales qualification process. Your team and your customers will appreciate it.

The post How does sales qualification work? appeared first on Insightly.

This is part 3 of a sales process series based on conversations with Insightly VP of Sales Mark Ripley.

Even after you’ve developed your ideal sales process and aligned it with the buyer journey, there are still challenges to overcome—both now and in the future. Unexpected changes in market conditions, new product launches, and rapid expansion or contraction of the sales team are just a few examples.

Is your sales process built to last?

Let’s explore tips for future-proofing your sales process.

Why some sales processes fail & tips to avoid failure

Here are five reasons why sales processes fall short—and some best practices for avoiding failure.

1. Sales process is too complex

Breaking down your sales process into clearly defined stages and steps is necessary and logical. After all, your sales team needs a general roadmap to ensure deals get done in a way that aligns with your business goals.

However, according to Mark Ripley, VP of Sales at Insightly, developing an overly complex sales process is a recipe for failure.

“One of the ways that a sales process falls down is when reps don’t follow it,” says Mark. “When sales leaders overcomplicate the sales process with too many stages, steps, scripts, assets, and questions, reps abandon it.”

How to avoid: Focus on two things: simplicity and buy-in. Go back and revisit your customer buying process and look for opportunities to reduce complexity in your sales process. Partner with leaders throughout the organization to ensure alignment and confirm their buy-in. Once management is fully on board with the finalized sales process, it’s time to roll it out to the entire team. If sales reps know that their managers believe in the sales process, they’ll be more likely to believe in it, too—and follow it.

2. Sales process is too vague

On the other end of the spectrum is a sales process that lacks meaningful details. Much like overcomplicating things, being too vague leads to a similar outcome: abandonment by reps.

“Your sales process has significantly diminished value if it’s haphazard,” says Mark. “You can’t measure anything, and there’s no consistency for the reps.”

How to avoid: If your sales process is overly complex, don’t overcompensate and go too far in the opposite direction. Instead, strive for a balanced approach that combines structure with the freedom for your reps to do what they do best.

“A high-impact sales process sits in the middle,” says Mark. “It gives people a framework for consistency, but it also lets each individual personality flourish based on their own strengths.”

3. “Set and forget” mentality

A sales process is not like an automated workflow that you build once, enable, and then rarely think about. Rather, a good sales process is a work in process that must be constantly measured, reevaluated, tweaked, and, in some cases, overhauled.

“The sales process is not something that you can set and forget,” says Mark. “It’s something that you establish, and then you keep looking for ways to improve in a never-ending evolution.”

How to avoid: Take a proactive approach in developing and maintaining an ideal sales process for your business. Launch a cross-functional team that meets regularly (at least twice a year) to discuss bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement. Use data from your CRM to go beyond gut feelings and set data-driven goals. For example, by the end of this year, you might aim to fully understand your MQL to SQL ratio for each of your industries. Understanding key ratios makes it easier to identify issues, support ongoing coaching sessions with reps, and continuously refine your sales process.

4. Inability to adapt

The COVID-19 pandemic upended most aspects of our personal and professional lives—and sales is no exception. Virtually overnight, sales teams that were accustomed to working in shared physical offices had no choice but to go remote. Companies that had future-proofed their sales processes found themselves at a competitive advantage to those who had not.

According to Mark, “The pandemic absolutely compounded the importance and impact of having a sales process.”

How to avoid: If your organization has never developed a sales process or your current sales process isn’t well documented, now is the time to take action.

“Documentation is more important than ever for organizations as they move to a remote work world,” says Mark. “You need that master sales process document so that each sales rep, even in a remote world, is creating the ideal customer buying experience and maximizing revenue.”

5. Right process, wrong technology

Simply having a master sales process document or diagram is not enough. Sales reps need the right tools and technology to perform their day-to-day jobs in alignment with your ideal sales process. However, when your process document and sales tools are misaligned, the net result is sales process abandonment.

