Customer Relationship Management software should be an essential tool for better communication with your team and customers—and for faster, smarter revenue growth.
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Many companies rely on CRM already, though you may have waited to invest. As a business manager, you know how much a modern CRM could help—but leadership hasn’t committed yet.
So how do you convince your boss to acquire a CRM? Use the questions below to spotlight the gaps—and the wins—of adopting a unified platform. When leadership sees the measurable impact, approval gets easier.
Lead Response
How long does it take to respond to website leads?
Without CRM, teams rely on scattered email threads, phone tag, or manual spreadsheets. That lag costs deals. Quality CRM systems show where each lead sits in the funnel so reps respond at the right moment—before competitors do. If your time-to-first-reply is over 10 minutes, you’re likely losing winnable opportunities.
Sales Activity
Are you monitoring what your sales staff is doing—daily?
Lacking visibility creates confusion and unnecessary meetings. A CRM dashboard centralizes calls, emails, meetings, and pipeline health so managers can coach sooner, not later. Fewer surprises, fewer status meetings, more selling.
Ad Spend & ROI
Can you connect ad spend to revenue without duct tape?
Disparate tools make it hard to see what’s working. A CRM unifies campaigns, costs, and outcomes so marketing can reallocate budget fast and sales can prioritize the highest-intent leads.
Revive Cold Leads
Are you staying in touch with cold or “dead” leads?
Automation inside your CRM can re-engage old prospects with timely, relevant content. Use engagement metrics to spot which accounts are researching competitors and win them back with targeted offers or helpful guides.
Automation nurtures prospects at scale.
“A single source of truth for leads, activity, and outcomes turns guesswork into growth.”
With instant metrics available on desktop and mobile, managers can see real-time pipeline movement and coach in the moment. Marketing can monitor funnel velocity and campaign ROI in one place.
Ready when you are. Centralize your pipeline, automate follow-up, and measure what really moves revenue.
Retail and wholesale mortgage brokers are in the same industry, so it would stand to reason that their needs would be similar. However, the needs of these two groups are quite different. Most CRM systems, specifically wholesale mortgage CRMs, are designed for retail mortgage brokers.
It emphasizes loan submission and processing in the service of individual clients. Wholesale mortgage companies, in contrast, manage teams of brokers by providing them updated information and engaging them in their work.
They bundle the mortgages and ultimately sell them as a package. Wholesale mortgage brokers have a few specific needs that must be fulfilled.
A wholesale mortgage CRM needs to have a highly sophisticated email marketing capability for lead generation. That is because wholesale mortgage firms provide frequent information and updates to brokers based on market conditions.
Most importantly, that includes any updates on the market conditions around interest rates. Brokers need to know if rates are rising, falling, or staying flat. As they keep in touch with these brokers, they generate more and more leads.
Additionally, they need an automated way to keep in touch with all of their brokers at one time. Moreover, Email marketing systems automatically fill in the names of the brokers to correspond with their email addresses. They send regular updates and automatically respond when they receive a message.
Email marketing systems work directly with automated marketing management systems and CRMs to take all leads in email updates. Wholesale mortgage brokers have much less tedious labor than in previous years.
Lastly, email marketing systems need an automated calling feature. The wholesale broker can click one link to get a call going, answer any questions, and get the deal completed.
A wholesale mortgage CRM needs to have a highly sophisticated email marketing capability for lead generation.
Broker Management
Top wholesale mortgage CRM systems excel at managing and organizing the brokers in a particular network. These systems clearly identify and segregate each broker by a number of criteria. These criteria include the location, firm, contact information, type of loan, loan volume, and background info on the broker. This is in stark contrast to brokers that look for a prospect’s FICO score, yearly income, and other information.
Importantly, wholesale brokers need to be able to group their contacts for targeted marketing campaigns through their mortgage CRM. For example, they may be doing an info session in a particular area and need to contact local brokers to let them know the date and time. Different lenders may target different types of buyers (jumbo for example). Wholesale brokers may use the system to reach out to particular brokers that specialize in these types of loans.
Top wholesale mortgage CRM systems excel at managing and organizing the brokers in a particular network.
Retail CRM Systems
In contrast to the priorities, retail mortgage brokers have a much different demand in their CRM system. First of all, they require experience customized for mobile access because they are in the field dealing with individual applicants.
They need to be able to pull up documents or customer information from a cloud platform on their phone or tablet.
Retail mortgage brokers are primarily focused on loan uploading and processing. They are trying to maximize the number of applications they can complete in the easiest way possible.
