Customer Relationship Management software is the basis for most businesses. CRM adoption is growing faster than any other enterprise software category with a 9.7% increase year-over-year. So, with such headline figures, it begs the question: why do your salespeople hate your CRM system? There’s no mere answer because every salesperson will have their own reasons. In this guide, I’ll tell you about the most common causes I have come across and how to solve them.
BAD CRM EXAMPLE 1: THE IMPERSONAL APPROACH
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, where ‘Relationship’ is the keyword. The whole idea of CRM is to build strong relations with your customers. By being impersonal, you’re losing your personality as a business. Nobody wants to do business with a faceless company! Most CRM systems will allow you to send an email to your customers and if they’re a contact in your CRM, you really should have their first name.
BAD CRM EXAMPLE 2: THE AUTOMATED APPROACH
I think automating processes are great. because it saves time and minimizes human error. It’s very pity, that some companies set up the automation so wrong that it confuses their customers. Managing your CRM system correctly is not less important for your employees using it. Getting the right system for your business is imperative for success.
BAD CRM EXAMPLE 3: “ISN’T IT THE ‘BIG BROTHER’ EFFECT?”
I’ve overheard salespeople on multiple occasions saying that CRM was only implemented. So their manager could keep track of their performance and activity. Sales are already one of the most measured departments within a business. CRM is a great way to track targets, but managers need to communicate with their team. It’s there to help them sell.
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“I ALREADY KNOW MY LEADS FROM MY SPREADSHEET”
Too many salespeople still rely on spreadsheets to manage their meetings. In principle, their spreadsheet is their CRM system. Spreadsheets can destroy your business. Why? Because they’re unstable and difficult to understand.
You need them to change because marketing and other departments can’t benefit from it. What’s more, if a salesperson were to leave your company, they could easily take a spreadsheet, which means – the data is lost to you. But as long as they store it in a CRM, you can keep it.
5. “IT’S FULL OF BAD DATA”
At every company I’ve worked for, I’ve had the task to clean data in the CRM system in forms. Bad data is like woodworm. It’s slowly eating away at the integrity of the system.
Bad data is like bad decisions. So you need to fix this quickly. Make certain fields mandatory like first name, email address, company, and phone number to ensure you always have this information by hand.
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“I NEVER BEEN TRAINED ON CRM”
In my opinion, most of your salespeople are motivated by commissions. Am I right?
This is no bad thing, but it means they won’t be focused on the CRM system. With a lack of training, a salesperson will see no value in using CRM, even though it’s proven to increase their selling efforts.
Take time out of their day to run training with no mobile phones or laptops, so you get 100% concentration. After all, training is a lot cheaper than sunsetting your entire CRM project.
7. IMPLEMENT POORLY, EXPECT POOR RESULTS
Generally, the decision makers aren’t the users or implementers. Too many CRM systems are set up without fully understanding the impact on each department. For instance, can IT successfully update and maintain the system? Get it wrong and your users will become frustrated and stop using your CRM.
There are clearly sales benefits, especially if sales cycles are long and you have a big team. Get CRM wrong and it could prove to be a valuable mistake. Get it right though and you’ll:
- be able to store information online rather than in your head
- save time on follow-ups with timely alerts
- automate admin tasks rather than writing them down on paper
- speed up your sales cycle by contacting the right people at the right time
- keep everyone in the loop with the more collaborative working
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