Success in email marketing and email delivery involves taking care of a number of details, some obvious and some essentially hidden from view. Some of the technical aspects of it can get quite confusing and overwhelming if you’re trying it out for the first time.
We created this Email Delivery guide to help you understand and address some of these hidden factors that can make or break the success of your campaigns.
Download our Email Delivery: Technical Configuration Guide to learn how to set up your website, configure your DNS, and manage and grow your list(s).
Essentially, the receiving mail server will check to see if the domain has an MX record setup. If not, that’s a negative sign from an email delivery point of view. So, just setting up the MX record and at least one functioning email address will suffice.
List Management
Cleansing the list
Keeping your list clean is the key to successful email marketing and efficient calling campaigns. Any list loaded into SalesNexus can be cleansed to validate email addresses and identify spam traps.
Cleansing your list improves email delivery rates and avoids spam complaints.
SalesNexus is integrated with RampedUp to provide SalesNexus users instant access to additional contact information for any contact added to SalesNexus.
If all you have is an email, SalesNexus now allows you to instantly add Company, Title, Phone, Address and other details to the contact!
Watch the video to see how it works!
How it works
First, open up the contacts page. Next, click on the desired contact. If the email of that contact exists in the RampedUp database, then the RampedUp icon will appear at the top.
If the RampedUp icon is green, that means that RampedUp has data on that contact. However, that data needs to be updated or synchronized in SalesNexus.
Therefore, you have the option to update the contact information through RampedUp Integration.
You can check the information currently in the SalesNexus Database for that contact by heading to the right side of the page. View the notes, click on the additional fields, and you should see all the known details of that particular contact.
To use the RampedUp integration to update the contact’s details, simply click on the RampedUp icon.
Free vs. Paid Options
After you click the RampedUp icon, a message will appear asking you to choose an option to update the contact with missing info from RampedUp.
You can choose between the FREE or the PAID options.
By clicking the FREE option, you will be able to update that contact’s information, but the details provided will be limited.
If you choose the PAID option, 1 credit will be deducted from your credits. You will then gain full access to all the available information for that contact.
Success
Once you make your choice, a success message will pop up. It will tell you that the information has been updated.
As a result, you can then check the resulting data in the contact record.
What’s Included in SalesNexus
All SalesNexus users get unlimited access to the basic RampedUp contact info. This includes:
Full name
Personal Email address
Title
Location
Company name
Phone number
Company address
Company Email address
All SalesNexus users get 25 credits per month to download the complete RampedUp contact info. This includes:
Social Media handles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn accounts)
Education
Skills
Company details (location, number, revenue range, primary industry, specialties, number of employees, status, number of followers…)
Current and former titles
Job history (former companies/employers)
You can purchase additional credits via SalesNexus.
With the online CRM solutions available today, you can integrate your sales and marketing strategies to nurture your leads. In this podcast, SalesNexus CEO Craig Klein speaks with MarTech Podcast host Benjamin Shapiro about the reasons small-medium businesses could take advantage of an online CRM solution to service their customers and scale their business. Learn how to connect with your customers, take them through your sales funnel, nurture your leads, and optimize your digital marketing investments with a reliable online CRM solution.
BS: The first thing that sticks out to me is that online CRM solutions are big sales-driven organization tools. Although it’s not necessarily a marketing tool, it’s a way to build relationships on the sales side of the house.
CK: You just pointed out the main problem that most organizations (regardless of size) deal with: the line between marketing and sales. When we started SalesNexus, that was the first thing that hit me over the head. I come from a sales background, and one of the uses of online CRM solutions is to organize the sales effort. However, we quickly learned that digital marketing was going to be essential to filling our funnel.
Moreover, there’s this big disconnect of measuring what was happening in the digital marketing part of things. And then what happens to those leads once they get handed off to a salesperson. We couldn’t really bring together all the data so that we could really optimize the whole process. So that’s where we’ve focused in terms of delivering solutions to that problem for smaller businesses that don’t have the huge marketing and IT staff to figure all that out for them.
Areas for growth for SMBs
BS: I feel like technology has become more advanced, right? The ‘sales forcification’ of online CRM solutions and some marketing technologies. There’s been providers like yourself, HubSpot, Pipedrive – all are a bit of a different take on how you recognize who the actual people are.
