One of the worst mistakes you can make in business is failing to recognize the factors that are holding back your growth. You may be under the impression that things are going fine and choose to continue with business as usual. But if you made simple changes to your capabilities and workflows, you could unleash massive streams of new revenue with relatively little effort. Rather than fall into the trap of complacency, examine your enterprise for signs that you could be doing better with a CRM in place.
Do Your Customer Communications Lack Transparency?
When it comes to sales, coordination is key. If each of your departments is not on the same page, you will inevitably underserve your clients and limit the amount of business you can do. Enterprises that aren’t able to get a complete, 360-degree view of their customer interactions prove to be their own worst enemies.
Has Information Become Isolated Between Departments?
Serving customer’s needs over the long term requires you to tailor your selling process to the customer’s buying process. That is impossible to do if sales, marketing, fulfillment, and other departments can’t easily share information. In the absence of ERP resources and other automated tools, it is either impossible or at least prohibitive to fully share information.
Are Your Sales and Marketing Teams in Conflict?
Sales and marketing have overlapping functions, but in a disorganized enterprise they can easily work against each other. Without careful coordination, customers will receive marketing messages that are out of step with their place in the sales funnel, creating the kind of confusion and frustration that makes them question your competence.
Is Your Competition Winning the Sales Battle?
A clear sign that something isn’t working is when you routinely lose sales to your competitors, especially if you have superior products, services, or prices. Customer service and sales acumen count for a lot, and if your competitors have streamlined their approach using a CRM, you will regularly struggle to gain market share.
Do Lagging KPIs Inform All of Your Judgment?
It’s important to understand how many sales you are closing, but these lagging indicators only tell you about the past rather than giving you insights into the future. It’s more important to focus on leading KPIs like sales that are about to close so that you can forecast your revenue and make informed strategic decisions.
Are You Confused by Your Failures?
No sales team is successful all of the time. But rather than accepting lost business as an inevitability, it’s crucial to figure out what went wrong, learn from those mistakes, and change your approach with future customers. If you seem to be repeating mistakes or find yourself baffled when a customer decides to leave, it means you lack the tools to analyze and correct your approach.
These kinds of problems are common in enterprises without a CRM. But once you have the capability to track, organize, and analyze the way you interact with new and returning customers, they disappear almost overnight. Rather than accepting your struggles as an inevitable part of business, take steps to streamline your approach and optimize your sales potential.