How To Map CRM To Sales Process

As a sales leader in your company’s sales department, you’re ready to implement a CRM platform. You’ve heard great things about what it can do, how it can help you keep better track of your customers and streamline your workflow. You’re thrilled with the opportunities it presents. But you know who isn’t thrilled? Your salespeople. A recent research study we conducted told us:

• Only 43% of salespeople report that their organization’s CRM solution is helpful to their sales efforts, and
• 60% of salespeople feel that the sales process contained in their CRM doesn’t track opportunities in a way that matches their day-to-day selling environment

Traditionally, salespeople have resisted CRM and often refuse to use it even after it’s implemented. You think of it as a blessing, but they clearly think of it as a burden. But if your salespeople won’t use the platform, it won’t actually do all the good that it’s supposed to. You need to find a way to get them on board. How? By mapping CRM to a sales process that realistically matches what your salespeople go though on a daily basis.

Defining The Sales Process

The first thing to do when implementing CRM is to look at the sales process – or lack thereof – that’s currently present in your sales organization. Do you have a relatively defined process that all of your salespeople are trained in? Or does everyone just do things their own way? Too often, companies don’t train their sales reps in a formal sales process for their products, resulting in many conflicting sales styles and no way to consistently discuss the deals they’re working on. This poses several problems. #1, it makes it difficult to sell effectively. Secondly, it makes it difficult to integrate CRM formally into your sales organization, since there’s no consistent way to track opportunities in the first place.

The Secret To Mapping CRM To A Sales Process

It’s essential to establish a consistent sales process for your company and train your reps in that process before you implement a CRM solution.

Base it on a process that is proven to be effective in the real world and will really connect with customers, selling to them in the way in which they want to buy. Then, as you’re creating your sales process, integrate CRM into it in a way that works in a real world environment and allows your sales reps to track their efforts realistically throughout the process.

If your CRM platform isn’t tailored to a real world environment, it will give your already reticent sales team just one more reason to reject it.

So how do you help your sales team understand the importance of CRM and how and why it’s beneficial to what they do? It’s very simple: talk to them. Explain the new system and show them how it works and how it benefits them, not just you.

Map the sales process contained in your CRM to a realistic sales process that streamlines their workflow. That way, everybody’s happy with using the new platform, your team’s sales effectiveness will improve dramatically, and you can get the full potential out of it.

Having experienced several of the major sales training programs over the past 25 years of sales and sales management, The IMPACT Selling^® process is by far the best. It is a simple, yet incredibly effective, process that provides a framework for every sales call regardless of your market. Working with the team from The Brooks Group has increased the performance of an already strong sales team and made us significantly more productive than we were before the training.   Bret M. Sales Director Medical Device