They want the system to facilitate fast completion through electronic signatures, compartmentalized documents, and instructions. Additionally, they want a smooth process that works with multiple lenders and can close the transaction as fast as possible. These needs are quite different from a wholesale broker.
SalesNexus is the leading CRM system for wholesale mortgage brokers. The solution has helped many wholesale brokers better organize their business and rapidly grow their revenue. For more information, please contact us
CRM software is a great business tool. Among other things, it allows your staff to be up-to-date on all customer information. It measures your sales activities in real-time. Moreover, It measures the return on investment of your marketing and ad campaigns. It helps your sales team stay focused on good sales opportunities and so much more.
That is why it is important that if your CRM software is not working or isn’t up-to-date that you rectify this problem as soon as you can. Here are some signs that it is high time for you to replace your current CRM software.
Is It Time to Replace Your CRM Software?
Finish in 8 minutes.
Inconsistent Customer Interaction
If a customer calls your business and the only person who can assist them is a salesperson then you have a problem with your CRM system. Your system is supposed to make customer interactions with your business uniform and consistent. Any employee should be able to assist a customer with a question or issue through the CRM system. If you can’t do this you need to replace your CRM system.
Manual Email Campaigns
It is time to replace your CRM software when your sales team has to type their emails to customers manually. CRM software when working properly effectively works to nurture and generate leads for the sales team. They won’t need to be typing out messages to customers because the CRM software will be automatically sending messages that are consistent throughout the business so that you can rest assured that your business tone and customer experience is consistent and in-line with your business’s goals.
Poorly Maintained Customer Information
When a new salesperson takes over an existing account they should not be confused about the status of the customer or their needs. People quit and move on and are fired or retire. There are going to be new salespeople working accounts that used to be worked by former employees. If your sales staff is confused about where a customer is at or what they need then your CRM software is not working the way it should be and needs to be replaced.
Key Performance Indicators Beyond Sales Results
You should not be measuring the performance of your sales team based only on their sales results. If your CRM system is working the way it should be you will be able to see and measure the activities and behaviors that lead up to and through the final sales. This information will help you manage your sales staff in a better way.
Low Value Leads
Your marketing efforts and marketing automation should be contributing and generating leads for your sales staff. If your sales team is not seeing the value of the leads generated by your marketing automation than your CRM system is in desperate need of being replaced. Your sales and marketing efforts need to need to be working in tandem to generate and convert leads to sales. If these efforts are disjointed your CRM system most likely needs to be replaced.
Slow Response Time
Your website is another great way to generate sales leads. However, if it takes you too long to respond to these leads they will not be as effective and you may lose them completely. If it takes you four hours or more to respond to website leads it is time to look at your CRM software and move to replace it.
Inaccurate Future Sales Forecast
One of the great aspects of CRM systems is their ability to forecast future sales. If your CRM forecasts are highly inaccurate, it is time to replace your CRM system.
Your CRM system can work wonders for your business. However, if you want the best results it is important to stay up-to-date with the latest and best software.
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.
CRM software, Cloud Computing and Written Procedures can protect your business from all of the most common disasters. If it hasn’t happened to your business yet, just wait… it will! No matter how hard we try to avoid it, life happens and it’s not always good.
There are a few things that can happen to a business that can be truly devastating. Unfortunately, they’re not uncommon. It’s also very uncommon for a business to be prepared for these types of unexpected disasters.
Your business may be among the lucky ones that hasn’t experienced any of these types of unfortunate events yet. After 20+ years of running businesses and working with thousands of business owners. I can tell you with certainty that one or more of these things will eventually.
The only difference among businesses that have survived for a few years is this: Some are prepared to minimize the effects of these unexpected disasters and some are not. This distinction can easily save any business $100,000 or more. For some larger businesses, it can save millions.
The categories we’ve put them in are:
Acts of God
IT Failure
Employee Theft
Unexpected Personnel Changes
Customer Disputes
Compared with Acts of God, some of the others may seem inconsequential but, the disruption and cost to the business can be equal if not greater.
I worked with a data services business in the energy industry that had an employee join their team, work there for 6 months, then leave to create a competitor, having learned exactly how their operation worked, copied their customer database and enticed a few employees to join him! Business Disasters
Their business suffered greatly for several months and even after they recovered from the initial loss of customers and team members, they had a strong competitor in the marketplace to face for several years.
Cloud Computing
There are several common themes that arise when recommending how to avoid the disastrous effects to your business. One is leveraging the cloud. When your critical systems and information are in the cloud, physical damage from a flood or fire can’t touch them.
In addition, it’s far easier for employees to copy or damage your critical systems and databases when they’re on your local network. No matter what your IT staff tells you, the cloud is more secure. Not to mention that cloud services normally have detailed access logs that can provide evidence of who logged on and deleted all that data, if they were able to.
