My Name is VP of Sales and I Am Addicted to Data

As a VP of Sales, do you tend to be obsessed with details? Have you ever stopped at your desk and asked yourself if your data collection requirements are impractical and not realistic at all? If so, you are surprisingly not alone. Alas, this is why Trustantial exists!

Did you know if you feed a starving person too much food right away, they can die? It’s called refeeding syndrome. Basically, the body did the best it could to adapt to this ongoing period of starvation; the body needs time to begin processing again. Baby steps and gradual intake. Feeding someone too much too fast could cause the body to shut down completely and literally crash. And as crazy as this example sounds, it relates to the core of a business and how it runs….your Customer Relationship Management software.

How is refeeding syndrome related to CRM issues? To be blunt, your sales team has been undernourished for years trying to sustain themselves with handwritten notes, excel spreadsheets, and post-it notes. CRM can provide an incredible amount of data, so the tendency is to want all of it all at once, literally like someone has been starving for years! Let’s track how many employees are at every office internationally! Let’s track what payroll system was used at their Dallas office 7 years ago! Let’s put spouse’s names in the contact record! Birthdays—we need birthdays! Anniversaries, yes, can’t forget when their CMO got married! This is going to be amazing! I’ll need and use all of this data all of the time.

What if I told you that many software companies seduce you with these tid-bits of information and that this ‘we have allllll of this’ is ultimately a trap?

Don’t go crazy with the data you collect from each client. Focus on what you need, not just what the CRM software can store. Any CRM software can store more information than you need. It’s OK to ignore what you don’t need. Here’s the reality: CRM implementations fail because required data that IS crucial is not entered into the system. If you needed such detailed information to be successful, you would have already created a spreadsheet to store it. Here’s the simple truth: Data collection is not free. The more information you require, the more it costs you. If you require too much, the CRM software becomes too difficult to use, so employees stop using it. They still need something to help them manage their data though, and the solution they come up with will sound familiar—the very same spreadsheets you started out with.

Less truly is more.

Remember, even if the only information you put into your CRM is exactly what you were tracking in spreadsheets, you have taken a big step. Even if that means just phone numbers, address, email, current spend, name and title, that is a huge win. Again, less is more and all your information is in one spot. It can be tracked and measured. It is accessible and gives you a transparent view of your customer.

If you feel like you need some tips regarding your CRM and how we can help simplify your ‘less is more’ process, we can help! We offer a free in person consultation or a simple phone call. Call 844-TXCLOUD or email [email protected] to get a time set up today! There is a solution to every problem, and the problem can be that less truly is more!