Is your Sales team performing at top capacity?

According to a recent sales performance optimization study from CSO Insights, over 50% of companies need to increase the effectiveness of their sales teams.  Each business has its own definition of improved sales performance, but generally the metrics related to the goals can include:

* Increasing the number of qualified leads that are contacted by each salesperson,
* Reducing the prospect-to-customer conversion cycle,
* Raising the average sale per customer,
* Growing the overall number of customers served (read more about the "High Value of Customers in Today's Market"),
* Increasing the successful achievement of sales revenue goals
* And more

In order to meet or exceed your company’s sales effectiveness, there are a number of different strategies that can be used.  Arguably, the number one approach is to deploy AND USE a customer relationship management (CRM) solution.  The following are the top five strategies that can help you to achieve your sales performance expectations with a CRM:

1. Make your CRM your primary performance metric tool - set up all of your routine sales reports to utilize your CRM based on the sales metrics your particular business utilizes.  Then expose these reports to your Sales team as well as upper management to use in meetings, presentations, and evaluations.

2. Tie at least a portion of Sales team compensation to your performance metrics - sales people inherently will perform according to their specific compensation goals.  Using your CRM to measure some or all compensation goals will drive results.

3. Managers and sales team leads must use the CRM system - as upper and middle management use and understand the advantages of a CRM the adoption will grow with the entire sales group.  Routinely ask managers or leads to give a report on their group using the CRM data.

4. Communicate the benefits of a CRM - many salespeople can be skeptical about how a piece of software can actually help them to achieve results.  Help them to see CRM benefits from easier contact or lead management, more timely sales data, or more efficient customer management through reminders and follow up prompts.

5. Share CRM results across departments - Marketing, Customer Service and particularly the executive level departments should have an opportunity to review and analyze your CRM reports and metrics.  This transparency will breed opportunities for other departments to see the benefits.  For example marketing can now see how leads are processed and how campaigns impact the sales department.

Your business sales performance has a direct effect on your overall business success.  As your Sales teams become more productive you will realize a higher level of performance and goal achievements.  

Every business is unique in how they motivate their Sales force and utilize their CRM solution.  Do you have a unique strategy for your sales group?  How did you turn the corner for sales performance?  Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Read about CRM best practices if you're considering a CRM solution for the first time, or if you're an experienced user that's evaluating migrating to a new CRM solution. 

by Green Beacon Solutions

The Top Five Strategies for Improving Sales Performance is a post from: CRM Software Blog

Barton Goldenberg, ISM’s founder and president, is a respected author, columnist, speaker and industry leader, including being one of the first three inductees in the CRM Hall of Fame.

On Tuesday, May 21, 2013, Goldenberg’s ISM released its 2013 Top 15 CRM Software Awards based on rigorous testing of CRM software programs from around the world that are sold in the North American marketplace. For those of you unaware, both Axonom's Powertrak and Microsoft Dynamics CRM made the Top 15 CRM list.

In the report, Goldenberg forecasts the following CRM Trends: Data/Business Analytics, Social CRM, Mobile Functionality & Gamification. These trends are identified from vendor surveys and intensive testing at the ISM Software Lab in Bethesda, MD.

The following are several business application and the latest technology trends in today's CRM software:

• Integration with Social Media Applications: CRM vendors are now beginning to offer integration with third-party, comprehensive social media applications that is adding a new social element in traditional CRM processes. These new ‘Social CRM’ applications enable a business to connect customer conversations and relationships from social networking websites into the CRM process. ISM sees Social CRM becoming integrated in CRM platforms and applications for a more complete view of customers through the use of feeds from social media channels.

• Increased Availability of Social Media Functionality: CRM vendors are now providing direct access to social media functionality. Social media can also refer to web-based services that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. Computers and other technologies have shifted from one-way static communication to platforms for interaction and community building. In addition, ISM forecasts that the monitoring, filtering and analyzing of relevant social media posts for sentiment and other organizational purposes will be an increasing focus for the CRM industry over the next 3-5 years.

• Increased Social Media Customer Assistance Options: Many CRM vendors see Social Media as a cost-effective method to improve their customer assistance options. Customers are no longer calling the help line when they have a problem — they are Tweeting about their problems, posting and finding the appropriate solutions within online forums or discussing problems on Facebook with their contacts. ISM sees more and more organizations building online communities (requiring components such as dialogues, forums, ideation, media sharing and blogs) for customer assistance, which increasingly come with tight integration into other CRM processes.