How to avoid: Seek out systems that best align with your ideal sales process. If it means making a change, so be it. Do your homework and research the capabilities of other sales systems. In particular, look for a CRM that can be easily customized to fit your sales process—without requiring complex development or expensive CRM consultants.

Request a free CRM needs assessment and Insightly CRM product demo to learn how sales automation can help your reach your sales goals.

Request a demo

Don’t get lost in the weeds

Over the course of this three-part series, we’ve talked a lot about the sales process—what it is, why it’s important, how to align it with your customer buying process, and how to overcome challenges. With so much to consider, it can be easy to get lost in the weeds at the expense of the big picture.

As you work on improving your sales process, remember that maximizing revenue is the whole point of a sales process.

The post How to future-proof your sales process & avoid failure appeared first on Insightly.

This is part 2 of a sales process series based on conversations with Insightly VP of Sales, Mark Ripley.

The first part of this series covered the benefits of improving your sales process: richer data, better coaching, improved scalability, and revenue optimization.

Successful companies recognize that continuous improvement is not a matter of if. Rather, it’s a matter of how.

So, how do you go about improving your sales process?

According to Mark Ripley, VP of Sales at Insightly, the best way to improve your sales process is by focusing on the buyer. Here are five steps for building a sales process that mirrors your buyer journey.

1. Get buy-in from leadership

Before you make any major changes to your sales process, it’s important to communicate your vision and gain leadership’s buy-in.

“For something as mission critical as your sales process, it needs to start at the top,” says Mark Ripley, Vice President of Sales at Insightly. “Getting managers and leaders to buy-in to what you’re doing will increase your chances of gaining adoption.”

Getting buy-in from leadership may not be an easy task, especially when your sales and marketing teams are not aligned. After all, spending time to refine the sales process can seem counterproductive compared to other, more pressing matters—such as strategic product launches, time-sensitive advertising campaigns, or quarter-end reporting.

Your next move: Arm yourself with data from your CRM that supports the case for enhancing your sales process. Identify specific pain points, such as customer churn or waning customer satisfaction, that could be alleviated with a reimagined sales process. Revisit the tangible benefits of continuous improvement and be prepared to share them with leadership. Be ready to make your best sales pitch!

2. Understand your customer’s buying process

If you’ve already studied your ideal customer journey and built an accurate customer journey map, you’re ahead of the game. However, now might be a good time to revisit your assumptions and gain a fresh perspective about the customer’s buying process.

As Mark points out, “Fundamentally, all buyers go through three phases leading up to a decision.” The phases are:

Problem Awareness: The customer realizes that he or she has a problem.

Solution Identification: The customer considers his or her problem and creates a list of products or services that could provide a solution.

Cold Feet: The customer decides whether or not the problem is actually worth solving.

According to Mark, the “cold feet” stage is easy for sales teams to overlook, but it’s one that must be carefully considered.

“When buying anything of significant value, everyone goes through a cold feet stage—even after doing all of the research to find a solution,” says Mark.

Your next move: Dust off any customer journey maps that you’ve already created. Reevaluate your assumptions in the context of the three fundamental buying phases: problem awareness, solution identification, cold feet. Did you miss anything?

3. Think like a customer

Understanding your customer’s buying phases is a good start, but it’s not enough.

“You need to go a level deeper by looking at the world through the customer lens—not the sales lens,” says Mark.

Ask yourself these questions to begin thinking more like your customer:

• How does your customer decide that a problem actually exists?
• What mysteries must be solved before a purchase can be made?
• What information is necessary to make an informed decision?
• Which questions and concerns does your customer have?
• What is your customer’s process for gaining information?
• Is the customer more likely to watch an embedded video or read a technical whitepaper?
• Is there any information that might accelerate the decision-making process?

Avoid the temptation to jump to conclusions. If you don’t have enough historical data to answer these questions, send out a survey or invite customers to participate in brief, 20-minute interviews. Ask open-ended questions that help you understand their perspectives and the steps they went through to buy your product.

Your next move: Slow down and dive into what makes customers tick. Set aside your existing sales process for the moment and seek to understand customers on a whole new level. Get creative and use data to build a more complete picture of your typical customer.

