Help, my sales team doesn’t use CRM!

Just because you have a CRM system doesn’t mean that it will be used

The CRM system is a valuable tool in sales. It helps the sales team organize day-to-day business, streamline collaboration within the sales team, and keep track of customers, figures, and activities. But what if these claims remain pure theory?

Consider the following: Because your management knows how important a CRM system can be, it introduced one at your company a long time ago. You, as head of the sales team, now want to get an idea of the current status of one of the company’s most important sales projects. A long-standing project, with great potential, with several participants on the buyer and seller side. But the data in the CRM system is not revealing. The system displays incomplete information: Contact details are missing, notes about customer appointments are not recorded, products and potentials are not maintained. Surely the next steps for your sales staff aren’t planned and stored. This is not helpful for you or your team.

So to bring things up to date, you call the responsible colleagues again. This is time-consuming, and after that you will have at best a rough picture, composed of the gut feeling of the people involved.

And again you ask yourself the question: Why isn’t my team taking full advantage of the CRM system?

Accept the true core of the problem

In order to understand why employees do not use the CRM system or they use it to only a limited extent, it is important to question users’ motives. After that, you can formulate a solution. This is the only way to make the team use the system once and for all.

So where does the problem originate? If you talk to dissatisfied users, the first answer is usually that working with the CRM system only costs time, it does not add value. Almost as often you hear that the system is only there for management to control the work of the sales team. Or that for one reason or another – technical hurdles or lack of user training – working with the CRM system is virtually impossible.

These are valid arguments, which in the end indicate a central issue: The users have not really accepted the system! Thus, the core of the problem revolves around a missed opportunity for change management and a failure to include users in the design and implementation process. It was implemented despite the users and its benefit is not clear.

Sales and digitization expertise are combined at valantic

In sales, there is a belief that the best deals are created on the interpersonal level. The mutual trust of the people involved plays a major role, especially in B2B sales or in products that require advising. Digital tools are designed to support sales by maintaining relationships, guiding salespeople toward real potential, and creating added value for everyone!

At valantic, our sales and digitization experts work together on CRM projects, and they put the focus on the user right from the start. Our consultants work closely with the group that will benefit from the project, because at the end of the day, these are the people who are supposed to use the digital tools continuously in their daily business.

This means that the groups that will benefit are already involved in the project when the requirement profile is created. To ensure that everyone ultimately uses the system, two key questions must be clarified in advance:

• How can I improve my sales work?
• What does the sales department need to do this?

In addition, valantic’s employees communicate as peers with the IT department. No digitization project will come to a successful conclusion without the active cooperation of IT.

Once target images and individual challenges have been defined, the focus is on creating and implementing the solution. The system is introduced in small iterations. This procedure ensures that all users are included, that the implementation does not overtax users or IT, and that critical points from the users’ point of view are taken into account in a timely manner.

We at valantic continue to support you after the introduction of a CRM system. Because the ongoing evaluation of the system is just as important as constantly integrating and training employees.

Here’s an outline of our approach:

• Step 1: Make users the focus
• Step 2: Develop a target image
• Step 3: Evaluate the individual challenge
• Step 4: Create the solution
• Step 5: Get the job done
• Step 6: Train the users