• Increased Use of Big Data Analytical Tools in CRM Solutions: Big Data Analytical tools, which include predictive modeling, can now foretell the monetary value and profitability of a particular customer. These tools take into account profiling customers based on their behavior, segmenting markets and predicting customer purchases based on past purchase information and psychographic/demographic data, as well as determining cross-sell opportunities. The expansion of Internet traffic, social networking, mobile devices and cloud applications will generate a tremendous increase in unstructured data, leading to an increased demand for business analytics software that combines text analytics, sentiment extraction and related technologies to find patterns and trends among social network, mobile device and cloud application users.

• Increased Number of Mobile CRM Offerings and a Move Towards Real-Time CRM: CRM vendors continue to develop and release mobile CRM application modules, especially those that are bundled with or work on a large variety of handheld and/or wireless devices. ISM foresees mobile apps extending its influence on the CRM marketplace as CRM applications will look and behave more like apps that are accessible on mobile devices. Consequently, CRM applications accessed on mobile devices will streamline their user interface and make their applications simple to use. Wireless components will increasingly allow users to make business decisions in real-time while simultaneously creating analytics in real-time—all of which support a growing movement toward Real-Time CRM.

• Increased CRM Offerings via the SaaS Model: CRM software vendors are increasingly offering CRM software solutions via the SaaS model, which is also referred to as an on-demand solution and is part of the growing cloud computing movement. While not applicable for all organizations, the SaaS model is attractive because it can circumvent traditional problems with the CRM client-server model including initially high prices, time-consuming deployments and the need to perform software upgrades. The two major drivers of accelerated adoption of SaaS in organizations include initial cost advantages and increased proof of data security.

• Increased in Gamification applications in CRM Software: There is a growing importance of Gamification, which utilizes game design techniques and mechanics to enhance user adoption of CRM applications. Business leaders are increasingly conducting trials on CRM programs which leverage game elements that provide a clear sense of progress, instant feedback loop and reward incentives—and which directly accelerate the accomplishment of measurable performance objectives.

To find out more about the Top 15 reviews, or to purchase, go to: www.ismguide.com/ism-products/top-15-crm-software-reviews.

By Axonom, a B2B solutions provider for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers around the world. Find out more about Powertrak software for Microsoft CRM at www.axonom.com.

Business Application and Technology Trends in CRM Software is a post from: CRM Software Blog

I am happy to announce that both Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Powertrak have been named to ISM's 2013 Top 15 CRM Awards list. These products serve as the standard for comprehensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. ISM's Top 15 awards are divided into two categories—Enterprise (Upper Mid-Sized to Large companies) and Small & Medium Business (SMB - Small to Mid-Sized companies) - to reflect the changes and growth in the CRM marketplace.

“The winners of the 2013 Top 15 are the influencers in the CRM community as they make significant advancements in both functionality and connectivity for sales and marketing professionals, offer better decision making tools for executives, and provide more intimate connectivity with today’s Digital Clients,” said Barton Goldenberg, president, ISM.

Each CRM software program undergoes intensive testing at the ISM Software Lab based in Bethesda, Md. Each software program ISM tests is rated according to 208 selection criteria, including 99 business functions, 48 technical features, 34 implementation capabilities, 10 real time criteria and 17 user-support features. With no ownership in or by a vendor, ISM's software analysis is 100 percent vendor neutral and bias free.

Powertrak Wins ISM 2013 Top 15 CRM Enterprise Software Award

Axonom’s Powertrak solution suite automates revenue generating business processes for high-tech, manufacturing, and service organizations. Highlighted by its award-winning Product Configurator and Time and Billing modules, customers utilize these solutions to manage their quote-to-cash cycle, automate time entry and billing management processes, and streamline transactions.

Axonom’s commitment to Customer Relationship Management does not end with the Top 15 CRM Award. The company has a Gold CRM Competency in the Microsoft Partner Network and Powertrak achieved Certified for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 (CfMD) status.

"The ISM and Microsoft awards and certifications directly reflect our commitment to the CRM marketplace by developing and delivering industry-specific software, services, and support," said Mike Belongie, COO at Axonom.

