CRM is an important building block for sales
Potential of CRM
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is taken for granted today and the potential shown seems plausible. Most companies want to make more of an effort in this area. A professional CRM should help the sales department to record customer information reliably. Based on this information, customers can be better selected and the salesperson can systematically prepare meetings, with the salesperson virtually carrying his company to the customer on his tablet. Intelligent consulting systems and short films allow them to combine customer concerns with targeted, binding real-time information. Marketing and sales activities can be better interlinked in lead management, while big data and professional data analytics are already shaping an attractive future. Approaches to automating marketing and sales relieve the burden on the expensive sales force. In summary, CRM should support customer-related business processes. All of this must be the case. However, CRM projects are often criticized in practice.
Criticism
In some companies, CRM is developing into a comprehensive dream program for marketing and sales. Everything is easy to imagine, but difficult to realize. CRM is a constantly shifting priority for some companies. Many CRM systems are too comprehensive and too complicated to use on a day-to-day basis. They also often make too little distinction between large and small customers or orders. The hope that development steps can be skipped is also deceptive. The lively discussion about big data and predictive analytics, for example, cannot cure the chronic problems of data quality (e.g. poorly maintained CRM data) in companies. But the best salespeople use CRM systems far less than average, poor or beginners. So the question is, what do top salespeople do differently and can this be mapped in CRM systems? Despite CRM, salespeople often have their own agenda. For example, supposed customer projects in CRM can be almost inactive in reality. An appropriate response can only be active sales management that demands maintenance of the CRM system.CRM is not directly reflected in the overall success of the company and the use of CRM can change all sales tasks. It is important to make a choice here and to record the effects in a differentiated manner.
Questions about success
Typical questions about the efficiency of CRM are, for example:-Which specific applications of CRM in the salesperson's job are productive?-Is it possible to increase the proportion of productive time in sales for customers with the help of the CRM system (this also includes customer face time)?-Can more customers be dealt with more effectively by individual salespeople?-Can new and attractive customers be acquired more effectively through lead management?-Can the steps in the sales process be selectively improved through CRM in order to lead customers to purchase more effectively?-Can it be possible to find those 'triggers' in customers through CRM?Can new and attractive customers be better acquired through lead management? Can the steps in the sales process be selectively improved through CRM in order to lead the customer more effectively to a purchase? Is it possible to record those 'triggers' with customers where customers reconsider their cooperation with suppliers?Can cross-selling and share of wallet be increased with existing customers because additional business opportunities are recognized? Can the advice given by the salesperson be improved with up-to-date information and useful combinations or can customers be advised electronically on their own? Does CRM reduce the company's dependence on individual salespeople and therefore make new sales staff more productive more quickly? CRM is a vehicle or platform for a wide range of changes, from pricing to opportunity management. In sales, however, CRM needs to be better aligned and utilized. Companies should assess where the optimum market development and, accordingly, the right sales resources lie. The wishes for sales with CRM may already be beyond the optimum and are therefore poorly realized. The bottleneck for CRM is rarely the system itself, but its use by employees.
Conclusion
In the case of new methods for the entire company, the best units and salespeople in a company are particularly penalized. The new and supposedly superior solutions from the head office (e.g. the CRM system) usually lag behind their own approaches; they are often perceived as inferior compared to well-established, in-house approaches. A changeover therefore leads to more effort and apparently only increases the central benefit of standardization, but not the decentralized one. Head offices would do well to take up important topics that are still lying fallow or to achieve and communicate significant progress for all those affected with new solutions.CRM is an important building block for sales. In summary, however, the levers for sales development in companies are broad: 1) Align Strategy and Sales, 2) Marketing and Sales fit, 3) Qualify Sales People, 4) Share Best Practices in Sales, 5) Close to People and Customers, 6) Digitalization, CRM and Sales Methods, 7) Sales Metrics and KPI's, 8) Sales Performance Management, 9) Global Account Management and 10) Restructuring Sales and Resources.*Prof. Dr. Christian Belz, Odinarius at the University of St.Gallen and Director at the Institute of Marketing ([email protected])
The book
The article is based on the new book "Sales Excellence Development - Mit der zentralen Verkaufsabteilung zu Spitzenleistungen im Vertrieb" by Christian Belz, Ch./Huckemann, M./Lee, Y.Ch. and Weibel, M. (2018). Publisher: Schaeffer Poeschel, Stuttgart. ISBN 978-3-7910-4084-4, CHF. 69.-/ EUR 49.55 (plus shipping). To order: www.thexis.chFurther information on the book:-Target groups are those responsible for sales excellence development, sales managers, top management, heads of divisions and countries, sales trainers and consultants-Team of authors from practice, consulting and research-Empirical study of 525 managers and 227 salespeople-Case studies AXA, B. Braun Melsungen, BEGO, Festool, Geberit, thyssenkrupp, Zeiss Microscopy-Numerous instructions for professionalization
