Sales Force Automation The Key To Crm Success

CRM has some of the highest failure and lowest adoption rates of any software category. Customer Relationship Management software is famous for complex implementations, confusing features, and the killer--lots of data entry to make it useful. These are the characteristics that make sales force automation so critical to your CRM success.

Customer Relationship Management

As marketing becomes increasingly diverse. Your sales CRM, and its simplicity, becomes increasingly important. Modern customers expect speedy responses, unique experiences, and the right person every time.

Marketing on the Internet and with social media, in this Web 2.0 world, are increasingly challenging sales forces. Sales people don't have time to figure out software, set-up confusing processes, or feed a system data.

This is where lead management can save your CRM implementation from a costly disaster. Lead management, probably a better term than sales force automation, is the digital assistant every sales associate or call center agent would love to have. Simple, intuitive, consistent systems that move deals forward and tracks your leads is the cornerstone of good sales force automation.

Lead Capture

It all starts with lead capture. Minimizing the sales time spent on capturing or entering leads into a database is the first step to a full and productive sales pipeline.

Your sales CRM should have a simple, but robust lead capture suite. An agent flush with leads is a motivated asset to your team. A sales person struggling to figure out how to get precious leads into their sales management system or forced to type them in is an anchor on your sales numbers.

The most basic lead capture methods your lead management software should include are:

• Spreadsheet imports
• Web form integration
• Outlook, GMail, Yahoo!Mail imports

Added bonuses would be the connection of your sales CRM to your social networks and Web 2.0 applications. Some important examples include:

• LinkedIN
• Plaxo
• Twitter

Getting leads into your sales pipeline and fueling your sales process needs to be a one-click process.

Contact Management

Now you have leads. Let's start calling.

It seems like the logical next step, but most CRM software even makes this process challenging.

Many sales force applications leave the sales person wondering:

• Who do I call next?
• What are the best leads?
• When was the last time I call this lead?
• Which leads are close to closing?
• Which leads need follow-up?

Basic stuff, but often neglected. Sales force automation puts contact management into an intuitive flow. Prioritizing and queuing leads for follow-up simplifies the sales process. Increases the productive pressure on teh sales pipeline. And, allows the sales force to concentrate on making the sale, not figuring out who to sell to.

Lead management can also improve the rate and consistency of follow-up. It is amazing the percentage of leads that never get a second call or contact. Super charging your contact management with a set of automated follow-up routines will increase closed deals immediately.

Sales Lead Tracking

Are you making your sales force update reports on their sales activities? Are they spending their evenings going back and annotating customer records? If so, you have the makings of inaccurate reporting at best and no reporting at worst.

Sales force automation can turn sales lead tracking into a simple and passive activity.

Simplifying lead tracking and reporting starts with lead statuses. Your sales management software should have intuitive sales statuses. These statuses should be easy to assign(automated and/or manually) to leads as they move through sales processes.

Making sales lead tracking easy will help you see real and specific areas to improve. Then your marketing analysis and sales processes tuning can become a snap. And, individual sales reps are not spending their time typing reports or entering data.

Here are some common sales actions you want to know about in your sales lead management system:

• Attempt
• Contact
• Proposal
• Withdraw
• Disqualified
• Do Not Call
• Closed

Using simple statuses like these can give you insight into more opportunities. Incorporating the status data in your marketing automation system will also enable you to give each customer a unique experience.

Sales Forecasting

Understanding where and when your revenue is coming can be another messy art in any sales force. But, it shouldn't be. Lead management allows you to quickly see where leads are in the pipeline, facilitating real-time forecasting and sales roll-ups.

Using a sales management software with sales force automation helps you forecast and drill into answers.

Find out who and how your sales force is producing revenue, by viewing:

• Individual quotas
• Team and division production
• Territories and product segmentation

With a consistent sales process, provided by sales force automation, makes setting quotas, benchmarks, and forecasts easier and more accurate.
Sales Accountability and Consistency

Once you have efficiently captured, tracked, and analyzed your leads, you know what works!

But, nothing is more frustrating than individuals on the sales team not adopting best practices. With sales force automation you can drive basic compliance with proven sales processes.

Enforcing best practices is not only an accountability issue, but one that simplifies sales persons' challenge with establishing their system and getting into a productive process. With sales force automation the process is there, and it will get results.

Sales force automation and lead management is the key to making your CRM implementation finally produce sales for you. If it doesn't do the things we have talked about, you need to either find a lead management companion solution to integrate or just scrap it and go to a real sales tool--sales lead management.