CRM Features and Trends

Barton Goldenberg found that as businesses seek a higher return and increased effectiveness on marketing, sales and service program investments, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software market is seeing dramatic growth and enhanced offerings including Data Analytics and Social CRM applications, mobile functionality as well as Gamification features, reports premier CRM consulting firm ISM.

He also identifies that mobile CRM, Social CRM, and SaaS offerings continue to be popular CRM software features. In addition, Big Data Analytics/Insight and Gamification applications are the new, hot new trends in the industry.

Download Software Reviews

More than 35 software reviews are available to use in your search for the CRM software solution that best matches your company's business processes and meets the unique needs of your sales, customer service and marketing functions. Wireless, Web and Hosted are among the options to consider.

The Top 15 winners for each category are featured in ISM’s 19th edition of User and Vendor electronic versions of The Guide to Mobile and Social CRM and are available for purchase in CD and downloadable format at www.ismguide.com/top-15-reviews. For more information, call 301-656-8448 or email John Chan at jchan@ismguide.com.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Powertrak Named to ISM's Top 15 CRM Award List.

By Axonom, a B2B solutions provider for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers around the world. Find out more about Powertrak software for Microsoft CRM at www.axonom.com.

ISM Releases Top 15 CRM Software Awards is a post from: CRM Software Blog

“Companies embarking on large transformation projects want to be sure they deliver both value and sustainable change to their organizations,” PwC Global Advisory Alliance Leader Jonathan Tate said. “Using PwC's transformation skills, industry sector insights and knowledge of technology platforms and applications in combination with tools like Microsoft's suite of solutions can help companies maximize the return on their investment.”

The Microsoft Dynamics line of products (CRM, CRM, Business Intelligence) are powerful and robust, potentially providing any company with the breadth and depth of business solutions needed to truly harness today’s technology. However, as with any technology, it must be configured and adapted to the situation at hand. PwC consultants provide that service, guidance and experience to help companies get the most out of their deployment of Microsoft Dynamics.

“Microsoft Dynamics business solutions help enterprises become 'Dynamic Businesses' and PwC has a proven track record in facilitating business transformation for enterprise customers,” Microsoft Business Solutions CVP Sales and Operations Neil Holloway said. "Our combined strengths from product to industry offerings will enable many regional and global companies to successfully modernize their business applications."

When it comes to configuring and deploying enterprise-level technology, you really only get one shot to do it right. Once a system is in place, businesses often have to work around critical oversights in design for years, causing a lack of efficiency and decreased return on investment. With a tool as potentially powerful as Microsoft Dynamics, businesses will want to ensure all major needs are met the first time.

As with anything in business, it’s not about getting the job done fast but getting it done right. If your business is considering a Microsoft Dynamics product deployment soon, or even if you’re in the middle of a deployment, consulting with deployment experts will guarantee you the best tools for your investment.

The combined strengths of PwC and Microsoft, from product to industry offerings, will enable many regional and global companies to successfully modernize their business applications and help them become Dynamic Businesses.

The complete press release issued by PwC can be found at on the PwC website.

By CRM Software Blog Editors, www.crmsoftwareblog.com

Pricewaterhouse Cooper Announces Microsoft Dynamics Alliance is a post from: CRM Software Blog

To deliver this more personalized experience, marketers must let consumer behavior be their guide and they must embrace marketing automation in order to do so efficiently.

Join us on May 23 for a live webinar to learn more about marketing automation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and how it can help you increase marketing effectiveness, generate more leads and drive ROI.

Learn how marketing automation can:

• Give your sales and marketing teams visibility into prospect behavior, and the ability to target them with relevant messaging and track responses.
• Capture customer and prospect data from email campaigns and website activity directly into CRM.
• Automatically score and route leads to sales based on demographic and behavioral information.

Date: Thursday, May 23^rd, 2013

Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST

Featured Partner: CoreMotives

Register Now for our Webinar!

By MIG & Co.

