As individual sales persons, we are quite adept at managing our sales process. We have been doing pretty well without any “systems”. So why do we need one?
The simple answer: To grow your sales! You can drastically improve your sales performance. Not just tweak it, but take it to the next level!
Managing customer relationships is like managing any relationship. The work you need to do to manage your relationship with your spouse takes time, effort and constant attention. Without these, the relationship goes sour. Customers are no less demanding than a spouse. The only difference is, there are many more of them (unless you have a harem… wonder whether one can use CRM for managing your harem). And we want even more customers. But the available time, effort and attention get diluted when divided among several customers. The inevitable result is compromise in customer relationships.
To handle a growing number of customers, businesses hire more sales persons. This increases the available time and resources. And in India where salaries are affordable, this is the easiest way to facilitate growth. So most small businesses have a much larger sales force compared to their sales revenues. However, you cannot continue this strategy beyond a certain point, because good sales persons are not easy to find. To make average sales persons work with the same efficiency, you need to work as a team. And as the team size increases, managing the team becomes expensive and cumbersome, leading to loss of sales effectiveness. Hence sales effectiveness is not scalable
I recently read an article on Roy Gough’s blog about this issue. Roy is a successful CRM professional who has implemented CRM systems for companies in the US. He lists the following problems commonly faced by sales teams that try to grow without a system.
- Promised return phone calls not made, and information not sent
- Not being informed of possible delays or problems
- That call to tell you when your order is ready – promised but not made.
- One department in the company having no idea what another department said to you in the last call or letter.
- No one bothering to call to make sure the goods arrived, or are satisfactory. Probably no calls at all – until of course they want to sell you something else
- No one knowing what they last sold to you – or when
- No one knowing enough about you to offer you items or services that would enhance or compliment your purchase. Frequently only one person in the company seems to know anything about you! And if they’re not available…?
The answer is a CRM or sales management system like On2Biz gives you scalable sales effectiveness. The system works
- by enhancing the efficiency of every individual sales person
- as well as improving team management capabilities.
For an individual sales person, the system works like a personal secretary who never forgets, and who allows the individual to handle more customers within the same available time and resources. For a team, the system becomes the communication platform that allows a large team to work together without communication gaps, forgotten tasks, and incomplete briefs. So adding a CRM or sales management system is almost like doubling your sales force, but without the high cost and loss of effectiveness.
But the challenge in using a CRM or sales management system is in getting your sales force to adapt their working style to a more structured process, where information is recorded systematically and accurately. This additional responsibility is often viewed as an unnecessary overhead by individual sales persons. Sales persons initially tend to view the system as a way for managers to keep tabs on their activity. They consider it as a burden that hampers them rather than serving to enhance their productivity.
That is where On2Biz differs from other such systems available. On2Biz has been designed to minimize the pain involved in adopting a system that requires individuals to work in a structured process. Based on the years of experience in implementation of workflow management systems in India, Reach1to1 has created a business management system specifically for ensuring successful user adoption of sales management systems.
Contact the On2Biz team for creating an evaluation account for your sales team today!
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