Garbage in, garbage out: stop forcing your reps to use CRM

sales

Garbage in, garbage out: stop forcing your reps to use CRM

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Every sales rep knows the frustrating experience of entering data into CRM. They’re also familiar with the sound of sales managers harping on their reps, desperately trying to increase CRM adoption.
“Did you enter that in CRM?”
–Every sales manager ever

And to what end? Maybe CRM adoption goes up from 40% to 60%. Maybe they get reps who check off the “entered in CRM” box, but their notes are still the bare minimum.

Update CRM Office SpaceAccording to a report from Experian, 91% of all companies’ data is incomplete, outdated or inaccurate. That’s staggering. Experian also found the main reason for data inaccuracy is human error.

The people we’re relying on for CRM data are the people who are causing it to be incomplete, outdated and inaccurate.

The Aberdeen knowledge brief “I Logged My Calls Into the CRM. Are You Happy Now?” reveals how broken current sales practices are when it comes to CRM. The report acknowledges that while CRM is a must-have for sales teams, CRM solutions are often “labor-intensive, user-unfriendly, counter-intuitive monoliths.” Ouch.

 

“Garbage in, garbage out” kills CRM effectiveness

When reps enter the bare minimum (if that) of data into CRM, they get exactly that much value out of CRM: the bare minimum. The Aberdeen report found that companies who focus on data quality enjoy better visibility into rep performance and how reps can be coached in real-time (when coaching can actually make a difference).

 

How to do CRM right

According to Aberdeen, “CRM data integration needs to be an invisible process from the salespersons’ perspective, so they are not consciously expending time or energy adding (often subjective) data.” It’s spot on. Stop forcing your reps to use CRM, and instead automate all the data collection. Then, CRM becomes easier and quicker to use, so they’ll actually want to use it.

 

The result for best-in-class companies

More than half of best-in-class companies achieve adoption rates of higher than 80%. Why? Because these companies provide their reps with tools such as electronic signatures, gamification and mobile data capturing. Their reps are more likely to have the ability to create content from their mobile phones, and they’re more likely to use predictive analytics to help with sales forecasting.

All of these sales tools help boost CRM adoption, but the golden egg of high CRM adoption lies in automation. Use data automation software, and you’ll never have to ask that “Did you enter that in CRM?” question. It’ll already be done. Seamlessly. Automatically. Accurately.

 

Just some food for thought. If you’d like to see data automation in action, schedule a 10-minute demo of our sales enablement software. Invite your sales reps—they’ll want to see it too.
Oh, and if you want to read the whole Aberdeen knowledge brief, you can download it here!

 

By Accent Technologies

28th December 2015