CRM is customer relationship management. It’s about building one-to-one relationships with a person and a prospect. Talk to me about why an online CRM solution is essential specifically for SMBs – for small and medium-sized businesses.
CK: Well, to me, there are two things that SMBs really don’t do well. And have a huge ROI for them if they invest even a little bit in them.
Lead Response – Most SMBs, based on our experience over the last 15 years. When you talk about the response to digital marketing, sales leads that are coming through your website, or calls that are coming in based on digital advertising, they’re doing a terrible job of responding to those leads. They are waiting too long. They’re not handling them properly. They’re not following up enough.
Lead Nurturing – They’re not nurturing the leads. The people that come into the funnel initially, and then don’t buy right away. They get thrown over the salesman’s shoulder and into the waste bucket and they forget about them.
Taking your customer through the CRM funnels
BS: You’re saying that there’s a process for the merger between marketing and sales. And I think the line is a little gray here. When somebody gets through your website, fills out a form, gives you a phone call, or leaves a message. There’s the initial onboarding. How do you make sure you’re maximizing the purchase intent or the interest that they have at the time of them filling the form and keep the iron hot? And then if you’re not able to get to the close, how do you keep a relationship with somebody? Eventually, there’s a third part of getting them across the finish line. And that is very much traditional sales. What are the stages that you set up in a CRM or the “funnels” in marketing terminology?
CK: Well, of course, it really depends on the market that you’re in. When we’re talking about salespeople, we’re mostly talking about B2B with some exceptions. With B2B, the organization typically is very sales-driven. Marketing is there because it has to be. Especially in a medium-sized company, the salespeople are what the executives envision as their connection to the marketplace.
Transitioning customers into digital marketing
So that creates this divide between the two groups right out of the box. For example, we’re here in Houston with lots of energy-related companies. These are companies that have been hugely successful for 20 – 30 years. They’re very sales-driven. And then for whatever reason after decades of sending salespeople out to go knock on doors, the lights go on. Then they’ve decided, “You know what? We need to start investing in digital marketing.”
Now here they are trying to inject these new types of opportunities into an old-school sales team. So we find ourselves very often helping customers manage that transition. If you don’t come at it as a marketer with the perspective of a marketer. Knowing as you mentioned earlier, the mindset of a buyer when they engage with that form, and really thinking about that and building a process that’s based upon that journey that the buyer needs to go through. Then you’re really going to damage the ROI on the entire campaign. So it’s a cultural change, ultimately.
The overlap between Marketing and Sales
BS: Talk to me more about the overlap between marketing and sales. I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that online CRM solutions are traditionally a sales-driven tool. But now there is the notion of the blending of CRM, understanding the relationship marketing email, and even prospecting is building into CRM. Where does the marketing part start? Where does it overlap with sales? And when is it really just the sales team’s responsibility?
CK: Ultimately they’re both overlapped completely. In a perfect world, that’s the way it would work. Because even when I’m closing a deal as a salesperson, there are messages that my customers are going to receive one way or the other. My retargeting ads or the email campaign they happen to be on, in a perfect world, those should all work well together.
In the end, that’s what we try to achieve. That’s kind of an ideal. And it’s not as if there’s no technology out there that does all of this. We’re different in that we’ve simplified it and combined it into one solution. That’s easy for a medium-size organization that doesn’t have the big back-office staff to manage, connect, and maintain it all.
How the sales process drives the marketing messages
The way we make things work for our customers is the sales process instantly drives the marketing messages. As soon as you come in as a conversion and engage with a salesperson, we begin to learn information about you. All that goes into the online CRM. Then that changes the messaging that you’re seeing. So even as you’re down at the closing end of the funnel, the CRM is using that information to change the messaging that you’re getting. Although that’s in a perfect world. Most companies developing all the content that would be needed to support all of the nuances in their sales process is probably a little bit beyond their scope.
BS: So what you’re saying is basically the marketing automation component of SalesNexus, the way that your platform works is as someone moves through one of the pipeline stages, it would change the language that’s being sent out to them using the marketing automation technology.
CK: That’s right. And you described it as stages. Typically what we see is at the top of the funnel is the need to focus on the customer’s pain. What is the problem that they have that drove them to fill out your form? Let’s stay focused on that at the top of the funnel.
Once you’ve uncovered an opportunity, then it’s really at that point more about establishing credibility. So that’s where things like case studies, testimonials, and things like that come into play. Just that one little change – being able to automatically switch somebody from a, “You have a problem, we have a solution” type of email campaign to a “Here’s how we’ve yielded success for our customers” type of campaign as they move through the funnel. Just that one little change can be huge.