4. Map your sales process to the customer’s buying process

With a data-driven understanding of your customer’s buying process and perspectives, it’s time to boil everything down into a simple diagram.

Map the customer buying process

Using diagramming software, a whiteboard, or even pen and paper, capture each stage of the customer buying process (step two) and related psychographic information (step three). Since you’re putting the customer first, this section should be documented at the top of the page.

Layer in your existing sales process

With your customer buying process clearly defined, use the space below to document the specific actions and workflows in your sales process. For starters, it may be wise to simply list out your existing process as it stands today (in the context of the buying process). You may be surprised how much sales effort fits into one stage—at the expense of another stage.

Begin developing an enhanced sales process

Examining your existing sales process next to the customer buying process is sure to identify gaps and bottlenecks. For example, you may realize that you need more resources in the “cold feet” buying stage. Brainstorm ways to create balance in your sales process and help the customer make an informed decision.

Your next move: Create your diagram and share it with key stakeholders. Start an internal discussion, look for misalignment between the customer’s needs and your existing process, and develop a list of opportunities for improvement.

5. Work with sales ops to implement your sales process

As you move toward a sales process that better aligns with the customer buying process, be sure to keep sales operations fully engaged in the conversation.

“Sales ops is usually the team that implements the process by adapting your CRM, setting up the measurement framework, and reporting the data,” says Mark. “It’s therefore really important to have a strong relationship between sales ops and the sales team.”

After collaborating with sales ops, you may realize that your current sales stack does not align with your optimal sales process. The good news is that there are plenty of systems on the market to help you accomplish your goal. Insightly’s intuitive UI and customizability make it a great option for adapting technology to your sales process—rather than force-fitting your vision into a subpar system.

“At Insightly, we’re very well known for having a high adoption rate,” says Mark. “It’s easy to use, which generates higher adoption and helps end users adhere to the sales process to maximize revenue.”

Your next move: Work with sales ops to adapt your tech stack for your ideal sales process. If that’s not easily done, consider evaluating other tools that meet your needs.

Future-proofing your sales process

Stay tuned for part three in this series about sales processes. We’ll be sharing tips for future-proofing your sales process in an era when most teams are still working remotely.

In the meantime, if you are ready to try or switch to a new CRM, reach out to the Insightly team to schedule a demo.

Request a demo

The post 5 steps to build a sales process that mirrors the buyer journey appeared first on Insightly.

This is part 1 of a sales process blog series based on conversations with Insightly VP of Sales, Mark Ripley.

If you sell something, you already have a sales process—even if you’ve never written it down.

Of course, some companies invest a lot of time and effort to create detailed flowcharts, diagrams, and work instructions for every stage of the sales process. Others do not formally define their sales processes, aside from allowing their sales reps to “do what they do.” Both approaches are examples of sales processes, yet a more formalized approach can be much more effective.

What’s the ideal sales process for your business?

To help you figure out, here are a few tips for defining and improving your sales process.

What is a sales process?

A sales process is a series of steps that your company takes to guide prospective buyers toward a purchase.

If you’re a cooking enthusiast, it may be constructive to compare your sales process to preparing your favorite recipe. Following the recipe allows you to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Deviating from the recipe—or ignoring it entirely—usually leaves a bad taste in your mouth and makes you feel like you wasted your time.

“Like any good recipe, a well-crafted sales process creates consistent results, time and time again,” says Mark Ripley, Vice President of Sales at Insightly. “As you start to grow your business, your sales process becomes even more important.”

Stop and think about your sales process as it stands today:

• What “steps” do you and your team go through to close a deal?
• Do these steps align with the pipeline stages in your CRM?
• Does everyone in your sales organization follow the same steps to close a deal?
• Or, do they just go through the motions and ignore your “recipe”?

Spend time studying your current sales process along with its strengths and weaknesses. Remember, you already have a sales process—good or bad! Now is the time to understand what is working and what’s not.

