Do you find yourself pinching your buttocks every month looking at the order intake versus the target to close? Wouldn't it be nice if you could meet those sales targets with much more manageability and predictability?
What is striking when we speak with sales managers and commercial directors at Webs is that the primary reasons and pain points for moving to HubSpot CRM overlap quite a bit.
Let's list the common roadblocks and frustrations:
The most common struggles of sales managers and sales leaders
- "We generally meet our targets, but sales aren't necessarily coming from where we expected them to."
- "Sales trajectories are getting more complex and longer, with more and more influencers on the customer side."
- "We're getting our sales pipeline filled harder and harder, but the targets keep going up"
- "Managing my team remotely in this day and age feels uncomfortable, it's hard enough to make sure my sales team is following the agreed upon process"
- "How do I get my team to embrace a digital sales culture?"
- "How do we build enough trust with potential customers to make it easier to close deals?"
"We're generally meeting our targets, but sales aren't necessarily coming from where we expected them to."
We hear this argument from commercial executives with some frequency. These are not even necessarily organizations that are still working with Excel, but rather often already operate in an (outdated) CRM.
Why is that?
- Sales people do not see the value of keeping the CRM up-to-date
79% of the insights your sales people have about sales opportunities never end up in your CRM or spreadsheets. Is your current system actually helping your salespeople sell more? Or do they see data capture primarily as an additional management control tool? So this explains why you don't see sales coming in from unexpected quarters.
- The CRM platform is too confusing or does not match the salesperson's practice
30-60% of CRM software implementations fail with the result that only a small number of employees want to use the software and thus keep records.
- The perception of salespeople is that recording data takes too much time
Keeping information in the CRM is seen as a burden and does not contribute to their primary task: selling. So administration always comes in 2nd or perhaps last place. Many a sales manager can spend every sales meeting chasing people to update the CRM and still not look at accurate data.
What are the success factors for improving this in your organization?
- When choosing CRM software, start from your employees who talk to customers, not IT or Management: Take the interests of your sales people as a priority when choosing a CRM package. Many CRM packages are (unfortunately) still built around the "what's in it for me" of decision makers and prioritize reporting and steering information over the interests of the people who actually have to close the deals. Steering information starts with the data that your employees make available.
HubSpot adopts a completely different philosophy in this regard and takes the salesperson as the starting point for development of the platform, but takes the interests of the "sales leader" into account.
- Choose CRM software that automates tasks so you're always looking at current/accurate data and forecasts
HubSpot may not yet completely eliminate administrative tasks, but it does take duplication out of the sales process, completes data from your customers and also automates the recording of certain data in the CRM, such as the status of deals, or sends reminders to sales reps regarding overdue tasks.
- Choose CRM software that helps salespeople close deals faster
CRM Software in which you capture your customer data does not necessarily make your salespeople sell better, faster and easier.
So when looking at functionality of that software, also look for tools that help salespeople approach and reach prospects on a large scale. But also in making it easier to schedule more meetings through better timing in the sales process.
- Train your people on how to use CRM:
You're not really going to get your salespeople on board until they start to see how CRM software helps them. Adoption is everything to get your insights. The right training will ensure that you get rid of the initial cold feet, they can work with it, and they want to work with it.
A major factor in HubSpot's growth over the past few years has definitely been the HubSpot Academy, which contributes immensely to this; Training tools in the cloud that not only help your people adopt the software, but also help hone their sales skills, and all at your people's own pace. What could be better than having your salespeople autonomously increase their knowledge around conducting sales more efficiently?
- Take a planned approach to implementing your CRM:
- Properly map out the goals and success factors for the implementation
- Draw up a project plan and get buy-in from the management
- Create buy-in from the employees for the strategy in advance
- Determine a standard for how the data should enter the CRM
- Roll out the CRM in phases, ensuring a smooth transition from the current system to the new one.