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Couple your CRM with a Sales Enablement solution
The value of a CRM depends mainly on the quality of the data that feeds it. Discover in this article what are its limits and how a Sales Enablement solution can be its best ally to optimize your sales performance.
CRM to centralize your data and improve your customer relationship management
A CRM is a software designed for companies to improve customer relationship management. The use of a CRM is part of a data centralization process. This centralization allows the company to have a complete view of its customers. The objective is to improve the knowledge on each of them and to adapt its commercial interactions. Among the best-known CRMs are Salesforce, Hubspot, Dynamics, Zoho and Sugar.
What are the limitations of a CRM?
Complexity is sometimes cited as an obstacle to its use. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of a CRM depends on one essential factor: the quality of the data that feeds it. Yet "77% of companies consider that CRM data is of poor or very poor quality". This alarming figure can be explained by sales reps 's disenchantment with administrative tasks. And yet sales reps spend an average of 11 hours a week entering data into their CRM. This has a direct impact on sales performance, since they spend less time on tasks directly linked to sales. This is an important point that Georges Da Silva, COO at Salesapps, is well aware of: "We still come across companies that pay for filling in the CRM, which is nonsense".
Data is essential to business performance. But it has to be collected and processed correctly. What's more, centralizing your data will enable Sales Managers to better understand the information they receive.
What is Sales Enablement?
Sales Enablement refers to the strategy of continuously aligning marketing and sales. The aim is to boost a company's sales performance by equipping sales teams with the tools they need (technology, content, training) to meet their customers' needs at every stage of the buying process. It is estimated that a company's sales increase by 5% to 20% after one year's use of a Sales Enablement solution.
What are the impacts of a Sales Enablement solution on the appointment?
This performance is made possible by the special feature of a Sales Enablement application: its impact on all three phases of a sales meeting. Upstream, it enables the preparation and personalization of face-to-face or remote meetings. During appointments, it helps to modernize the customer experience and make salespeople more effective. Finally, downstream, Sales Enablement limits "time-consuming" tasks by eliminating the need for sales reps to enter reports into the CRM, since the processes are automated.
Sales Enablement to automate, collect and extract actionable information from your CRM
As far as CRM is concerned, Sales Enablement takes data automation, collection and analysis a step further. It enables you to extract actionable information to personalize your approach to each prospect. It automatically tracks all the information presented during the appointment. You can now track the content displayed during a sales presentation and the time spent on each piece of content. In addition, you can track the sales path followed during the appointment and the documents sent. All documents shared by recipient during the appointment are reported in CRM in the form of a task specifying whether the content was actually read, and if so, when. This is invaluable information, as it can be used to identify your contact's points of interest. Another advantage of using a Sales Enablement solution is its ease of use. All actions taken during appointments are automatically recorded and entered into your CRM.
Couple your CRM with a Sales Enablement solution to free the salesperson from administrative tasks and CRM filling
By coupling your CRM with a Sales Enablement solution, your sales and marketing department will be supplied with perfectly usable information. This will enable sales reps to be more effective in meetings. It's also worth noting that the data transmitted to management enables better alignment between sales and marketing, as demonstrated by a McKinsey study: "content that takes account of feedback from the field is used 30% more by sales reps". It's important to point out that sales reps save time at the end of appointments, as their visit reports are automatically entered into the CRM.
The icing on the cake? By connecting your CRM to a Sales Enablement solution, you can identify the best practices of your best sales reps directly linked to a sales context. Good practices that you can then apply to the rest of your sales force. The result? A sales force that's won over and performs better, tailor-made content that's perfectly in tune with needs in the field, and sales that grow!
