Customer Relationship Management Strategies: Why Your Sales Reps Should Ditch The ‘Busy Work’, And Focus on Building Relationships
A CRM is a phenomenal tool that can help you exponentially grow your business—if used correctly. Our last article focused on how the C stands for Customer and how sales teams might lose sight of that goal. This week, we’re diving into what the R stands for.
The relationship between sales reps and customers is where a lot of decisions happen. With the right relationship (and the right tool to build it as strong as possible), you not only ensure more sales but also a better overall customer experience and impression of your sales team or company.
The Misconception
It’s easy to think, in this digital age, that a CRM is mandatory. Everyone’s using one, right? So it MUST be the way to go.
A lot of teams look at the trend and think the equation goes like this:
Your Team + Your Management + CRM = Higher Profits
But when looking at the stats reported by Forbes that doesn’t seem to track. Their studies show that sales reps are spending 60% of their time on non-revenue-generating activities and less than 20% of their time in their CRM.
So what’s the issue?
The Reality
The fact is that a CRM isn’t a magic bullet solution to increase metrics. Instead, the sale revolves around your sales reps’ abilities to build a relationship with their customers. And a CRM is designed to help create and manage those relationships.
If you cram a CRM into the mix that doesn’t fit your team, you aren’t making relationships—you’re making frustrated reps who waste time (whether intentionally or just because your system is designed to require it). You might notice a few symptoms:
- Sales reps spending over an hour per day typing CRM details
- Rep reports consisting of little more than “Saw Customer X. Follow-up Friday”
- Weeknights filled with “catch-up reports” as reps try to remember the day
You’ll see sales fall through and zero proof of relationships getting built while having no idea why your reps seem so frustrated.
The Solution
The right CRM is one that not only stores powerful information on your customers—it’s the one that frees up your sales reps to focus on building their current customer relationships. It allows them to capture relationship-building information like who a customer goes to for sales approvals, who else needs to be involved in a sale with a particular customer, and what concerns they’ve had in the past.
“Finally… a CRM my sales reps love to use! I finally found a CRM my sales reps love to use, which in turn gives me relevant information to run my company.
– Kevin Weinacht, President Weinacht and Associates
With a quick and easy reporting method, your reps can even record details like a customer’s personal life. What are their kids doing? How’s their home situation? These are small but impactful details that make it easy for reps to build lasting relationships over time.
All of this information boosts the Relationship aspect of your CRM. You get a big picture of how your sales are doing and a deeper understanding of how your customers are. This all helps, inevitably, with the “M” of CRMs—management. And we’ll get to that in our next article.
In the meantime, look for ways to ditch the busywork you’ve added on your sales reps with a CRM. That way they can focus on the relationship side of their CRM. You can schedule a Telenotes demo with us to see how your reps can get more accurate and complete customer sales data into your system.
