Category: CRM

CRM is Not the Enemy – This is How to Boost CRM Adoption by Salespeople

When you talk to sales reps about CRM, you will often hear: “Yeah, it’s great for management, but I don’t see how it can benefit me.” Some will even go further and point out that recording everything related to their job in the CRM system is time-consuming and comes at the expense of valuable prospecting time. Coming from the “trenches”, we understand their perspective very well and would like to offer some new view points

Selling is not just a numbers game; there is a need for constative follow-up and on-going learning from the most successful salespeople. Let’s first have a closer look at what sales reps do to close deals. For one, they interact with potential and existing customers to follow up on leads and close new deals. This involves sending and receiving emails, making and receiving phone calls, setting up appointments, and making notes for follow-up. They also send out information, price quotes, and contracts. They are keeping track of meeting their KPIs and sales targets, and staying on budget. They also need to report on potential and closed deals, and their pipeline progress. That’s enough to make anyone’s head spin.

That’s where CRM comes in. A CRM system reduces the time they need to spend on mundane tasks, so that they can concentrate on what they truly like to do (and are good at!) – making sales. A CRM makes it easy for a sales rep to retrieve prospect and customer data and to create, classify, organize, and optimize sales collateral at a central place that can be accessed in the office, but also remotely when WFH.

A hurdle in making CRM sales rep-friendly is the use of a smartphone when being on the road or working from home. When sales reps are using their own (BYOD) or a company cellphone, the business-related calls and phone messages are normally not recorded and documented in the CRM system, which forces them to rely on their memory, scribbled notes, and time-consuming reports. To make their lives (and that of their managers) easier, a mobile-to-CRM solution is called for. Such a solution only records and stores sales-related conversations in the CRM for analysis without any privacy issues regardless if you, as a sales rep, use a company-issued or your own BYOD phone. Recording calls empowers the sales rep with growth opportunities as the data can be analyzed, and valuable lessons can be learned.

With the pandemic reaching a second and even third wave forcing governments to take lockdown measures, working from home (WFH) remains the new normal. Sales reps are now using their smartphones to make remote sales, since face-to-face meetings and business trips are much less common. During such calls, a lot of sales information is exchanged that should be recorded for follow-up. That’s also where a mobile-to-CRM solution makes a difference by automatically recording, tracking, documenting, and integrating business-related cellular calls, SMS records, and other forms of business communications, while respecting the privacy of the sales reps (and whoever else in their household is borrowing their cell phone to make a quick call).

So, if you are a sales rep, it’s good to know that CRM is your friend and that can indeed make your life easier!

Want to know more about how Mobile2CRM can help your sales reps too?

Contact us at [email protected]

November 18, 2020
Want to keep your sales up? Make every sales call count!
Picture this: your sales figures are lower than they should be, the measures you take to increase numbers are not working – and you have no idea why. To make this even more painful, this has been going on for quite some time now. Strange, because your salespeople are good; you made sure that they got comprehensive sales training, attended the annual sales kick-off, and you even arranged podcast sessions for them.

So you’re beginning to feel the need to dig deeper and get to the bottom of this conundrum. Naturally, you decide to go right to the source – customer and prospect interactions. That should tell you where the problems are. Your CRM and call recording system are, of course, excellent resources for this, since all customer conversations are recorded and filed for analysis and follow-up. Sounds good – right? Not really…here is the problem – most of your salespeople are on-the-go and use cellphones to talk, send messages (SMS, text, etc.) to customers, prospects, partners etc. These interactions, and the valuable data they contain, are NOT recorded and NOT stored in your CRM, regardless of whether they use company-issued or personal smartphones.

There are two complex issues to examine here (and then some…):
1. Technical – Peer-to-peer cellphone call recording and CRM integration aren’t trivial, especially across operator networks and carriers, over multiple geographic regions, etc.
2. Compliance – The need to separate private and business calls in order to only log and record business calls to respect the various privacy laws
Once you use a mobile-to-CRM solution, you can overcome both of these challenges and only record and store business-related conversations in your CRM for analysis without any privacy issues regardless of whether your sales reps use company-issued or BYOD phones. This treasure trove of data lets you listen to the unfiltered voice of customers and prospects. You can now check, grade, and review all sales conversations, which enables you to identify areas for improvement.

It’s important to emphasize that you really need to make every call count. Only by listening to your reps will you be able to focus on what support they need to be successful. The insights gained from the mobile-to-CRM solution enables the successful coaching of your sales team instead of just (re)training them. Don’t get me wrong – sales training can be useful for teaching standard sales practices. But only continuous coaching based on real-world performance will empower each and every one of your sales reps to live up to his or her full potential. Since the recorded conversations between your sales reps and their customers or prospect reveal the real cause of your sliding sales, the sales coach will know exactly what to address to improve sales performance.

