A B2B technology report from Informatica revealed that 25% of marketers don’t know their lead conversion rates, largely because they don’t have the right CRM strategy, which limits sales growth and work efficiency.
If a CRM does not provide immediate value and is overly complex to implement and maintain, it will fail to do what it was designed to do: increase sales.
On the other hand, a recent survey by Software Advice revealed that 74% of companies using the right technology for their business say that it has improved their access to customer data, therefore allowing them to improve lead conversion and ultimately increase sales.
If your CRM is not working for you, here are five common reasons why:
1. No overarching strategy with relevant sales goal metrics
It’s critical that sales and marketing teams work closely together to set an overarching strategy with specific sales goals that can be tracked using a CRM, for example: lead conversions rates for specific sales pipelines.
Often times, companies don’t have a clear strategy or a system for tracking metrics like these, instead using their CRM as a glorified contact management system.
If you don’t currently have predefined goals and metrics, then you might be losing out on one of the key features of your CRM which should be providing a clear overview of your sales pipeline progress.
In order to keep your business on the track to sales growth, make sure that you set aside time to establish a clear strategy, define which sales metrics will be relevant and have both marketing and sales teams meet regularly to track progress through your CRM.
2. Not utilizing CRMs effectively
According to a research report by BuyerZone, 91% of companies with more than 11 employees use CRM software and have great initial intentions for getting the most value out of them, yet after their teams utilize it for the first few months, usage wanes.
Read rest of the article at: eConsultancy