Nurturing leads using marketing
CK: Certainly the marketing messages have to reflect the sales approach as well. We talked about earlier being able to nurture leads in this way. As when the salesperson just gives up. Once they go, “This deal’s not going to close. I’ve got to focus on the people that I am going to close this month, so I can hit my numbers.” We want to make sure that those people go on to some kind of drip campaign.
That’s where I see most companies just really are missing an opportunity because in B2B, for sure where it’s not so much of an impulse type. The reason people don’t buy is almost never because they’re saying “I don’t want to ever do business with you.” It’s almost always other things that are really out of the control of the brand. It’s things like, their budget, the unavailability of the decision-maker, or being in a contract with another vendor.
BS: I’ll use a dating metaphor: It’s the right person, right place, right time. And if one of those variables is out of whack, you’re either not getting a first date or you’re not selling your services.
CK: Therefore, you just got to be there. Six months from now, when something changes in their world, and all of a sudden it’s the right time. You want to be the last message they got.
Nurturing your leads
BS: Talk to me a little bit more about that nurture phase. When you’re going through the pipeline. You’re learning about them. You’re trying to build credibility or you’re actually getting to the point where you’re selling, and they’re just not ready at that time or there’s something that’s missing. How do you keep the relationship alive and how do you still preserve some momentum? So when they are ready, you are top of mind.
CK: It can be more nuanced than this, of course. At a really simple level, you want to go back to the pain. Additionally, just keep offering valuable content. That’s basically saying, “Hey, if you have this problem, then here are some tips. Here are some tricks. Here’s some interesting stuff that may be helpful to you.” So that’s how you’re going to keep that line of communication open as long as possible. If you keep going for the close in your email messages, eventually you’re going to annoy them and turn them off, and they unsubscribe.
Therefore, you want to go back to – “I can just be helpful here. Once your problem gets significant enough that you need more help than what I’m sending you, then call me. I’m here. We’ll talk about how it can help in other ways.”
Focusing on the customer’s pain
BS: That’s interesting. I would think that the nurture content changes depending on where someone is in the funnel, right? If somebody is in the “learn” phase, doing nurture content that talks about how to address the pain, makes sense. If somebody gets to that credibility portion, and they’re not ready to move forward, you’re not necessarily saying, “Hey, here’s more information about why we’re credible.” You’re going back and saying, “Is this still your pain point?” Is that because you’re simplifying the process here? Or is that really a best practice? No matter where someone is in the funnel, just keep reminding them that there is a way to address the pain that they’re feeling?
CK: As I said, it can be more nuanced. For instance, you may have a major competitor that when you close a deal, it’s almost always for them. Well, when you know, that’s what happened in a given deal, maybe you want a set of messages that really contrast you with that competitor.
I try to keep it pretty simple. Especially for a medium organization. Those who are just jumping into this for the first time. It doesn’t have to be very nuanced. What you’re wanting to do is just maintain brand awareness over a period of time. That’s 90% of the battle.
Reasons SMBs don’t have a CRM solution
BS: Craig, any last words for today about why SMBs need a CRM solution? What’s the biggest reason why they don’t have one?
CK: Well, the Achilles heel of the CRM world, of course, is that salespeople hate using them. So that’s the biggest reason why most companies don’t have them. The management just hasn’t figured out a way to twist anybody’s arm enough to get them to use it. So that’s another reason why doing this type of thing to me is a win-win for everybody involved. It’s a win for the business because what you’re doing is you’re giving the salespeople a reason to play the game with the CRM.
Advantages to having an online CRM solution
CK: The flip side of that is that there’s a huge win for the marketing group as well. In a small-medium-sized business, maybe they’re making that first big investment in say, Ad Words to drive traffic to the site. Well, the first thing they’re going to find out is they can drive conversions with all sorts of different techniques and tactics in Ad Words. But then they hand them off to the salespeople. However, they have absolutely no way to know whether the leads that come from that landing page or that ad campaign are the ones that the salespeople are closing. They just lose the tracking.
