Always be … CRMing

Sales Leaders (and for that matter anyone in Sales) know the acronym “ABC” is the infamous motivational phrase “Always Be Closing” made popular by Alec Baldwin.  Today’s Sales Leaders need to know another acronym called “CRM”, or Customer Relationship Management

Long past are the days of business card binder pages and heaven forbid a Rolodex. The days of keeping track of appointments and upcoming opportunities in a cumbersome Day-Timer are past as well.  Trying to manage on a spreadsheet requires a lot of wasted time and effort just set up and maintain. 

Today a Sales Leader is well versed with CRM systems. CRM is software for managing all your company’s relationships with prospects and existing customer interactions as well as tracking events and opportunities so that you can in fact Always Be Closing. A CRM gives you an organized system with visibility (across the company) with all sorts of built in functionality to improve managing all your relationships.  

Sales Leaders often have experience in different CRM software products.  Realistically, there are about a dozen CRM systems - each a little different than the next. A CRM software is typically selected based on the size of company, legacy systems, desired features and industry requirements. However, no matter which system is selected (or in some cases built custom), they all possess the functionality to enable better relationships through the data they store and the ability to display the critical information for the sole intent of closing more deals.  

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Adoption and effective use of a company’s CRM is incumbent on Sales Leaders voicing their needs, setting the example, (often they become a power user) as well as training their salespeople to use the system effectively. Additionally, a Sales Leader will be able to monitor progress of deals directly from subordinate’s usage, as well as configure reports and dashboards to keep a pulse on all sales activities (in real time) and present sales activity directly from the CRM. 

If your Sales Leaders are not ABCing they probably are not CRMing.