Posts Tagged ‘CRM’
Analytics, CRM, and “Sales Prevention”
Ran into a great blog by Bob Apollo (@bobapollo on Twitter) on the Inflexion-Point Blog this morning that really got my wheels turning, entitled “Is your CRM system a sales prevention system?” Since one of my company’s biggest products is a lead management CRM, I was intrigued by Bob’s five “danger signs” that a company’s…
Read MoreTop 5 Reasons For Failed Sales Technology Implementations
It’s pretty simple: In three and a half years doing client services in the sales software space, here’s the Top Five Things I’ve found that will kill even the most promising sales automation purchase.
1. The true value of the system is never made apparent.
Forcing people to use new software or systems is certainly a management right, but an effective sales tool must appeal to the reps by solving immediate pains, and by making it easier for them to stay organized and keep promises to their customers and co-workers.
It has to provide better sales intelligence (data), improve speed and efficiency (automation), or heighten overall employee impact (training and process development), or employees simply tune out . . . .
Read MoreSales Metrics – Bridge Group’s SaaS Sales Survey Shows Orgs Take Their Own Medicine
It hasn’t been released to the public yet, but Inside sales metrics gurus The Bridge Group, Inc. just finished their “2010 Inside Sales for SaaS Companies” report, and they kindly sent me an advance copy. I’m not going to reveal too much about it, but like their previous sales metrics reports, my reaction can be…
Read MoreSales 2.0 – Psychology, Self-Selection, and “Getting There First”
I’ve read, heard, and studied lots of talk about the psychology of sales and marketing.
What makes buyers tick.
How decisions are made.
Prestige, Pleasure, Pain (relief), Profits, or Preservation.
But I was reminded today of another key psychological aspect of sales:
Get there first.
“Getting there first” is a simple rule that Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook talks about.
Want to be a budding (sales) rock star?
Get there first.
When it comes to lead management and generating new sales, showing up last is often worse than not showing up at all . . . .
Read MoreInside Sales – Lead Management, CRM, and Knowing Something About “Something”
Today Seth Godin stated that one of the revolutions of human economy was when man first discovered that knowing something about “something” was just as valuable, if not more valuable than the “something” itself.
Consider:
How much more valuable is a library when it has a card catalog, digital or otherwise?
Without the card catalog, the usefulness and utility of the library itself decreases by a factor of 50, 100, 1000 or more. How hard would it be to find something in even an average-sized municipal library without an efficient, easy-to-follow system of organization?
Now think about the Library of Congress.
So what does this mean for sales and marketing?
It’s simple:
How much more valuable does your sales team become when you have a “card catalog” of what they do . . . .
Read MoreLead Management – JS Bach, Music, and Your Sales Pipeline
I absolutely loved this recent post by Copyblogger. As someone who took piano lessons for over eight years, I’ve played my fair share of Bach minuets, and hearing about the sheer amount of effort he put into creating his music inspired me.
And I think there’s a lesson to be learned here that’s eminently applicable to sales:
“Researchers concluded that the rate of [musical composition] hits to misses was pretty constant between major and minor composers. The truly great composers produce more masterpieces than the others, mainly because they produced more work overall.”
Change “musical composition” to “prospects,” and “masterpieces” to “sales” and suddenly we’re on to something.
You want to know one of the secrets of the top sales people? The agents in the “20 percent” category of the “80/20 Rule of Sales” (i.e., “80 percent of all sales are generated by 20 percent of the reps”)?
Read MoreCustomer Management – A PC-to-Mac Finder’s Tale
Have you ever lost an account suddenly, unexpectedly? As in, one month they were “happy campers,” and the next they just disappeared?
I hate to admit it, but we haven’t been immune to this syndrome. The root causes were varied; sometimes it was just change in the organization, sometimes it was a change in strategy, but sometimes it was because we simply weren’t addressing a key need or pain, and the client decided to look elsewhere.
These are the worst types of lost accounts, because the simple fact is, we weren’t doing our jobs.
I bring this question up because at work I have recently been shifted from using a PC to using a Mac (I can hear all of the Mac disciples out there now shouting, “Hallelujah! A new convert about to enter the fold!”).
And sure, the 24″ iMac screen is a dream. It’s dual-core, plenty fast, big hard drive.
Except there’s one small problem: without fail, at least once a day, there’s something about MacOS that irritates me to no end: the file manager.
The simple fact is that relative to its competition . . . .
Read More5 Ways to Rethink Your Marketing Niche – What Is Your (and Your Company’s) Real Expertise?
In our never-ending search for the “perfect marketing campaign,” we as marketers can occasionally get trapped into thinking that “outside the box” is better. Sometimes, it’s simply better to focus on our core competencies. When push comes to shove, we as people, and as organizations as a whole, naturally gravitate to who we are and…
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