Then going into the board meeting at the end of the quarter and reporting on the results of your advertising. You can say “I spent a hundred thousand dollars in this quarter… I got X number of leads… I got this number of conversions.” Unfortunately, that’s all you can say because the sales guys are not going to give you credit. They’re not going to say, “We hit our numbers this quarter because of all those great leads from marketing.” Instead, they’re going to say, “It was our wonderful selling.” So you’ve got to be able to tie that together. And if you don’t have all this information in one system, you really can’t.
Optimizing your digital marketing investments
CK: That’s one thing that I’m really excited about. We just released a new capability that literally tracks the conversions coming in based on Ad words, Ad groups, and that kind of fine detail. As a result, you can do a pipeline report and a close report that says, “I might be getting a lot of conversions from this ad where I’m spending a lot of money advertising. But I’m not closing very many. But over here, I’ve got this ad campaign that I’m not really emphasizing or spending a lot of money on. Moreover, percentage-wise, I’m closing a bunch of those leads. So let’s redirect that advertising spending based on what’s happening in the sales process. That’s a huge game-changer in terms of optimizing your digital marketing investments.
BS: I think that’s a good point is that an online CRM solution allows you to capture the data. Not only from your marketing efforts but connect it to sales. So you’re able to see end-to-end from what campaign is driving impressions to web conversions and form fills, and then are those actually being closed and producing revenue.
And so that end-to-end reporting is something that’s really powerful to not just optimize, to drive people to and through your website, and make sure they’re actually creating business results.
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The MarTech Podcast tells the stories of world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success.
Sales leaders searching for CRM and sales management solutions typically have Dashboards and Reports high on their shopping list. Unfortunately, they’re often misled by the sexy demos they see and only learn about key limitations after they’ve made a commitment and it’s too late.
Imagine two car sales people traveling to the Amazon to sell cars.
One sells Kias and the other sells Cadillacs. Deep in the Amazon where the
natives have scarcely seen a car, they’re not likely to appreciate the depth of features and quality that the Cadillac salesperson can point out.
It’s only after driving a Kia for a while that you can really appreciate a Cadillac.
Most CRM vendors will show you dashboards that do generic things like measure leads by source or by vertical market or sales opportunities by product or territory. And if you’ve never been able to get that type of report without putting your accounting department, marketing department and your assistant through torture for weeks, then those reports look like game changers.
But, it’s only after looking at a report of sales opportunities by product each week for a few weeks that it begins to dawn on you…. You need something slightly different. Your business is unique and even your direct competitors probably want to measure their sales pipeline in different ways.
CRM Customization Breakdown Example:
A standard report or dashboard in most CRM systems is Calls made by sales person. Again, if you’ve never been able to get that data easily, then it is a very nice report! But, can you look at that report and know which sales person on your team needs some attention regarding their call volume? Probably not. Sally might have logged on 50 calls today but, that’s been the case for a few months and her sales keep coming in under quota. On the other hand, Sam only logs 10 or 15 calls in the CRM but, he kills his quota consistently. There’s something missing. It could be the potential size of the accounts Sally and Sam are calling on. Maybe Sally is very comfortable calling on customers in the industry she used to work in but, those accounts are typically smaller. Sam on the other hand is always focused on big fish.
The solution is that your call dashboard needs to clearly show calls logged for large accounts vs. small account. Or perhaps its certain vertical markets that need to be highlighted in your reporting.
The point is that it’s this simple little bit of detail that always does two things:
It makes the information actionable – you can look at the dashboard and know which sales person needs some training or some praise and take action immediately.
It breaks most CRMs
Most CRM solutions are built to do all sorts of need things with the default structure of their system and the fields built into their system. But, when you create custom fields to track unique bits of information that are crucial to your business, taking those pre-built, ready to go, great looking reports and adding that additional information in leads to one of these road blocks:
It just can’t be done in the basic product – purchase and configuration of add-ons or upgrades required.
It can be done but, it takes a skilled technician – start spending time and money with consultants.
Here are some conversations from the Salesforce.com support site:
Interpretation: “Yes, it can be done but, I’m probably going to need to do it for you.”
Interpretation: “Yes, it can be done but, you’ll need to purchase additional products or add-ons.”
This is why SalesNexus offers a far lower risk decision for sales managers:
All features are built to work seamlessly with your customizations. Custom fields can be the basis of your reports, dashboards, campaigns, etc.
