I’ve been thinking a lot about a post I wrote back in December titled 4 Key Sales Tools you Shouldn’t Live Without* and it really got me thinking about the core functionality of a “Really Good CRM” and how one would go about even evaluating one. First, let’s start with some definitions…
By CRM, I mean Customer Relationship Management software (we’re SaaS if it makes a difference to you). CRM is one of those acronyms that means a lot of different things to many different people so let me take it one step further:
CRM (for the purposes of this conversation) = Sales Software. The objective, help your sales team do their job faster, better, and smarter (#CouldntHelpMyself). To find out how best to meet the goal I’m going to start by looking at the activities salespeople get up to every day:
- Research and find new customers
- Meet with new and existing customers
- Call customers on the phone/answer incoming calls
- Find opportunities with new and existing customers
- Help customers buy (demo product/answer questions)
- Follow up on commitments
The list could go on forever but at it’s core we are having conversations with a wide variety of people every day. These conversations a generating a good deal of notes and a few follow ups…
- Note taking
- Task manager & Calendar
- Address book
Some of these contacts might want to buy something, so we’ll need a quick way to remember who wants what…
- Lead/Opportunity manager (or whatever you want to call it)
There’s so much going on that we’re going to need a way to prioritize our time…
- Forecasting
And some of us (or our bosses) LOVE stats & metrics…
- Reporting
Now to quantify “Good” I’ve created a scorecard using the above criteria to rate what’s important to us.
*TL;DR 1. A Really Good CRM, 2. Task Manager, 3. Note Taking System, and 4. Sales Presentation Library. Doug breaks down the CRM component into three essential functions Contact Management, Opportunity Management, & Forecasting/Reporting.