Want to know more about how Mobile2CRM can help with coaching sales reps?

Contact us at [email protected]
November 4, 2020
Are you really making the best-informed decisions? Or….. (Part 2 of 2)

In our previous blog post, we mentioned that more and more business communications are taking place using cellphones over the cellular network and therefore remain unrecorded and undocumented by the organization’s systems.

For this valuable business data to become a resource for your decision-making processes, a new type of solution is necessary that will give you access to all business-related call recordings, CRM, and other analytics and BI data. Only then will you be able to make fully informed business decisions about allocating resources, providing better CX, preventing customer churn, improving your competitive edge, and improving corporate performance.

Let’s have a closer look at the features and capabilities a solution should have to provide in order for businesses to get a truly 360˚ view. To state the obvious, we are talking here about a near real-time solution that allows the recording and documenting of all business-related mobile calls into the organization’s systems regardless if your employees are using their own (BYOD) or a company cellphone. Needless to say, the tricky part is separating private from business calls for practical reasons (having one’s mother-in-law over for dinner is not exactly relevant BI) and, more importantly, for complying with the various privacy laws.

Let’s have a look at how the Mobile2CRM solution works.

Once your company has subscribed to the Mobile2CRM solution, each employee will be assigned a mobile business profile. The employees then download the mobile app to their cellphones from either the Google Play Store or the Apple AppStore. Alternatively, your company can allow employees to download the app via its own MDM system.

After employees install the app on their mobile devices, they can start using their new (and real) business mobile number while keeping all the functionality that they are used to and love. From that moment on, all incoming and outgoing business calls and SMS messages via the assigned mobile number will be recorded and documented in your company’s CRM and call recording systems. If employees use IM services such as WhatsApp for business purposes, the solution can add an IM business profile for that IM service. Needless to say, only business-related messages and calls will be recorded. It is important to note that the recording is effective and dependable since it uses native cellular networks, as opposed to VoIP services that are known to have issues (e.g., dropped calls, VOIP coverage, audio quality, etc.).

The Mobile2CRM solution logs metadata as well as the content of calls and text messages, dates, times, duration, and content of each call is recorded as well as the calling/called numbers, and also if the call was answered or not. No more valuable business info flying under the radar; it’s documented in the CRM.

Let’s recap – with a solution as described above, you will have all the recorded calls and documented data you need for your decision-making when accessing your company’s CRM and other (e.g., Analytics, BI) systems. Yes, it really is as simple as that…

August 19, 2020
Are you really making the best-informed decisions? Or….. (Part 1 of 2)

As any director, VP, and C-suite manager can tell you – making informed decisions is crucial for the company, but it is also easier said than done. It all stands and falls by having relevant data available that can provide a 360˚ view to get the whole picture.

As any manager can tell you, making informed decisions requires a systematic approach to reduce the likelihood of overlooking important factors and data for analyzing the situation, having relevant data available, looking at the various alternatives, exploring multiple options, and choosing (fingers crossed) the best one.

To make things complicated, success depends on the resources and tools used to come to that decision. SWOT analysis, applying a decision matrix, or a Pareto analysis are all great tools, but mid-and senior level managers just don’t have the time for such an academic approach. Also, for these approaches to work, the decision-maker must depend on the completeness and accuracy of the available data. In other words, what you as a director, VP or C-level manager need first and foremost is a 360˚view of your department and organization including all the data that you can get to support making informed decisions. This will give you the insight to make informed decisions with a low risk level.

Important tools in this context are, of course, your company’s CRM, call recording, and other Analytics and BI systems that contain valuable data for your analysis. Regardless if you are responsible for sales, CX, finance, or corporate – you need to get insight into all recorded and documented data, including business-related mobile calls and text messages that are often missing, but are essential for meta-data analysis.

So why is such a solution crucial for your decision-making process? Well, as the saying goes, “knowledge is power” – and using all your business-related call recording, CRM, and other analytics and BI data available for analysis is priceless. With it, you can quickly and efficiently make informed business decisions about allocating resources, providing better CX, preventing customer churn, improving your competitive edge, and improving corporate performance.

In our next blog post (Are you really making the best-informed decisions? Or….. Part 2), we will look into the features and capabilities that such a solution should have to provide the treasure trove of data for a truly 360˚ view for informed decision making. (Hint: using business profiles, managing business numbers, inbound/outbound calls, CRM integration, managing company-owned mobile devices…..) – Stay tuned!

July 30, 2020