2013-10-24

Are you running your sales operation with yesterday's technology or no technology? You might be if your customer-and-prospect database is nothing more than a hodgepodge of business cards, scattered notes (some on napkins), an overloaded Outlook Inbox, and an untrusted mismanaged data-base management system.

If you cannot easily find your contact information, appointments, up-to-date sales-team communications, or marketing-campaign results, you might have nothing more than a cumbersome and nonproductive BONA system: Business cards, Outlook, Notes/Napkins, and Access. According to Dynamics CRM consultant, Lean Tribe, there is a better way to manage your sales operation: A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.

Here are reasons why and considerations for selecting a CRM system to help assure that you don't miss any sales if things fall through the cracks.

The CRM Alternative to BONA

Successful business is all about customers -- finding, serving, and keeping satisfied, loyal customers. These relationships must be managed across one's entire business  - marketing, sales, and customer service. Today's fast-moving competitive business requires today's technology to be productive, time-saving, and cost-effective. That's a CRM system - great improvement over BONA.

CRM manages leads and tracks sales for selling more products and services, quickly, easily, and effectively.

CRM provides the right information at the right place, and at the right time, for informed business decisions.

With this management, your customer data become a strategic asset by extracting more value from your customer base, which yields increased revenue and profit.

CRM assures that sales, marketing, and customer service all work together toward a common goal of being on the same page with the customer, raising your company success to a new level. It combines processes, technologies, and people to help you better understand your customers and their needs.

Selecting a CRM 

Before selecting a CRM system, you need to understand that automation, itself, will not fix an inefficient sales process that you want to improve. Therefore, have someone at your company look at your business operations as a whole. Or hire an outside expert. Even better, find a CRM vendor who will take the time to fully understand your processes and your needs, and get all team players involved right from the start. This will assure that your CRM system will yield the results that you want.

If you are about to be a first-time CRM user, or you are a current CRM user looking for help with your disappointing CRM, here are five questions to ask a CRM provider:

Will the CRM solution help to acquire customers, keep customers, and grow overall company revenue?

Will the CRM solution accommodate rising customer expectations and improve customer satisfaction?

Will the CRM solution help to better manage fragmented customer interactions processes, such as onboarding, order administration, loan processing, and customer service?

Will the CRM provider offer mobile solutions for smart phones and tablets that improve employee productivity?

Will the CRM provider:

Take the time to fully understand your needs?

Get all of your users onboard?

Train all your users?

Offer value-added products to enhance your CRM system for your future needs?

For more questions to ask when selecting a CRM and to learn how CRM can help your reps be more productive, cost effectively, and in less time, please call me. Also, ask about our "No Results Missed" pledge ...Bob

by InfoGrow

Updating Your Sales Operations, Upgrading Your Business, With Dynamics CRM is a post from: CRM Software Blog

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