Category: Getting the Most Out of CRM
Top 10 Guiding Principles for Designing Your CRM Selection Process
1. Pick a partner, not just a vendor. While it’s important to pick a CRM tool with appropriate features, it is also important to evaluate the CRM vendor’s business strategies and culture …. 2. Know your sales drivers. CRM delivers the best immediate value when it is aligned with the specific drivers that yield sales [...]
Why CRM Is Fast Becoming a Standard Business Practice and Essential Tool
In my research for my book, Getting the Most Out of CRM, I found that the majority (61%) of wholesaler-distributors surveyed already use CRM in implementations that range from basic to advanced. If you’re looking for perspectives to get to a “go” decision for adopting CRM or expanding its use at your company, here are [...]
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What Is Client Relationship Management or Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
CRM can mean many things to wholesaler-distributors. It’s a software and sales automation tool, of course, but CRM can also be viewed as a strategy or process, depending on the business experience, technology affinity, and sales orientation of the wholesaler-distributors we encountered. Looking for more Benefits of Adopting a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Click here [...]
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Top 10 Benefits of Adopting a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM)
1. Manage customer contact information. Perhaps the most basic of benefits, CRM helps salespeople create and maintain a database of customer information from basic information about names and positions, to personal information about business goals, professional affiliations, and family members. 2. Manage sales pipeline or territory results. CRM has the potential to transform a salesperson [...]
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Top Concerns Distributors Have About Adopting Customer Relationship Management – CRM
We found that wholesaler-distributors that have not adopted CRM are cautious, seeking greater assurance that their investments of time and cash will deliver results for their businesses. Few distributors reject the premise that there is a fundamental need for automation of the sales management process, much as automation has improved other aspects of their business. [...]
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4 Ways to Utilize Data Collected from CRM Analytics
Our conversations with executives and sales leaders for my book, Getting the Most Out of CRM, identified four immediate analytical uses for the data that CRM can provide: 1. Account profitability: One wholesaler-distributor is already using data to segment customers on two dimensions: valued services and account profitability. On the first dimension, valued services, sales [...]
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3 Benefits of Adopting CRM for Sales Leaders
Our interviews with principals and sales executives for my book, Getting the Most Out of CRM, identified three primary benefits of CRM for sales leaders, each of which helps to stretch the sales leader from tactical execution to strategic contribution: 1. Improving sales forecasts: In many distribution sales organizations, a salesperson’s goals are determined by [...]
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3 Success Factors Helpful in Building Your List of CRM Vendor-Selection Criteria
When I interviewed wholesaler-distributors for my book, Getting the Most Out of CRM, most executives described selection processes that are practical, flexible, and not overly burdened with formal requirements or procedures. That’s not to say that these approaches were necessarily swift, however. Some were, but almost all wholesaler-distributors emphasized that making the best possible choice [...]
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3 Reasons Why Successful Distributors Adopt CRM
In writing my book, Getting the Most Out of CRM, I asked distributors to describe the rational for their “go” decision to adopt Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and they gave me three: 1. Adopt it because it’s the right thing to do Even if a wholesaler-distributor can’t envision how CRM will immediately improve the performance of [...]
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