Webinar: Have You Heard the Buzz Around Marketing Automation? is a post from: CRM Software Blog

But, when combined together these two systems create a complete business solution that streamlines operations and makes your team more productive.  Specifically, the benefits of integrating Dynamics GP and CRM include:

1. Improved customer insight— Combining the data stored in Dynamics GP and CRM offers a 360 degree view of your customers and their preferences.  Armed with this level of detail you can easily tailor your marketing message to the needs of specific groups, which in turn will improve your conversion rate and subsequently sales.
2. Increased activity tracking—Integrating Dynamics GP and CRM makes it simple to keep track of all the key performance indicators, such as customer satisfaction and inventory levels that provide vital clues about the overall health of your company.
3. Enhanced productivity—Connecting Microsoft Dynamics GP and CRM systems helps keep your customer data up to date. You only need to make a change once and it will be automatically carried through the system; no more duplicate data entry.  Not only is this a time saver, it also reduces the risk of human error.
4. Real time decision making—Integrating Dynamics GP and CRM means you no longer have to waste time running multiple reports in separate systems. Instead, you can get all the information you need from a single report and react in a timely manner.

These are just a few examples of the many ways companies benefit from integrating Dynamics GP and CRM.  Sign up for a free 30 day trial and see how it can help you.  Simply fill out the brief form below to get started.

Interested in learning more about the powerful combination of Dynamics GP and CRM?  Contact us or view the Virtual Convergence session, “Integrating Your ERP System with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”  Once logged in to Virtual Convergence 2013, go to “Sessions”--> “Microsoft Dynamics CRM” then scroll down in the list of sessions on the left hand side of the screen until you find the one you’re looking for, and click the play symbol.

By: Laura Heinbockel, Intelligent Technologies, Inc., a NC Microsoft Dynamics GP and CRM reseller

www.inteltech.com

Together Microsoft Dynamics CRM and GP Deliver Improved Insight and Productivity: Try it FREE for 30 Days is a post from: CRM Software Blog

Maps do more than display a place or how to get from one place to another. In sales, for example, maps let you visualize and conceptualize spatial relationships more easily than with rows and columns in spreadsheet data.

Even better: When combined with CRM, mapping is changing the name of the game. That's because CRM data can be displayed on a map with street and satellite images.

So, what value does a map add for sales reps?

• Save time in planning trips by coordinating travel time to see other customers and prospects.

• Find all customers and prospects in a particular area: Let’s say you are travelling to location X and want to visit customers and prospects in a radius of, say, 10 miles of that location. With a map inside CRM, you can easily make callbacks and work out appointments to visit all nearby key customers and prospects.

• Find missed sales opportunities: On a map, see a point for every won or lost opportunity. You might be surprised to find that you have not targeted companies in a particular area for some time. Although you could look at the data in a table, a map makes your data much more visible, jumping out to you for better decision making.

• Filter sales calls by specific CRM data (such as sales per year and number of employees), build a radius around a call location, and spend time setting appointments with higher valued targets. Because not all customers or prospects are created equally, you need to ask, "With limited resources, where do I spend my limited time?"

Learn more about InfoGrow at www.crmcallplaner.com, or contact Bob Sullivan: 800-897-9807, x224

Maps Add Value to CRM: How Sales Reps Benefit is a post from: CRM Software Blog

With a neat drag-and-drop feature, you can drag emails over to your calendar or contacts and it will auto-populate the information!

This drag and drop works for tasks and notes too!

Follow these easy steps below to learn this efficient trick for yourself:

• Left-click and hold any email and drag it down to your little calendar icon as show below.

• Release the mouse and Outlook will automatically open an appointment in the calendar with the details from the email.  Just add the location, change the dates/times and you’re done!

• You can do the same thing only with contacts
  • Click an email that has a contact’s signature and drag it to the contact icon.

• It will automatically open a contact record, copy over the contact details that it recognizes, and then you can do simple copy/paste for any that it doesn’t.

To learn more about this cool feature and all things CRM-related, contact Crestwood Associates!

Allegra Gallian, Crestwood Associates, LLC – an Illinois and Indiana Microsoft CRM Partner

CRM Tip: Auto-populate calendar and contacts with drop-and-drop feature in CRM is a post from: CRM Software Blog

They decided upon a re-implementation, based on what's involved in the move from on-premise to online. Now, as there's currently no easy way to achieve this (short of a full data migration effort), and because a data migration effort was already necessary, the client decided to revise their data model and code base and choose a re-implementation.