I’ve worked with numerous customers who had just this problem. A sales staff member logged on to their CRM software in the cloud and downloaded their customer list. First, they could have disabled the ability of the sales staff to do that at all; however, theychose not to. Had that been an issue, your CRM provider can always able to help with legal proceedings by providing access logs including IP addresses, user account info, dates, times, etc. so they have the evidence they need to take action. Business Disasters
VoiP Phone Systems
VoiP (Voice Over IP) phone systems are another good way to reduce the damage from these sorts of disasters. If your office is flooded, your PBX won’t work and so, customers can’t reach you.
VoiP systems commonly enable the use of “soft-phones” that run on your PC and often have their own app to run on your smartphone. This way, when you have to relocate temporarily, the entire company phone system works exactly the same from anywhere in the world. Business Disasters
We’ve benefited from this when the Internet has been down in the office at various times over the years. Everyone can just go home and work there and there are no issues with receiving or making calls.
Written Procedures
Written procedures are one of the most valuable assets your business can have for countless reasons.
Potential buyers want to buy your customers and your revenue and your assets and they also want an operating manual that lets them run the business without you.
Expanding your team is far more efficient when managers and new employees have written instructions to follow, rather than relying on the “tribal knowledge” of a few key employees. Employees leaving unexpectedly can leave the business and customers without answers.
If their job description is in writing, then anyone on the team can drop in and take charge without missing important tasks. In advance of un-predicted business interruptions, it’s also a good idea to cross-train your team so that this transition, if necessary, is seamless and efficient.
Forbes sums up the importance of written procedures: “They maintain control, ensure consistency, enable training of your growing staff, avoid issues with legislative regulators and authorities, demonstrate due diligence and even keep you, your employees, and your company out of the press. In some cases, written procedures may even be a legal requirement.”
CRM Software
When things go awry, one of the most essential objectives is to keep communication flowing with customers. Even if your production floor is under water, an email or phone call to all customers with open orders to let them know to expect delays can be the difference between retention and attrition.
Not to mention the effect on future business if your sales team is unable to operate effectively for a few days. Most businesses have the most accurate information about paying customers in their accounting system.
However, accounting and ERP systems aren’t built for making communication easy. They have different purposes that are more about the operation of your business. You may have the billing contact in Quickbooks but often, only the salesperson has the email for the actual user or buyer.
Of course, if your salesperson goes to work for the competition or is just sick for a few days and she’s the only one with key customer’s info available, you’ve got a big, costly problem.
CRM software let’s you ensure the business has access to up to date info on customers. This should include email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, key contact names and titles. It should also include notes about recent conversations and meetings, copies of proposals and copies of all email correspondence with customers.
If your CRM software is in the cloud, then your marketing and sales operations are protected from Acts of God, personnel changes, IT failure and employee theft of customer information is far more risky and difficult.
In addition, with CRM software in place, mitigating disputes with customers is far easier and more diplomatic. Without a record of the email that a former employee sent to a customer about the expectations for their order, it’s just a “he said, she said” conversation. With CRM software, you’ll be able to provide copies of emails, date stamped notes and proposals and more to backup your side of the story.
The best news is that these types of things don’t happen all that often. Another piece of very good news is that implementing cloud services like file sharing, cloud computing and CRM software is relatively easy. There are lots of vendors to choose from at all levels of cost starting with FREE. Just don’t wait until it’s too late!
Are you nervous about how to on-board them and teach them the processes that lead to success?
Has your company’s past sales training process consisted mainly of a few days of product training and a list of potential customers and a pat on the back?
Have you decided it’s time to change your process for hiring sales people and launching them toward success?
First, you’re not alone. It seems that in many companies, the last thing to be boiled down to a process that can be repeated, managed and scaled up is the “art of selling”.
To build your new sales team successfully, it’s important to start with the end clearly in mind.
Put Yourself in the Mind of Your Newly Hired Salesperson
A new salesperson needs and probably even expects a few things that many companies fail to deliver, and this can cause them to stumble early in their ramp up process:
This is typically tough for businesses to do the first time. It’s not necessary to change the process that’s in place now, only to document what it is and begin a journey of ensuring that it’s followed consistently and measured. That way sales people can be managed based upon their execution of the process, not just their sales results. To create a sales process that works best, it’s helpful to think about your typical customer’s process for making a purchase of this type. How do they move through the stages of the process of making a purchase?
Awareness – the customer first becomes aware of an opportunity, need or problem.
Action – the customer decides to do something about it.