SalesNexus provides unlimited support and consulting itself. If you can’t do something with SalesNexus that’s important to you, we work with you to create it rather than referring you to outside consultants and vendors. This keeps things simple and affordable as your needs grow and change
After years of running your business, have you thought about selling it for a substantial profit? If you haven’t evaluated your business lately, you might end up discovering some surprises on what it’s really worth.
While you probably think of your business value as all revenue and profits, buyers look at many other variables. Part of this comes in measuring your business processes. More accurately, it’s all about documenting these processes so a buyer sees what you’ve done to build your company.
CRM implementation moves things forward and documents everything from marketing and sales to customer service.
Take a look at how this improves business valuation for a faster sale.
Proving Your Profitability
While this is one of the most common business valuations, it still pertains to owning a CRM. Your CRM platform lists all the sales you’ve made since buying the program and even projects the future profitability of the business.
Metrics are a major part of CRMs, so you’ll have a lot of data at the ready to show your prospective buyers. Since you can access this information 24/7, including on mobile devices, it’s easy to present your profit charts.
Of course, buyers want to see if you have any liabilities, as in major debt. These metrics can prove you have a clean financial record.
Your Marketing Processes
There isn’t a better tool for marketing than using a CRM. Quality CRMs can up these conversions as much as 300%, proving what it does to prove your marketing prowess.
All of this becomes easily documented in a CRM for buyers. They can see how many leads you’ve generated over a year’s time, and which ones you’re still nurturing.
Thanks to your CRM having this data easily organized, the new buyers can easily take over your business without starting over. In fact, they can take over existing leads and nurture them while having all the data they need to take the leads through to the conversion phase.
Your Sales Processes
CRM implementation can immensely help with your sales processes. You have multiple communication methods and data on general customer personas. CRMs often gather data in real-time, so you can build accurate profiles on which customers are the most loyal over others.
Any buyer is going to find this very valuable if they want to keep the same loyal customers you’ve maintained for years. Sustaining the same customer base during a transition helps them in their early stages to maintain profit during their first year.
The same goes for learning about your sales processes, including the CRM itself. Passing on this tool to help with sales tactics is already a great asset the new owners can acquire without having to invest in it themselves.
Scaling All Processes
With all of these processes available in a CRM, you can see why it’s such a valuable investment to make in valuating your business. It goes even further, though, thanks to the cloud being involved in CRM programs.
All your data is easily accessible from the cloud, but allows all features to scale when it’s necessary. Those who want to buy your business want to see whether it has any chance to scale easily without added expense. Your CRM allows this to occur if the owners want to expand and take your business to the next level.
If you’re like most companies implementing CRM software for the first time, you have more questions than answers when it comes to exactly how to set things up.
It’s challenging to know how to properly configure your CRM software until you’ve used it a bit to understand the capabilities to some extent.
If you’re company has used other CRM software previously, you may have a clear understanding of what matters most for your business. Or you may have someone on the team that has prior CRM experience in another company. If so, your path to CRM success may start with strategic planning of objectives for the CRM software and then move on to implementation. Check out our Ideal CRM Implentation Plan here.
If it’s your first time to setup and implement a CRM system, you may feel paralized by your lack of experience. In that case, it can be best to simply begin the process of loading all essential information into your new CRM system. In the end, it will be difficult to judge the value of managing specific businesses processes with CRM by playing with an empty database.
Benefits of CRM Software
Access to customer information instantaneously.
Fast, efficient execution of marketing campaigns.
Visibility into lead flow, deal flow and status.
Improved customer service.
More effective sales management.
Increased security of information.
Road Map to CRM Success
Load contacts
Categorize if possible
Organize Contacts
Assign to reps
Categorize
Add emails, address, etc.
Add industry specific info
Add marketing info
Schedule and Complete Tasks
Follow Up Calls
Existing Client Calls
New Lead Prospecting Calls
Add Notes, Documents, etc.
Meetings, calls, etc.
Proposals, contracts, specs, etc.
Add Marketing collateral
Brochures
Specifications
Price Lists
Create Email Templates
For follow up after 1st call, after sale/order, existing client check in, etc.
For new potential prospects
For New clients
Add sales opportunities and sales history
Future sales opportunities
Past sales history
Create dashboards
For sales reps to self manage
For marketing to track leads by source, campaign, etc.
For management – track pipeline of future business, track ROI on marketing
With this information loaded into your CRM software, opportunities to leverage this vast trove of information will literally appear organically. Of course, you can also try applying the CRM software to certain business processes and begin to learn where the path of least resistance toward real business value lies.