Benefits of developing a better sales process

If you’ve been in business for very long, your existing sales process has at least delivered some measurable results. Cut yourself some slack and be thankful for the success you’ve enjoyed.

That being said, there’s always room for improvement. And, as Mark points out, continuously refining your sales process puts your business in a better position to enjoy the following benefits.

More data for ongoing measurement & continuous improvement

Whether you realize it or not, you likely have a substantial amount of data at your fingertips. It might be messy and require some cleanup, but it’s a start. Analyzing historical deal data enables you to understand your future data needs, which creates a virtuous cycle for enhancing the sales process.

“Measuring conversion rates and everything else in your sales process provides a surgical approach to understanding what needs to be improved,” says Mark.

Key takeaway: Use data to take a snapshot of your existing sales process. Then, look for new measurement opportunities to generate more data for ongoing improvement.

Enhanced coaching for your sales team

Armed with reliable data about your sales process, you’re in a much better spot to anticipate challenges, provide actionable coaching to your team, and be the best leader that you can be.

“Data makes it easier to paint a vision of success and inspire your sales reps,” says Mark.

For example, closely monitoring your team’s average close rate on qualified opportunities should make it easier to identify reps who need specialized training or assistance with late-stage deals. Likewise, tracking the success of cold outreach efforts can help you predict acquisition costs and inform decisions about talent allocation.

Key takeaway: Simply telling your team to “try harder” is not a winning strategy. You need a transparent, data-driven sales process that provides the right insights for elevating sales rep performance.

Scalability

As you add additional sales reps, layers of management, geographic locations, product lines, and general complexity, a haphazard sales process turns into serious liability for your business.

“If you want to scale, that’s where a sales process becomes mission critical,” says Mark.

Key takeaway: If you have ambitions of growing your sales team beyond a handful of reps, you need a reliable, repeatable sales process.

Revenue optimization

No article about sales processes would be complete if it ignored a key topic: revenue optimization. Maximizing revenue is the whole point of a sales process.

When properly designed and implemented, a sales process makes it easier for your company to generate revenue—and do so without adding headcount.

“Your sales process can help you increase your revenue per rep in a number of different ways,” says Mark. “If you’re taking the right measurements, constantly tweaking things, and coaching effectively, you should start to experience more revenue per rep.”

Key takeaway: Think of your sales process as a tool that helps you drive more revenue in an increasingly efficient way.

Next up, model your sales process to the buying process

Stay tuned for our next article about sales processes, which will provide specific steps for modeling your sales process to the customer’s buying journey.

Check out more sales tips on the Insightly blog.

The post What is a sales process? Why is it important? appeared first on Insightly.

That’s why midsize companies frequently hire CRM consultants to help with implementation, training, and ongoing support. CRM consultants possess intricate knowledge about particular systems, features, and integrations—knowledge that may not exist within your organization’s four walls.

Of course, hiring a CRM consultant comes with its share of tradeoffs. Cost is certainly at the top of the list, as CRM experts are in high demand and, as a result, highly compensated.

This article discusses the topic of CRM consultants and how to form a game plan for eliminating, or at least minimizing, consulting fees.

Why are CRM consultants so costly for midsize companies?

Midsize companies have customer data management needs that are similar to those of larger organizations, but with budgets that are considerably smaller. This means that every dollar of your CRM project really counts. However, when you’re spending the majority of your CRM budget on consulting fees, it’s hard to make traction toward your actual business goals.

Here are just a few reasons why consulting fees can add up so quickly for midsize companies:

CRM onboarding expenses

Bringing in a consultant to document use cases, develop architecture plans, and serve as an independent advocate is a common starting point. You also need someone who can extract data from legacy systems, prepare data for import, configure custom fields, onboard users, and coordinate training. And, of course, all of these tasks require meetings—lots of them. Before you know it, the consultant has logged 100+ hours, which begins to rival the total cost of your first year’s subscription. Ouch.

