In the market, there are several CRM tools/platforms available to help Commercial teams to become more efficient and effective

Main benefits of CRM tools:

• • Track, examine, store and make easily accessible to anyone in the company:
    • every interaction and communication with customers
    • all relevant, commercial and contact information of customers (in one place)
  • Support sales teams with effective and efficient call planning (priority setting)
  • Get more business in from existing and get new customers in (Sell More!)
  • Improve customer segmentation
  • Get more accurate Sales forecasting (NB! Garbage in = garbage out)
  • Get more effective Marketing campaigning due to detailed analytics
  • Create a ‘one stop shop’ for Commercial teams with links to many other apps and tools
  • Improve cooperation of cross-functional teams, all dealing with customers or getting new customers in:
    • Service – Sales Support
    • Sales: Indoor Sales – Key /Global Account – (Local) Sales reps
    • (e-) Marketing

A list of interlinked reasons, based on my own experiences and interaction with experts, why CRM tool implementations and adaptation by teams and leaders are not always optimal:

1. 1. Sales process: Lack of a structured and uniform sales process which defines ‘what excellence looks like’. Results in everybody doing their own thing, also in the tool
   2. Roles: It is not clear who is doing what and there is not an optimal cooperation between:
      1. Service and Sales
      2. Key/Global Account teams and local Sales teams
      3. Marketing and Sales
         For example, a CRM tool is not going to solve how KA teams and local teams successfully cooperate and coordinate their commercial approaches, account plans, getting opportunities in

1. 3. Capabilities: Lack of clear (leadership) capabilities linked to ‘what excellence looks like’ and linked to specific roles
   4. Management
      1. Top Management is not involved, leaves the introduction to their Middle Management
      2. Managers who directly manage Sales teams mainly use dashboards linked to quantitative KPIs to evaluate the performance of their teams. Like # (prepared and reported) visits, # planned visits # opportunities (all phases of the pipeline) # completion (ratio) # visit reports. This can result in ‘desired’ behaviour by sales teams and doesn’t say anything about the quality of the input, the quality of the preparation before the customer contact, the quality of the contact with the customer itself, the quality of the follow up/reporting, the quality of the opportunity……
      3. Sales teams see the tool as an administration tool and as such as a burden, which they need to fill in by their management. They feel monitored and not supported by their management, leave alone coached and developed

1. 5. Access: Not everybody in the organisation who is interacting with customers has access to the tool
   6. Change Management: The introduction of a new CRM tool is a change in itself. Putting in place everything what is needed for a successful CRM Tool usage another change. Just enforcing people to fill in the tool (‘people should do what they are told to do’), without having tackled these items will be counter-productive and demotivate your team

So why invest a lot of money in a new CRM tool and get a poor adaptation without at the same time tackling everything what is needed to improve and develop your Commercial teams and leaders?

Feel free  to contact me for more information/tips on how to set up an effective Sales Enablement environment and get more effective and efficient Commercial teams, including successful implementations and adaptations of CRM tools. Any feedback or input is welcome! Of leave a reply below.