There are thousands of articles and blogs saying how a CRM is essential to sales efforts to both save data on your customers and provide a sales and marketing process that support each other.
However, what is not often mentioned is the time and effort needed to get these systems to work how you want them to! I've years of experience in getting CRMs functioning the way the users need them. A CRM should be be servant NOT the master!
Right now you may be experiencing:
- CRM is too complicated which puts off the salespeople from using it properly
- CRM is full of fields that you don't need
- The sales team seem to spend most of their time imputing data for other teams
- You can't get clear sales reporting and pipeline information
- You can't see what activities your team members have completed
This. Is. Not. Unusual!
In fact every organisation that I have worked in has experienced this.
Sometimes, it's difficult to know where to start and what to do. But you also know that the longer you leave it, the more your sales team will become disenfranchised and 'cheesed off' with a poor system that doe not work for them.
Find out how
Here I outline my steps to getting your CRM house in order...
1) My CRM is too complicated!
A complicated CRM is a nightmare as it leads to salespeople taking shortcuts and thereby leading to poor data quality and inconsistent forecasting and [pipeline management.
Here's my steps to sort this out:
1. The starting point is to identify the extent of the problem: Map the steps that the sales people have to follow to on CRM from the first time a lead is allocated to closing the sale and handing over to the customer success team (or equivalent). You should map the pages/records opened and the fields that have to be filled out.-
- The number of processes and steps may even surprise you!
- Then take a step back and consider: what are you trying to do?
In this case its sales. Therefore, you need to look at each step, each field, each click - is it relevant to making a sale? If it is not: mark it for review. - You’ll need to establish the impact of removing the fields out of the salespersons flow. Remember, if other teams are requiring this to be completed, it is for them to provide the reasons why your team should be their data gathering.
- In the past for B2C sales, I’ve used a form to collect all non-sales related data. For B2B, its generally the complex delivery requirements that need the most work – again can a form be used with use cases etc?
- Don’t remove the fields straight away – consider points 2 and 3 below and complete them in one go – it makes the sales team feel that you’re really listened to them!
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- Make sure that stop any double entry of data IMMEDIATELY
- Can the data be automatically transferred from record to another
- Can that data be placed into one page or record?
- Even if you can't do this, can you improve the path that the sales team have to follow so that it becomes more intuitive?
- Can you use a ‘wizard’ to help the salespeople thereby improving data entry.
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- Making the layout of each record so the field follow the process the salespeople follow really helps system adoption and is a surprisingly quick way to get them on board.
- I’ve seen this in HubSpot and most particularly in Salesforce.
- Typically, most organizations get their IT admin team do this – don’t: It needs to be the sales team or their operations team. IT don’t get sales so how will they know what order to place the fields?
2) My CRM is full of fields we don't need!
This is a common problem - mission creep! Downstream teams want more and more information as since sales is usually the first team to encounter a customer, they're always expected to capture the data.
This is a poor use of resources frankly!
The only team that should be capturing any data during the sales cycle is the Marketing team so that they can provide relevant colleterial and make sure that the beginning of the marketing funnel is as fine tuned as it can be,
How to fix this:
- The starting point is to identify the extent of the problem: Map the fields that the sales people have to complete on your CRM from the first time a lead is allocated to closing the sale and handing over to the customer success team (or equivalent).
- I would recommend using a tool like Miro to help you map out the steps.
- Then, duplicate the process map and put an 'X' on any field that is NOT anything to do with a sale. You may be surprised at just how many fields are being used to collect data for other teams.
- Sales' job is to sell. This is the lifeblood of your organisation so it should be given priority.
- If other teams need data then they need to justify why the sales team should be collecting this data.
- This is sometimes a difficult conversation! Other team's naturally think that they are important. Unless they are the marketing team, which naturally may need to see how campaigns are working, other teams have no business clogging up the sales team with their requirements.
- Try and find other ways to accommodate their data gathering - forms, quizzes etc
Once you have identified the field that the sales team don't require with an 'X', sit back and check that the remaining fields are ABSOLUTELY necessary.
- Use a different colour to identify them
- Get a second and third opinion about if they are required.
- I have a worked with a education business where the sales team have to qualify that a customer is suitable to study a course because there is an umbrella organisation has a set of criteria that they expect each learner to meet. This means that sales are 'constrained' by needing to qualify a customer. This seems like a lot of bureaucracy until you think that the umbrella body can stop you selling your products and therefore your business falls apart like a pack of cards.