Ongoing expenses

Consulting projects have a way of evolving into never-ending engagements. What seemed like a one-time setup morphs into an ongoing relationship. After all, new customer data continues to flow into your CRM. Someone also needs to stay on top of deduplication, record management, provisioning new users, offboarding old users, and ensuring everyone has proper access to the right data. Since you’ve already invested so much time (and money) into the consulting relationship, it seems logical to keep the consultant around to provide ongoing support, even though the hourly fees continue to add up.

5 tips for eliminating dependency on CRM consultants

So, what are your options for minimizing dependency on costly CRM consultants?

Consider these five tips:

1. Start with an intuitive, easy-to-use CRM

Users and administrators want a system that is easy to use and manage. When you go against their wishes and select a CRM with a complex data structure and antiquated user interface, consultants become almost unavoidable. If you’re still in the consideration stage of your CRM selection process, take a few minutes and ask yourself these four questions:

• Do other midsize companies use this CRM?
• Is data management intuitive and customizable?
• Can we save money and improve efficiency?
• Will this CRM scale to align with our future growth?

Then, look for a CRM that’s built for the exact needs of midsize companies and offers features that accelerate user adoption, such as:

• A modern, intuitive user interface
• Easy-to-use administrator tools
• Customizable data fields
• Integration to business applications that your company actually uses

2. Avoid shiny objects

Go back and reevaluate your motivation for implementing a CRM in the first place. Take a CRM needs assessment to get your creative juices flowing. Is your primary goal to centralize customer data? Or, are you looking to scale sales operations and give SDRs more tools for prospect engagement? Identify your primary and secondary goals, then focus all conversations and resources around achieving those goals. Do not be distracted by features that, while interesting, do not support the mission.

For example, if your main goal is to streamline the handoff between sales and operations, you should not spend much time worrying about APIs or custom objects. Rather, focus on the features that accelerate project delivery, such as automated workflows and record linking. You might be surprised by how much your in-house team can accomplish on their own once goals are clearly defined and understood.

3. Use every resource at your disposal

Most likely, your CRM vendor’s pricing page lists every feature and service that you’re entitled to as a customer. (Your contract might include similar information.) Look for the expanded version and familiarize yourself with every resource at your disposal. Examples might include:

• Standard support services (i.e., email support, chat, etc.)
• Success plans that provide dedicated support and continuous improvement
• Online user communities
• Sample data import templates
• On-demand training resources
• Native integrations
• Self-help documentation (For example, here’s Insightly’s documentation site.)

Go through the feature and service list to identify resources that could make the biggest impact on your CRM project. Make sure your team is also aware of these resources and references them often.

4. Continuously invest in your people

Your team is a talented, diverse group of professionals. From IT to sales and marketing, your organization already possesses many skills that are necessary to successfully implement and manage an in-house CRM project. Perhaps they just need extra training or coaching to give them the necessary confidence boost.

Believe in your people. Capitalize on their strengths and identify opportunities to help them develop new skills. In doing so, you’ll be supporting their professional growth while simultaneously establishing a new core competency for your business—one that’s far less reliant on consultants.

Empower your team with modern and easy-to-use CRM, like Insightly CRM, that can drive up productivity, free up time for more creative work, and help your team reach goals.

5. Run the numbers on a CRM success plan

If you’re still not sure how to eliminate costly consultants from your budget, maybe it’s time to consider your vendor’s CRM support and service plans. Although there’s a cost, such plans can be easier to budget for as compared to hourly consulting fees. In exchange for a predetermined amount, your vendor provides additional services to help your in-house team be more successful with your CRM project.

For example, Insightly’s support plans include a variety of value-added services such as:

• Onboarding
• Admin and user training
• Phone support
• A dedicated customer success manager/personalized guidance
• Regular check-ins for continuous improvement

Why not tap into the collective genius of the people who are developing and supporting your CRM software? Seems like a logical place to start.

Get your game plan

Perpetually relying on consultants to manage your CRM is a losing proposition. It’s time to take control and develop a game plan that maximizes the impact of each dollar invested back into your CRM.

Explore Insightly and schedule a demo to get a free CRM needs assessment and see Insightly CRM in action.