Comparing CRM Re-Implementation to a CRM Upgrade
For this client, the benefits of a re-implementation were:

a.  Scrub of the schema. This allowed cleanup of 5 years of accumulated fields and forms outside of the CRM application.
b.  Selective data import. (Example: Inactive contacts older than 3 years were not imported at all)
c.  Code optimized for 2011. (Rather than fix the code prior to upgrade or during the import process, the code can be optimized offline.)
d.  An opportunity to manage (and include) different data sets other than the Sales CRM instance into the data migration prior to load.
e.  For migrations of instance from on-premise to the cloud, where a migration is essential, the opportunities identified above are too good to miss!

Not all of these are mutually exclusive when compared to an upgrade, but they are significantly easier to manage when dealing with a tabula rasa style environment.

To be fair, we should look at the benefits offered by selecting an Upgrade:

a.  Automatic data migration.
b.  Mapping of Users to the new domain users, and historical mapping of old, unmatched users.
c.  Transition of all client side code and database stored plugins.
d.  Workflow transitions.

The Process
Re-implementation forces a deep dive into the minutiae of the existing CRM environment. This is the kind of thing that would usually only happen when an environment is initially set up, or for certain key releases of functionality. (In the case of the latter, it is still unlikely that the entire application gets reviewed.)

Accordingly, we built a data-map for all entities in the source application that needed to be migrated. This data map also contained details of all forms and views currently in use, and the sequencing and labeling of the included fields.

What followed was a painstaking process of field by field examination by Madrona and the client to evaluate the use and label of each of these fields. Once the data map was confirmed, we planned the migration of the existing CRM data into the new application. Sequencing of this was key, as we were not simply inserting rows into SQL, we were migrating to the online CRM 2011.

Some Final Thoughts On Re-Implementation
Having recently completed this project, here are some key takeaways to consider when evaluating an Upgrade vs. a Re-Implementation:

1.  Set expectations early The process of re-mapping needs to be replicated at the testing phase by the client to ensure the data migrations occur exactly as planned.
2.  The ability to manage the dataset outside of a CRM environment, and to include new data into the mix during the transition, is an opportunity unique to the re-implementation process If you have a great deal of data normalization to perform (and are due an upgrade) it's worth considering re-implementation.
3.  Being able to transition code independent of the data migration is another advantage re-implementation.
4.  The relationship between CRM and external reporting teams needs to be established early, and considered a key part of the process With schema renaming and fine tuning of the data migration process, large impacts can be seen downstream for reporting.

If you'd like more information on the benefits and workload involved in Dynamics CRM upgrades and re-implementations, or would like to discuss which of these options may be right for you, call us today at 206.686.8701 ,or contact us directly with your questions and comments.

By Madrona Solutions Group, Dynamics CRM and Business Intelligence Consulting, Seattle, WA

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Upgrade, or Re-Implementation? is a post from: CRM Software Blog

Note For improved performance, Microsoft Dynamics CRM caches plug-in instances. The plug-in's Execute method should be written to be stateless because the constructor is not called for every invocation of the plug-in. In addition, multiple threads could be running the plug-in at the same time. All per invocation state information is stored in the context. This means that you should not use global class variables in plug-ins.
This is easy to prove. In your plug-in code, simply add a global variable named recordCounter and set it to zero. When the plug-in executes, have it call a method that loops 10 times and in each iteration, increments the recordCounter by 1. When you are done, the value will be 10. Now execute the plugin again, and this time the value will be 20 and not 10. Even though the plug-n may have been executed by a different user, on a different day, by a different trigger, the value will be 20 and not the desired 10.
Pull your logic out to a class so that there are no variables in the plug-in, but call the method in the class from the plugin, and you will get the same result. This can be frustrating when you have multiple methods running, one after the other, and each one affects one or more values that you need to keep track of but do not want to keep returning because you might want to return something more crucial to the actual process. For example, a method that returns a bool, but you want to know how many records it processed before failing, what the exception was, etc.

It seems you can get around this when you have to use global variables by not using a static class with static members. Use a regular class and instantiate it before calling a method and your global variable values inside your class seem to get contained within the context of the instantiation. I cannot confirm this to be 100% accurate but in all the testing that I did, the results were always the same and the values did not get overwritten by other process using the same class.

Wishing for more great blog posts by Rockton Software? Check them out http://rocktonsoftware.blogspot.com/.

Written By Gary Rasmussen, Developer at Rockton Software.

Using Global Variables in a CRM 2011 Plug-In is a post from: CRM Software Blog