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It’s summer over here, at least on paper. It is a quite appropriate time to travel to an exotic country, hike in the jungle or enjoy sea & sun on the beach… It’s also a fantastic moment to take a step back and to think deeper about your organization and processes. We just emphasized last month how a structured sales process is key to increasing your chances of winning.
If you’ve read it, then you must know that the angular stone of a sales process is your CRM. But not only when it comes to sales, your contacts are your main asset. The people you meet every day contribute actively to your value creation.
Let’s check out some tips on how to set up an efficient CRM from idea to implementation in less than 6 weeks, just in sync with the end of GoT.
Brace yourselves & have a great summer!
You should think CRM starting from the first day of your business activity. When you create a company, you are building a community that you will have to nurture every day. It can be anyone you meet, customers, prospects, investors, partners… you see the point. Every single person taking an interest in you or your company must be part of your community and become a fan, a future ambassador.
Do we really need to explain why you need a CRM ? Below are some of the main benefits you could expect from a good CRM tool.
1/ Building your contact asset. As you create value with your product, one of your business values is all the people you meet. When referring to CRM, we don’t only talk about prospects but about your whole ecosystem. It is crucial to capitalize on it, to get a precise and segmented view of all interactions you had with these contacts over time. A CRM will prevent you from losing contacts and key information when your sales people move to another job.
2/ Nurturing leads. It is unusual that a prospect becomes a client right away the first time you meet him. The act of sale is often preceded by a maturing phase. In fact, a customer should be exposed to your solution a few times before understanding the value and signing. Hence, it is really important to make your CRM base mature and detect the right time to transform opportunities in business.
3/ Monitoring sales performance. A CRM will allow you to track relationships records over time and monitor efficiently sales performances. It is really important to have different levels of details like macro (management), for each business unit and for each sales people allowing you to easily monitor performance in the sales cycle, per sale, per region and per stage.
4/ Preparing for International deployment. International deployment is a strong challenge for companies. Your CRM will help you prepare it and facilitate upsell and cross sell. In fact, a sales rep should be as equipped as the one next to you wherever he is in the world.
5/ Forecasting your future revenue. It’s quite simple : no CRM, no forecast. As CEO, one of your key tasks is to forecast your revenue and cash. Your CRM will help you analyze your sales cycle, success ratios and average deal size to forecast the future based on your existing pipeline.
6/ Raising funds. No CRM, no fundraising as well. As a VC, it is quite anxiety-provoking to invest in a company that manages its sales process with an excel. It is not really scalable, quite difficult to collaborate, you couldn’t share it easily and you could lose it at any time. Not ideal for an investor.
7/ Preparing to scale. CRM is usually the first block in your back office IT system. It is a key element to structure your information system and to deploy it internationally.
Okay, there are three main options, but do you know which one to choose ? First, let’s present them. Then, we’ll explain to you how to choose between those options.
1/ The all in one approach. Salesforce is the most used and deployed CRM in the world. Usability may not be the best but the functional scope is huge. In addition, a lot of connectors will allow you to manage your sales, marketing and whatever you want. However, Salesforce is one of the most expensive CRMs on the market with a price ranging from 25€ to 150€ / user / month. Zoho is a good challenger. Usability is significantly better than Salesforce but functionality perspectives are quite limited. It is mainly used by startups and pricing varies from 12 to 35 euros / user / month. A lot of other integrated CRM platforms are obviously available.
2/ The best of breed approach. It is the best in its class focusing only on the commercial part and the act of sale of the CRM. Pipedrive is a very good one with a great usability. However, it is less relevant if you want to integrate your marketing campaigns. It is often used by early-stage startups.