The right sales software tools will propel a growing company forward, but the wrong tools will stall success on all fronts. How can your company ? This blog outlines five key considerations that will help you to reach your goals.
- When Does a CRM System Make Sense? The crucial question of when to acquire some type of CRM has been made much easier by the explosion of low-cost hosted software options. While this is not the time to discuss the value of SaaS (software as a service), the ability to pay a few dollars per month per user for hosted CRM software greatly reduces the costs of a quality CRM application.
- Where to Host the Software? Today, CRM software runs on platforms ranging from a single computer to a company network server to a company Web server to a third-party hosting provider. The distributed nature of modern small businesses demands a networked solution, not one designed for a single user. Sales managers need oversight of all salespeople, and only networked CRM makes that possible.
- Evaluating CRM Candidates. Talk to other small businesses, in your market segment and in other segments. Finding a hosted CRM application takes almost no effort, but choosing among multiple candidates does require some testing.
- Accepting the CRM Workflow. Salespeople will complain the CRM software doesn't work the way they like to work. This is, almost always, a good thing. CRM vendors like us take feedback from all customers into consideration when we upgrade software. You are receiving a pre-built “best practices” sales cycle framework with each CRM application.
- User and Manager Adoption. A successful CRM implementation must be used by everyone involved in the sales process to provide customer contact consistency and full management oversight. Only by complete compliance will the company .
The modern sales department, especially those with distributed sales team members, will make more sales in less time with a CRM solution than without one. Customer service will improve, since any member of the sales team will have the total customer history available if needed to fill in for another sales team member. Management will know exactly which members of the sales team are doing the preparation necessary to keep their personal sales pipeline full and therefore supporting the company sales goals. Contact us here at Sikich to learn about how .
By Jim Drumm with Sikich,
