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?

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