Factors Affecting Sales Performance Positively Affected by CRM Technology Deployment

Let's make one thing clear: CRM technology is not (in itself) sufficient to success. However, if your sales team are utilising CRM solutions in an efficient, regular and correct manner then they will unlock the potential for your sales performance to increase (see my previous article on CRM Strategy for more on this)

CRM must, therefore, be seen as an enabler. By encouraging your sales team to use CRM, their workflow should become more streamlined which in turn allows for factors that can help increase sales to be easily identified and managed. The factors CRM positively affects, in particular, are customer knowledge, collaborations (i.e. between a sales and marketing team), as well as understanding social capital.

From recent research on how CRM allows you to hone in on these important factors that turn a lead into a sale, I have created a simple flow-chart. This will help you identify the areas in which CRM technology will boost your sales performance by allowing you to understand your customers better and drive them through the sales process with greater ease.

As you can see from the diagram below, the efficiency of sales administration is perhaps the stage at which CRM technology has the most impact. I can't stress enough how important this stage is; if it's overlooked or if you are still storing information in scruffy notebooks, the entire sales process can be compromised.