How to Get More Value from Your CRM

CRM is widely considered a staple for sales teams. Yet CRM isn’t widely used by every seller.

In a recent CSO Insights study, although almost all the participants said they had a CRM system, 32 percent of them admitted that their systems are less than three-quarters adopted.

With endless research proving the value of CRM, why aren’t salespeople using it?

Well, here’s one reason: According to HubSpot’s 2018 State of Inbound report, manual data entry is the number one CRM adoption challenge. Yes, the data housed in CRM is incredibly useful to sales managers and higher-level executives. But it demands sellers spend a lot of time updating and maintaining records – time they’d rather spend selling.

Rather than not use CRM at all, sales teams should consider integrating their CRM with a sales enablement tool to automate processes and streamline workflows. Here are three ways to drive CRM usage with sales enablement.

Integrate CRM with a mobile sales enablement tool.
By doing so, sales teams can:

• Easily access the most up-to-date, on-brand content from marketing – whether online or offline
• Provide customized presentations for unique buyers and lead value-driven discussions that address specific challenges or goals
• Instantly track content used in meetings by directly attaching notes to the opportunity or contact record to cut down time typically spent manually entering the information later; this provides a consistent journey for prospective buyers
• Automatically create and track activities in CRM, thus making sure that meetings and sales interactions are tracked – and bringing valuable information to the seller and the company

Create a single location for content and data.
This makes it easier for salespeople to prepare, present, and follow up after meetings. Having information in one location provides sales teams data-driven conclusions about which materials are appropriate for each unique sales interaction based on industry, buyer persona, and opportunity stage. This insight allows sellers to be more effective in meetings and consistently  replicate success.

Measure your sales effectiveness.
Sellers often wonder which content helps move deals forward or causes them to stall. By integrating a sales enablement tool with a CRM, sellers can show proof of what’s working by tying ROI back to the content used throughout the sales process. A sales enablement integration with CRM helps sellers do this by capturing which materials are used at each stage of the sales cycle.

By integrating your CRM solution with a sales enablement platform, you can increase CRM usage as well as business impact to provide your customers with a better buying experience and drive business growth.

As the EVP of global alliances and international sales at Mediafly, Tony Kavadas works to expand business relationships on a global scale through strategic alliances.