Research – the customer absorbs information about causes of the problem, and possible options/solutions., etc. Here they are primarily accumulating enough knowledge to confirm that they have a clear understanding of the problem or opportunity and the range of possible options/solutions.
Engagement – the customer starts to take action with one or more solution provider – filling out a form on the site, calling sales, contacting support, downloading a report, etc. Here they are beginning to consider specific solutions – options, pricing, terms, etc.
Purchase – the customer at least thinks they know what they want to buy, may attempt to negotiate and may or may not actually make the purchase.
Create a Management Dashboard for Newly Hiring Sales People
There are a few things that just have to be measured for all sales people. Having it in place when hiring new sales people is essential. Here are a few: Quota Attainment, Leads Generated, Qualified Prospects, Proposals, Sales Forecast, Calls Made. See our reccent post for more information on Essential Sales Management Dashboards.
Hiring Sales People that will Make Prospecting Calls
New sales people need to fill their funnel with new opportunities as quickly as possible and that’s going to involve getting on the phone and connecting with as many potential customers as possible. They’ve got to be motivated to burn up the phone line early on! This mainly depends on clearly setting expectations prior to hiring sales people, the measuring their performance and providing lots of feedback and lots of praise when they meet their goals for prospecting. This is the most stressful part of the job for most sales people, so getting sales motivation for prospecting calls down is the one thing you can’t focus too much attention on.
Lead Nurturing is a Force Multiplier for New Sales People
Young sales people just understand the importance of automating and reaching out to potential customers innately. They’re working hard every day to reach out to new prospects and of course, most they just leave voicemails for and a lot just don’t have the time or interest at the moment. But, if they’re calling the right target prospects, its mostly a matter of timing. Sales people don’t have the time to make 100 calls a day AND send follow emails to each one and remember to call them again in a few days and send another email, etc. Creating an automated process to keep in touch with leads via emails and remind the salesperson when it’s time to make another call lets them focus on making the calls and building relationships with the hot prospects and gives sales people the feeling that each attempted call has the potential to come back to them in the future as a hot prospect. Here are a few Lead Nurturing suggestions that can be implemented without too much resource or time required.
Before you start hiring sales people, be sure you have a plan to address all of these areas. Ideally, you’ll have specific plans in each of these crucial sales management areas prior to even beginning the process of hiring sales people.
The best sales people have worked in organizations that have all of this in spades. They need to see that you have these sales processes and measurement frameworks in place or they’re not going to be interested in joining your team.
You’re not alone, across industries and markets, new inside sales teams are growing and outside teams are shrinking or accepting completely new roles.
Undoubtedly, there is some friction between the old pros, the traditional outside sales people, and the new inside team and their management. After all, the old pros got you where you are. They’re the ones that brought home the big account that took you from tiny start up to established player. They have relationships with all the big players in your industry and referrals and big new opportunities sometimes just seem to appear in front of them.
How can a bunch of kids sitting at computers duplicate what they’ve done? Your top producer is probably an old pro and you’re having trouble teaching him new tricks, much less getting him on board with the new inside sales team. This is not an easy task. Sales Dog recently published an eye opening article about some of the fundamental challenges that come up when sales management tries to teach the old pros new ways to do things.
One powerful way to get the old pros on board AND give the new inside sales team the greatest chance for success is to make the old pros the model for the new inside sales team’s processes.
“How can that be possible?”, you ask… The old pros thrive by shaking hands, buying lunches, looking people in the eye, spending evenings out wining and dining with customers. How can your new inside sales team do that?
This is where sales managers can miss a crucial piece. Whether conscious on not, the assumption is that the new inside sales team will thrive through efficiency and volume. They’ll make more calls, use CRM software and marketing automation tools and just touch more customers in a given day. Often management fully intends to carve out the big customers and leave them in the old pros hands because they just don’t believe they can possibly get the attention they need and expect from an inside salesperson.
New Inside Sales Teams Can Excel At Relationship Building
In the end, strong relationships are based on trust. How can your new inside sales team establish the same level of trust without looking customers in the eye and spending thousands of dollars on lunches and beers?
Break Down the Old Pros Process
What’s their process? What are the steps they typically take? What is the purpose of each step? How can your inside team accomplish the same things without face to face contact?
For example, taking a customer to lunch is a common step in a big deal. What is the purpose? What does it accomplish?
Gets the customer outside of their work environment allowing more open communication.
Demonstrates that you value the customer.
Facilitates more personal conversation, getting to know the customer as a person. Hobbies, background, etc.
Creates a comfortable opportunity for the salesperson to ask the hard questions.
Can your new inside sales team accomplish these things on the phone? Yes, they can!