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The post How to eliminate the need for costly CRM consultants appeared first on Insightly.

While all of these definitions may be partially correct, business development, in its purest and simplest form, encompasses any activity or team that accelerates growth beyond its current pace. Highly effective business development teams align with senior management to identify, prioritize, and implement incremental growth opportunities.

In this post, we’ll explore how a CRM can supplement biz dev efforts by streamlining sales development, relationship management, and capacity building.

3 CRM use cases to support business development

For purposes of discussion, let’s assume that you’re the business development leader at a mid-market manufacturing company. Your leadership team has tasked you with the job of doubling revenue within eighteen months. What’s your first move?

Luckily for you, your organization uses a cloud-based CRM. Users are well-trained and actively use the system, which means you have a wealth of data and insights at your fingertips. After analyzing the data and considering all of your options, you sequence three cards on your kanban board.

1. Entry into an adjacent market

Although the vast majority of your existing revenue is from the automotive industry, you can’t help but notice the occasional outlier lead. In fact, your sales team has been tagging all non-automotive leads in your CRM in case someone ever decided to do something with them. (That’s you.) Further review uncovers a very interesting trend. That is, about half of your non-automotive inquiries originate from the boating and marine industry.

How a CRM helps: Tagged records accelerate your ability to identify data-driven, real world market opportunities without wasting time on gut feelings. Drag and drop reporting makes it easy for you to analyze audiences, understand each lead’s inquiry, and drill down for further insights. At-a-glance contact information within the lead record provides a convenient way to re-engage old leads when validating assumptions.

And, if the market is deemed viable, your CRM enables a rapid ramp up of sales activity. For identical sales processes, an existing pipeline could be applied with a few clicks (instead of starting from scratch). Built-in outreach features, such as email inbox integrations, expedite your sales team’s ability to engage a large number of leads and convert them into paying customers.

2. Increasing production capacity to serve more customers

Not every business development opportunity requires expansion into a new market. Sometimes, there’s simply more demand than you can supply. When customer demand exceeds supply, it’s your job as the business development manager to step in and evaluate ways to increase capacity. After all, customers are willing and able to purchase—but only if your company can deliver.

Unfortunately, increasing supply is not as easy as flipping a switch. Doing so may require an upfront investment of additional tooling, equipment, labor, and production facilities.

How a CRM helps: Your CRM should be an essential data source when building an expansion business case. Productivity metrics, such as project and milestone trends, offer a snapshot of existing workloads to inform complex staffing decisions. Transaction and invoice data stored in your CRM provides transparency for identifying large customers, who may be more likely to make advanced purchases. Intuitive business intelligence (BI) dashboards make it easy to visualize existing product sales trends and forecast the impact of additional capacity.

3. Leveraging existing relationships to evaluate product fit

Launching a new product is hard work and, in many cases, kind of a gamble. Will the downstream revenue more than offset the upfront cost and effort of commercialization? Pre-validating product fit with a critical mass of customers is an excellent way to reduce risk and improve your chances of success. If enough customers express a desire to purchase, non-customers will likely, too.

Existing customers also play a vital role in QA testing prior to full-scale launch. Beta testing with a group of loyal customers provides an unparalleled platform for collecting honest feedback and eliminating roadblocks to success.

How a CRM helps: Neatly organized customer records and data filtering in your CRM make it easier to identify and connect with customers who are willing to share feedback and participate in beta testing. Sorting records by creation date enables quick access to your longest-standing relationships, which could serve as a gold mine of support ticket data to substantiate product feasibility. Logging calls and notes directly in your CRM provides a convenient way to track customer conversations without relying on spreadsheets or other data silos.

Grow faster with a better CRM

Whether your goals involve expansion into new markets, maximizing output, or leveraging customer relationships to their fullest extent, a well-structured CRM is an essential part of any business development initiative, in any industry.

Is your CRM not up to the challenge? Check out Insightly’s switching CRMs eBook or continue reading about why companies switch CRMs.

Ready for a new CRM? Request a free demo from Insightly. No commitment required.

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