Deciding to write a CRM RFP is a tough decision for most organizations. (Acronym Disambiguation: CRM = Customer Relationship Management; RFP = Request for Proposal).
Typical businesses decide to implement a new CRM solution, for the first time or to replace an existing solution, and go through a “selection process” that is loosely structured. Typically the process goes something like this:
Browse the marketplace for possible CRM vendors.
Select a “short list” of vendors to begin indepth demos and discussions with.
Put together a list of “must have” and “nice to have” features based upon the features you’ve seen from vendors.
Bring together a group of users and managers to compare the vendors against your must and nice to haves.
Make the selection and plan the implementation based upon the vendors available services and recommended processes.
Of course, this approach is upside down. The primary risks that this approach leads to are:
Lack of executive and staff buy-in, leading to poor adoption.
Misfit of features to real business needs.
Inefficient implementation and under-utilized solution due to poorly planned implementation and lack of resources.
Writing a CRM RFP inverts the order of the process and provides a framework for managing the selection and implementation process to ensure the best fit CRM solution is chosen and the implementation leads to a well used solution and maximum business value.
It’s a big job but, well worth the investment. Consider this: Even today, 50% of CRM Implementations fail to meet management expectations. What is the cost of CRM failure for your business?
How to Write a CRM RFP
Build a Selection Committee
Identify representatives of each group that will use the solution and just as importantly, be sure to include at least one or two executives with the influence to ensure processes are followed and staff requirements are enforced.
Business Process Documentation
List business processes from the standpoint of the customer’s experience and map out how your staff will use the CRM to manage that process.
Business Analytics Design
What reports and analytics will be needed by executives, marketing and end users? How will those reports be used to make decisions?
List and Prioritize Required Capabilities and Features
Each team and every user will have their own list of important CRM features. Add them all to a list. Be inclusive. This is a key part of making sure each group is on-board when it comes time to use the CRM system. Invite outside of the box thinking! Include features that might not be considered typical CRM features like marketing automation, integration with accounting systems or ERPs, etc. As an example, here’s are several lists of CRM Requirements provided to us by various clients.
Obviously, this list of “wants” is going to be long. So, of course, the 2nd step here is to prioritize. And this is where executive involvement is crucial. A handful of members of the committee that have a firm grasp of how the business really works, where profits come from and why customers choose your company over competitors should go through the entire list of features you’ve built and assign a business value to them. This should not be an exhaustive process that involves lots of research or cost analysis. It’s soley for the purpose of prioritizing the requirements that will be the basis of your CRM RFP. Just put each feature in a “ballpark” in terms of the cost savings or additional revenue that should result. If it saves time, estimate the cost per hour and the number of hours.
Again, don’t agonize over the math here. You’ll quickly realize that there are a short list of requirements that should deliver the lion’s share of the business value and the rest of minor contributors. As your CRM selection and implementation project unfolds, some in the organization may reach a point of fatigue or just get distracted. Keeping your eyes on the expected overall value to your business will help keep the team focused and motivated.
Write Your CRM Requirements
Reorganize the list into Must Have CRM features and Nice to Have CRM features. The Nice to Have list might need to be organized into 2 or 3 groups based on needs of particular groups, etc. Share this prioritized list of CRM requirements, with the associated estimates of derived business value, with the entire team for feedback. Be sure that executive management is on-board with your estimates and will support decisions that may leave “nice to have” CRM features out for constiuencies that report to them, so long as the Must Haves are achieved by the chosen CRM solution.
Plan the CRM Implementation
Take a look at the resources available to help with implementing the CRM solution including sales and marketing staff, IT staff, executives and consultants you’re already working with. What is their primary function? How much of their time can you afford to devote to the CRM implementation and for how long? Take a look at our “Ideal CRM Implementation Plan” for a more indepth look at what works.
No matter your industry or the CRM system you choose, there are a few crucial steps that will be required for someone to invest time in:
Field design – what specific data elements will be captured in the CRM? What are the possible “answers” or valid input in these fields?
Data mapping and loading – mapping the customer information you have (accounting software, sales people’s contacts, marketing lists, etc.) to the newly designed fields in your CRM solution.
Process Documentation and Set Up – each CRM user role should be defined clearly in terms of what that user is required to input into the CRM system, when and how, framed by your Business Processes defined earlier on.