Duplicating the Effect, Not the Process
Sending valuable information or even gifts demonstrate the value you see in the customer. Are there educational books, whitepapers or videos that would be helpful to your typical customer in their job? These don’t have to be created by your company and they don’t need to be about your products at all. In fact, its best if they are completely unrelated to your product or service but, highly valuable to your customer in their job and will help them advance in their career.
One technique is to ask a prospect if they read much. If they do, have 2 or 3 books that you like to recommend and then offer to send them a copy. If they say they don’t read much, have videos or TED talks or something produced by an industry trade association that you can offer.
You can also send invitations to industry events. If your organization has local representation, one approach is for the new inside sales team to tee up appointments for the local reps for a sporting event, industry function or just lunch.
By analyzing your old pros’ process and coming up with creative ways to duplicate the effect of these steps on the customer, you’ll find that two very powerful things happen:
The old pros enjoy being the model for the new inside sales team’s process and become very supportive of the initiative.
The new inside sales team works closely with the old pros from the outset and are better able to leverage their relationships and add value for the old pros in return.
If you’re using custom or uncommon Accounting Software, having access to Accounting Information in CRM software can be difficult.
Giving sales and customer service staff access to credit limits, credit balance, YTD sales and other information typically only available in your accounting system provides a better customer experience and reduces errors, canceled orders and wasted time.
SalesNexus provides a simple method to export excel files from your Accounting Software and update customer records in the CRM software so that customer facing staff have immediate access to information to help customers place orders and manage their account.
Problems Associated with Lack of Accounting Information in CRM Software
Taking orders that are later put on hold due to high credit balance.
Costly collections operations.
Inability to respond to customer inquiries about account status without checking with Accounting department.
Inability to easily target customers that have previously placed large orders or who’s orders have declined.
In 25 years of helping sales teams implement CRM solutions, I’ve learned there are two main reasons that CRM projects get stalled. And believe it or not, that is happening to a LOT of businesses!
As a CRM vendor, we’ve studied the reasons that deals don’t close and by an overwhelming majority, the primary reason is that the customer just never makes a decision. In other words, a business starts looking for sales automation and CRM solutions, talks to vendors, gets demos, have internal meetings about important requirements, etc. and then just never decides on a solution.
Why is that? From my experience, the two most common reasons are:
Unable to Reach Consensus on CRM Requirements and Capabilities
Often, CRM projects start off as a tool the VP of Sales needs but, the requirements very quickly expand to include marketing and customer service functions and information exchanges. So, now there are multiple decision makers at the table each with their own list of priorities. Even within a typical sales organization, it’s difficult to find a CRM solution that has all the bells and whistles possibly needed for Lead Generation, Inside Sales, Outside Sales, Pipeline Management, Contract Management and all the other things that your sales team may want to do. If you take that list and add to it all the tools your marketing team might like to have and the same for customer service, the list becomes extremely long and you’ll find there are no “out of the box” CRM systems with all of these capabilities. So, either your project just got much more involved, with the need to integrate and customize several technologies, or everyone’s going to have to choose what they can live without.
This is where things stall. There may not be budget or patience for building an all encompassing system for the entire organization. And there may not be enough agreement among departments to reach agreement on compromises.
Lack of Executive Support/Leadership
Of course, when you’re marketing, sales and customer service departments can’t agree on priorities, that’s when executive leadership is supposed to make the decisions for you. But, technologies like sales and marketing automation are often a bottom up decision internally. Management closer to the sales and marketing departments recognize the need but, executive management can’t see how it directly impacts the bottom line.
So, the Sales VP and the Marketing Director pitch executive management on a project that is massive in scope, in order to accommodate all the constituencies. And that’s not likely to fly anywhere.
Or perhaps leadership is completely out of the loop, which as described above, leaves no referee to prioritize requirements and so, no vendor can be agreed on and everyone just loses patience and goes back to work with the tools they have at hand.
Believe it or not, a large portion of successful businesses in the US do not have a CRM solution implemented. And the reasons are above.
So, if you’re CRM dreams have stalled, the answer is to sell the concept to the C level first. Get them on board and get boundaries from the C suite and focus all requirements discussions and vendor demos within those boundaries.
If your CRM project has stalled for budgetary reasons, let a SalesNexus consultant tell you about our CRM Implementation packages that help document requirements and workflows and set things up quickly and affordably.
customers and a pat on the back?
their management. After all, the old pros got you where you are. They’re the ones that brought home the big account that took you from tiny start up to established player. They have relationships with all the big players in your industry and referrals and big new opportunities sometimes just seem to appear in front of them.
