I am lucky to work closely with our clients to align their goals with our custom sales as a service solutions. However, a recurring roadblock we hit in these discussions is effective business development CRM usage. Many tell me they tried a CRM, but the results weren’t worth the effort. Or, they’re wary of implementing a new system and tackling the perceived complexity, seeing it as more trouble than its worth.
When I hear these hesitations, I empathize. Studies show 40% of SMEs say they lack the resources to implement a CRM, and less than 45% of companies surveyed had a 90% CRM adoption rate. There are data and experience to support these misgivings, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
Thoughtful business CRM implementation, regular refreshes, and dedicated support unlock the average 29% boost in sales and a 34% increase in productivity with effective CRM implementation and maintenance. If you set your system up right, you’re sure to avoid unnecessary pain and reap the revolutionary benefits a CRM offers.
Essential Elements for an Effective CRM
- Track all activities. If the intelligence isn’t logged, there’s no benefit. Limited data leads to limited insights.
- Customize your fields. Custom fields (i.e., contract end dates, fiscal year, software they’re utilizing) track pertinent prospect information, helping to better segment your database for targeted campaigns. Train your outreach team to gather this custom data to build your CRM.
- Note and clean bad data. Train your team to record incorrect information, duplicates, and missing data. Have a centralized way to record issues and update your database regularly.
- Integrate marketing automation. When marketing automation and CRM work together, you get real-time updates. Quickly gain information on insights like webpages visited, campaign interactions, and marketing content engagement with marketing automation integration. The faster you gain these insights, the nimbler you can be with responses.
- Build custom reports and dashboards. Use custom dashboards and reports to track activity by campaign, buyer persona, attempt number, or other relevant stats for your team. When reports are relative to KPIs, you can quickly adjust efforts and increase overall performance.
- Leverage calendar and task features for cadence. Establish outreach cadences for each segment and stay steadfast with the calendar and task features. Dedication to the cadence is essential to determining effectiveness and adjusting for continual improvement.
- Integrate geo-mapping. Geo-mapping gives you additional insights you can leverage for improving outreach, optimizing travel plans, or boosting referrals based on location proximity.
Setting Up for Success with NuGrowth’s CRM Services
With over ten years’ experience as a Salesforce® CRM partner, the experts at NuGrowth Solutions know the CRM-business development relationship inside and out. We’ve worked with businesses of all sizes and across industries to implement, refresh, and provide on-going support to their custom CRM system.
Discover how we can bring your team custom dashboards and reporting, webform and sales and marketing integration, and targeted, personalized training for CRM success for years to come.
Contact us at 800.966.3051 or www.nugrowth.com to find out how our team can serve you and your business.
As the Director of Account Management for NuGrowth Solutions, Phil Dumas is responsible for working with NuGrowth customers to gain alignment with the goals and expectations established by each engagement. In his years at NuGrowth, Phil has excelled as a top sales performer for several engagements and served as a sales coach, leading and growing several successful business development teams. His sales expertise includes financial services, software, education, staffing, and automotive advertising.