Analytics and Report Design and Setup – customizing the chosen CRM solution to provide the needed metrics and reports.
Template Design and Setup – email templates, proposal templates, customer service response templates, etc.
Really Write the CRM RFP
List the Business Processes to be managed by the CRM system.
List the Must Have CRM requirements and clearly mark them as such.
List the Nice to Have requirements and provide some ranking of importance based on your business value analysis. It’s a good idea to provide your own table of features and requirements that vendors can answer yes or no to, line by line, so that you can easily take all the RFP responses and compare side by side.
Define Expected Deliverables – Will your team load data and set up fields, reports, dashboards, templates, processes, integrations, etc.? Or will you require the vendor to do some or all of this? Clearly define which parts you plan to manage internally and which you need the vendor to handle.
Described the Desired “Acceptance Testing” – Clearly, there are a lot of variable in a CRM implementation project and your vendor’s definition of “ready” and yours will not be the same. Consider planning a small “beta test” of the solution once its set up and ready to use. A small group of users can quickly try the primary business processes in the CRM and find oustanding issue quickly. This avoids disrupting the entire team and creating a negative impression when the system isn’t quite ready for prime time.
Describe the Planned Training – Is there a national sales meeting planned where you’re expecting to train the team on the new CRM? Will there need to be separate training programs for various types of users?
Describe Documentation Required – One of the great benefits of going through the process to write a CRM RFP is that key business processes often get defined and clearly documented for the first time. Do you expect the vendor to provide documentation of your specific business processes or will your team do that?
Effective CRM training is the key to getting your sales team onboard and off to a fast start, without disrupting their sales efforts.
Lack of user adoption is the #1 killer of CRM rollouts. However, typical training approaches can err on both sides of the equation, too much information as well as not enough.
Common CRM Training Mistakes
Probably the most common mistake made by leadership in rolling out their new CRM especially in smaller organizations, is lack of structure combined with lack of training. The mistake that leaders make is assuming that the team will invest good faith efforts in learning the new CRM tool. This may be true of new cool tools for account research or other sales and marketing functions but never forget, the CRM is perceived by most sales people as management playing big brother. So, they will use lack of training and slow, inefficient software for their lack of use of the CRM but, as often as not, it’s their own resistance to the concept that is the culprit. If you leave it up to the sales person, some will learn it and some won’t but, most will blame the system when they fail to use it.
Conversely, the leadership team and the support staff that were involved in selecting the CRM solution often are very excited about all its capabilities and anxious to rollout the solution to the team so they’ll learn and use all the bells and whistles. But for all the reasons above, the sales people are not as likely to be excited by the technology. Often leadership is misled by a few tech savvy sales people that are very enthusiastic into believing that the entire team will utilize a tremendous amount of the CRM capabilities. And so, the CRM training is a blizzard of bells and whistles, too much information and most of the sales people leave completely overwhelmed.
There is no over estimating the disparity between the appitudes and willingness of individual sales people to adobt and learn CRMs. Countless times I’ve trained entire sales teams in a big banquet room or conference room and seen it happen before my eyes. It seems that no matter the pace and structure of the training, there are always a few team members that begin to get that glazed over look within the first few minutes.
To be clear, this is NOT all the sales person’s fault. We all know folks that just don’t get tech quickly. Often, these people are team players that see the value of the CRM but, just don’t learn technology well in a classroom setting.
In addition to the challenges of training a varied and often resistent team, leadership lacks the experience to see how certain things are aboslutely required of the sales people in order to drive the reporting, analytics and dashboards that management is expecting.
Based on 25 years of experience teaching sales people to use CRMs, I’ve found that the path of least resistance and highest probability of success in CRM training and adoption is this…
Identify Sales Leader Champion
There’s got to be one or more sales people that are going to act as an example to the rest of the team and encourage them. “Hey guys, I did it and it helped me this and that way. You can do it too!” Ideally, these champions are involved in the selection process early on and therefore understand all the trade offs that are wrestled with along the way. They’ll also serve as a reality check as you begin to map out the required input from sales people. What’s realistic to expect? What will really be helpful to the sales person? What will really aggrivate them?
