2016 Sales Trend 8 – Streamlining CRM

Sales Trend 8 from our 12 Sales Trends Report for 2016 is ‘Streaming CRM’.

Many companies have invested in feature-rich sales technologies only to find the functionalities are not being fully utilised or used at all by their sales teams. In many instances, these technologies are either overly complicated, requiring excessive administration by sales teams, or missing the mark completely on the actual requirements of salespeople and customer-facing employees to perform their tasks adequately.

The smart customer relationship management (CRM) systems are moving with the times by making their user interfaces more intuitive, easy to use, and mobile. This sales trend looks at the streamlining of CRM.

Smart companies are adapting and embracing the new ways of doing things to make it easier and more efficient for their sales teams to sell better – from utilising the comprehensive analytics available from the web and social media to the ability to customise a CRM system and deploy applications on various devices.

Streamlining CRMs capabilities is key to getting sales teams to use them most effectively.

Using a CRM system that ticks all the boxes can mean the difference between an organisation struggling to meet its targets to one that is setting the pace and is a leader in understanding its customers, providing targeted solutions with satisfied customers and a fulfilled workforce.

Following are the key aspects we need to consider when streamlining our CRM capabilities.

Cloud

The embracing of cloud computing as a medium to deliver business systems has now meant new CRM players are able to deliver systems that are simpler to use and more cost effective than traditional on premise solutions.

This means SMEs can get access to premium CRM capabilities for a fraction of the price and don’t have to worry about downtime and overheads for upgrades. These CRM services offer a seamless experience to the end user with the added advantage of having the latest and greatest at our fingertips.

Integration

One big complaint organisations have are the various silos that are created with the replication of data across various systems.

Intelligent CRM applications now integrate with other critical business systems. Organisations want integrated lead‑to‑cash processes, an integrated view of the customer, and more comprehensive cross-functional reporting.

Mobility and user experience

CRM systems need to be in the forefront of technological advances, allowing them to be deployed onto various devices including desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Many organisations are beginning to adopt a BYO device policy (BYOD) and CRM systems have to be ready for users to utilise the application on any device.

Mobile applications, in particular, empower customer-facing staff and consumers. Mobility has become a corporate priority. The ability to use handheld mobile devices to support sales consultants and customer service activities in the field will become a mandatory requirement rather than an optional luxury.

Failure to move into this space will without fail affect your bottom dollar.

Flexibility

It’s all about flexibility. Future CRM applications will be designed for ease of integration with the user and the ability to customise the experience with integration and add-ons.

This self-serve approach will mitigate the need for highly specialised skills, thus empowering the end-user to perform the needed administration without the need to engage contractors. This will reduce the high overheads in developing and maintaining the CRM system.

CRM systems management will start to look very similar to modularised elements used to develop websites with the ability to download freeware to achieve the needed functionality.

Data analytics

How about having the ability to predict customer purchases based on past purchases, behaviour or demographic influences? Enter into the conversation “data analytics” or “big data”. This enables us to predict these trends by profiling customers and identifying opportunities including cross-selling, thus increasing our selling opportunities.

Tools that can assess and interrogate the internet, looking at social networks, mobile devices and cloud applications, will have the ability to perform text analytics, extracting sentiments to find patterns and trends for market segments and customers.

Cloud-based applications are ideally suited to capturing conversations on social networks and turning these into actionable intelligence by hearing the voice of the customer, implementing and prioritising process improvements to address customer expectations and provide visibility of these to employees across the company.

This will help sales teams and businesses better understand the affect their decisions have on customers and allow them to provide better service and more targeted offers to customers. This will also help improve communication across sales and support channels within the CRM platform.

Gamification

The new buzz word emerging from various applications, with no exception to CRM systems, is gamification. This is a concerted effort to make using applications more interesting, enticing users with game design techniques to get them to take ownership of the CRM application by way of rewards and incentives, translating into increased performance and satisfaction.

There are some warning signs about gamification with the potential negative down side of rewarding people for simply doing their job. The consequences of rewards and incentives on expected daily job activities can severely restrict intrinsic motivation to do a good job for its own sake.

Next steps

Before purchasing a CRM system, a proper cost benefit analysis exercise needs to be performed. We may think we are purchasing a cheap CRM system but may find the needed features and functionality are usually delivered through a premium edition costing considerably more. An effective CRM system needs to be efficient and easy to use.

The CRM must add value to the salesperson’s role helping the salesperson deliver sales results with less effort. It should not be an onerous task, tying salespeople up in administration and keeping them from selling. An effective CRM needs to integrate with other in-house systems, capturing data that is shared across the value chain in one central location.

Furthermore, it must be conversant with cutting edge technologies to empower companies by having the edge over their competitors.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett is the founder and chief executive of the innovative and forward thinking sales advisory and education firm, Barrett and the online sales education & resource platform www.salesessentials.com.