- So be careful here - get a second opinion before launching inti as massive cull of fields
3) My sales team seem to spend most of their time imputing data for other teams
As said above, this is a massive distraction. The sales team are spending time working on items for other teams rather than their own work.
I've seen this happen for a number of reasons:
| Situation | Actual Problem | Solution |
| Sales team members asked to complete additional fields regarding the sale so that the delivery team have advanced notice of the contents of the sale. | The sales team have been selling products that are 'not quite available' so the additional fields are used by the delivery team as a way off preparing for what is required and project planning | Proper product training! So the sales team sell the products are they are actually delivered to customers. Then combine this performance management around product sales. |
| Sales team asked to fill in finance fields such as VAT and other fields to enable invoicing | Finance systems are poorly set up and so require teams upstream to fill out fields to enable them to work properly | Fix the Finance systems! At the very least try to automate the fields that need to be filled in so the sales team don't need to do it |
| Sales team have to update the type of account the customer belongs to - I've worked with one company that had 4 different systems on Salesforce within 2 years: Go;d, silver bronze, then high medium, low and so on - all it did was confuse people so it was never filled out | You want a quick way to identify, high, medium and low value clients. Asking sales people frequently delivers the wrong result as sales people usually overvalue their clients | Segment your customer database properly and logically using a workflow and the data you have |
The solution is always to look at:
- Removing the need to for the fields in the first place o
- Automate the fields so that the data is entered automatically.
4) I can't get clear sales reporting and pipeline information
This issues tends to be caused by two things:
- Your reports and dashboards haven't been set up correctly - The actual data is there in your CRM, but the reports and dashboards you have set up are not giving you the info you need.
This is actually the easiest issue to fix. In man y organisations, report and dashboard build is given t the 'data' team who lack understanding of key metrics in sales and indeed customer support. They'll do their best to produce something that meets your requirements, but it won't quite hit the target.
A good way of getting the Data team to understand what you want is to create a PowerPoint showing each component and how you want it work/look - they can then try to put your ideas into practice.
If this does not work, reach out to a sales enablement expert who can build sales dashboards on your CRM - they'll know exactly what you are looking for and be able to implement your ideas with ease. - The data is not there - Here, your CRM is not gathering the data you need to generate the reports/dashboards that you need to make commercial decisions and understand what is going on.
You need to work through what data you have and what data you need. Then look at how you can get the missing data. Try to avoid asking the sales team to fill in more fields and instead see if you can use automation and calculations to get the data.
Employ a sales enablement consultant to guide you in how to do this - in all likelihood they have had to do this themselves before.
5) I can't see what activities my team members have completed
This is the simplest issue in this blog to fix. All CRMs capture the activities undertaken by users, its just a matter of finding the data or switching it on.
Salesforce uses 'Activities' and tasks to log calls, emails, meetings etc. These can be reported on like any other Salesforce object. Make sure you have:
- Integrated your phone system to collect phone call data
- Integrated your email platform to collect email messages and responses - this not only lets you report on the emails sent, but it also lets you see what has been sent so you can quality check them.
- Integrated webchat (for B2C sales) so that you can see how your sales team are interacting with this enquiries.
- You have picklist fields to record what is happening - Free text means you can't report easily on the data. Drop downs allow you to see what is actually going on.
HubSpot has less sophisticated activity reporting than Salesforce, but its easier to integrate everything such as phone calls and email. Again make sure that:
- You have phone, email and webchat integrated - use an App Marketplace app to help integrate it if you need help (these can bridge different technologies so that you don't need to buy a new phone system etc).
- Again, make sure you have dropdown fields, rather than single-line or multi-line text fields, as dropdowns allow you to consolidate the data.
- HubSpot has a really useful set of default fields which capture when a contact last had activity with you: such as:
- Last contacted
- Last activity date
- Next activity date
Summary
Getting your CRM to work for you requires preparation and thought.
Once you have go live, refine the system, by mapping processes and field so that you can remove all that are not needed.
Most importantly, refine the UX so that the sales team only see the record/objects and fields that they need to. Remember to make activities easy to complete.
This will give them confidence in your system and then allow you to concentrate on reporting and dashboards, knowing that they underlying data is correct.
Sometimes you need to look for outside support and expertise - click here to see the skills and knowledge that I can bring to your organisation