Identify Expected Analytics & Reporting
In the end, the point of the CRM is to manage customers and manage sales people and enable marketing automation, etc. So, management has to decide what analytics and reporting are essential and which are nice to have. Each manager that expects to have a dashboard to help them serve clients and manage their team should spell out exactly what is on that dashboard early on, ideally prior to the selection process. “I want to see how many customer service issues we have each week.” is not quite good enough. You have to spell out exactly what defines a customer service issue. Does it include a customer calling in to change their bililng address? What about calling to praise a team member?
Map Analytics to Bare Minimum Sales Input
With all the required analytics mapped out, then you’ll know exactly what information has to be input in the CRM by each user. Users have to be trained to know that changing the billing address is officially a “customer support” case but, praising a team member is not. Sales people need to be trained that calling a customer and having an actual conversation with the customer should be logged as an official “sales call”. Dialing the phone, getting the secretary and asking how her weekend was is not an official “sales call”… or maybe it is for you. Either way, your dashboard is worthless if you don’t know what sales people are calling a sales call. In addition, marketing may feel it would useful to be able to segment prospects and customers based on several very specific pieces of data about their company. Each of these items need to be collected by the sales people consistently or marketing’s segmenting and targeting objectives can’t be met. Is it reasonable to ask sales people to obtain all of this information in all cases? Is it onnerous to ask them to document it all after every sales call?
Build a Focused CRM Training Program
The CRM training for the sales people should focus only on the data entry that is essential to driving the analytics and reporting that are required by management and marketing. Get very specific and very clear about exactly how to enter each piece of information and play out real world scenarios so that sales people can be confident about how to make judgement calls. After a sales presentation, which fields have to be updated? What are the scenarios that apply to each value in each field? What is expected in terms of documenting deal size, follow up tasks, etc.?
The intial CRM training should be very focused and limited. This avoids the overwhelmed, glazed over feeling by being very clear and very specific and providing lots of examples and practice. Managers and marketers will be frustrated by this process. They’ll see it as underutilization of the CRM solution. But, be patient! The greatest risk is that the CRM investment will be a complete wash because the sales team didn’t adopt it consistently. Take this diliberate approach and when you and the sales team feel you’re ready for it, add new requirements for the sales people that provide greater value for management and the company. But do it carefully in small bites.
You know its a great idea to survey your customers about various things. Have you ever thought about surveying your sales team?
Whether you’ve hit a sales growth ceiling, are entering new markets or planning new hiring, a survey can be a great way to be sure you clearly see the biggest challenges and opportunities faced by your sales team.
Our 4 Steps to Market Domination includes these Sales Team Survey questions and our step by step guide to organizing customers, automating lead generation and reaching your goals.
Below is a complete list of questions we like to use. Most surveys only include some subset of the below. Some of these questions are great as multiple choice, and you’ll see some suggested answers below. However, many of these questions are best asked as open ended questions. Let the sales team tell you the things you haven’t already thought of!
Sales Survey Recommendations
It’s probably best to keep the survey anonymous. You may not like some of what you hear. You need to know that stuff! Don’t discourage frank feedback by tracking who says what.
Don’t react to what you learn with immediate new initiatives for the sales team or, of course, accusations or recriminations. That will only discourage honest input in the future.
Take a few days to consider what you learn. Summarize the findings and then share them with the team. You may find that some of the feedback was not a general consensus.
Pick out a short list of 3 or 4 opportunities to address and let the sales team be part of implementing the plans.
In the case of implementing your CRM solution, keep it simple. Choose the areas where most of the team agree that the CRM can add the most value to sales growth, customer retention and profits and focus on those areas. Don’t try to make your CRM all things to all people. Win the important battles.
least one or two executives with the influence to ensure processes are followed and staff requirements are enforced.
list of features you’ve built and assign a business value to them. This should not be an exhaustive process that involves lots of research or cost analysis. It’s soley for the purpose of prioritizing the requirements that will be the basis of your CRM RFP. Just put each feature in a “ballpark” in terms of the cost savings or additional revenue that should result. If it saves time, estimate the cost per hour and the number of hours.
smaller organizations, is lack of structure combined with lack of training. The mistake that leaders make is assuming that the team will invest good faith efforts in learning the new CRM tool. This may be true of new cool tools for account research or other sales and marketing functions but never forget, the CRM is perceived by most sales people as management playing big brother. So, they will use lack of training and slow, inefficient software for their lack of use of the CRM but, as often as not, it’s their own resistance to the concept that is the culprit. If you leave it up to the sales person, some will learn it and some won’t but, most will blame the system when they fail to use it.
