Leveraging CRM Solutions To Enable Remote Sales Teams To Operate Effectively

One challenge that IT teams have been facing during the pandemic is how to enable their team to work effectively. Working remotely comes with a unique set of challenges, and although IT departments have been taking steps to ensure their workers are able to work efficiently, there is still a gap. Keep reading to find out how you can leverage CRM solutions to enable your remote sales team to better operate.

Ease of use

If you are leveraging a CRM solution, you're not alone. The CRM market has seen a recent surge in adoption that's expected to continue. Sitting on their remote laptops and stuck at home, many sales teams are finding new ways to leverage CRM solutions to manage their pipelines. For CRM directors and IT leaders, it is important to make the CRM tool easy for the sales team to use. Here are three areas you can focus on:

1. Make key information for accounts and contacts available with fewer clicks. The sales team generally uses accounts, contacts and opportunities heavily, and task management is key as well. Leveraging a CRM solution could allow your team to easily add key contact fields on the record highlights panel as well as leverage custom solutions to display key metrics with just one click. Building mass updates for tasks can help sales teams to update tasks easily.

2. Enable deal changes by making key fields easily accessible through search or at the top of the page. The current Covid-19 scenario has made it important for deal changes to be tracked on a daily basis to meet revenue targets. In order to make this happen, build drag-and-drop metrics panels that display changes in close date, amount, products, stages and key contact role changes to easily monitor deal changes. 

3. Enable the mobile app for your CRM, and have sales teams record their phone calls to be transcribed. Single sign-on solutions to quickly log in to the CRM system and update key fields should be allowed for sales teams. Most CRM systems now have a note-recording feature that can easily record your sales team notes instead of requiring manual typing. You should make your CRM application the next Siri for your sales teams.

Leverage predictive analytics solutions to measure uncertainty for sales management

One of the challenges with the current situation has been that many deals seem to be stuck, and sales teams are unable to move them forward or predict what will happen. Most CRM systems now have the complete or partial ability to score opportunities and predict the likelihood of winning them.

Before you turn on your predictive analytics features, a readiness check on your CRM data is essential. You'll want to ensure that your CRM system has a minimum of three years' worth of historical data, with tasks, activity history and data quality maintained consistently.

Handling increased adoption

In the current scenario, I've found that many IT and CRM teams have become overwhelmed with the increased adoption of their CRM systems. Even though it is a dream for administrators who have been frustrated with the lack of adoption of their changes, it could soon become a quagmire resulting in burnout and employee fatigue.

To keep it simple, here are two things you can do to enable your CRM teams to handle the heavy influx of requests:

1. Simplify the change management process to handle requests with prioritization. Most CRM teams currently have a very loose structure to handle requests. CRM teams should leverage Agile processes for handing changes and should partner with IT to provide tools and best practices to enable the changes. With Agile, prioritization takes a key role, and having a process for priorities can enable business stakeholders to make key decisions and align your CRM teams toward success on their projects.

2. Enable self-service using gamification, communities and processes. If your CRM systems have self-service content, CRM teams should plan to leverage it to train users. Gamification such as digital badges and monthly check-ins with advanced users is another key tactic your teams can implement now to arm your users with the knowledge to use the CRM systems effectively. 

By following these strategies, your IT sales team will be able to move their deals forward with ease. Now is the time to get your CRM system in order!

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