Customer Relationship Management (CRM) empowers your sales reps to achieve more with less effort so they spend their time on things that actually matter. Without a CRM, all businesses face some common pain points or challenges, and these challenges result in a poor selling experience for sales reps, which in turn results in a poor customer experience.
Pain Points without CRM
How to Overcome Common Sales Challenges with CRM
1. Restricted Access to Data
Now let’s meet Sam, our sales rep for a trading company based here in Singapore. He’s going to meet his customer today. Without a CRM, Sam’s company stores their data manually in various excel sheets throughout different departments.
Before meeting his customer, he has to call his finance to get an overview of the revenue YTD from the customer. He has to call logistics to see if the customer has any open orders, and basically piece together different bits of information from different sources to prepare for his meeting.
With CRM, Sam gets a quick Customer 360 view, which gives him a combined view of all important customer details from different departments at the click of a button. This results in successful and productive customer interaction.
Customer Details screen
2. Forgotten Leads
Sam received 10 leads this week and he needs to follow up. Without a CRM, He has to call marketing to make sure he has all the correct details of his Leads, and he has to check back various different sources and excel sheets. Lead data is scattered and difficult to follow up on. This makes it easy for Leads to fall through the cracks
Leads are integrated and automatically stored in the CRM system. Sam and his team have a quick and easy view of open Leads, as well as automated follow-ups and reminders to make sure each Lead gets the attention it deserves.
3. Reduced Productivity
When it comes to submitting a sales quote, without a CRM Sam has to open an excel sheet to prepare the format for the quote. He has to call his finance to get the latest pricing and product details. He also has to go through his email to pull out the relevant customer details and copy-paste them into the quote. Finally, once his quote is ready he has to send an email to his boss for final pricing approval, and his boss may even go back again to finance to make sure the pricing is correct. All of this wastes valuable time and energy.
With CRM, Sam can quickly generate a quote, with all of the latest customer and pricing details added in automatically. Once it’s ready for approval, a workflow is triggered that sends it directly to his boss, who gets a notification with all of the details on his mobile phone.
4. Lost Opportunities
When it comes to analysis and understanding why certain deals are Won/Lost, Sam is completely lost. How many deals did he lose last year? Was it 12? Was it 15? Therefore, without a CRM he likely won’t have the answers.
However, with CRM Sam has access to in-depth reports and dashboards. These give him a clear picture of why certain deals are Won/Lost. Thus, this helps him drive changes in the sales process to adapt to customer/market needs, helping him close more deals.
5. Staff turnover
Sara just left the company, and Sam needs to take over her accounts.
What deals was Sara working on? What are the next steps?
What were the latest discussions with her customers?
Without a CRM he likely won’t have the answers.
With CRM, Sam has a database of all discussions and information regarding the customer, as well as an overview of open and outstanding items with the customer for follow-up. He can also leverage quick reassignment functions to redetermine responsibility for Sara’s accounts and sales activities.
6. Gaps in the Customer Journey
Sam wants to establish deeper relationships with his customers and have them see him as a trusted advisor. But, without a CRM he has trouble understanding customer requirements and recommending the right products to them.
Sam can get automated product recommendations from CRM at significant customer touchpoints by using machine learning. Besides that, Sales Intelligence tools help keep him up to date with his customers’ developments. All of this helps him build trust with his customers and results in a better customer experience.
Also Read: 4 Key Steps to Become a Trusted Advisor
Modern CRM
A modern CRM solution that can help you achieve all of this is SAP Sales Cloud. With SAP Sales Cloud, you can sell more, act faster, and be relevant to your customers. You can improve the customer experience by creating personalized connections with your customers, where you proactively add value to their business. In addition, this tool helps improve your sales team’s productivity and efficiency.
