Selling B2B2C products is a market where competition is fiercer than ever. To face up to this, and increase your market share, it's crucial to equip yourself with tools that not only simplify processes, but also transform the way you interact with your distributors.
A customer relationship management (CRM) system is more than just software; it's a strategy, a tool for growth and an investment in your brand's future.
Indeed, investing in a Sales CRM is not a superfluous step, but a kingly one. Today's buyers are no longer mere spectators of their purchases, but have become the main players. Information and comparison between offers have become much easier, and you now need to differentiate yourself in a different way.
In this article, we'll explore why a CRM is essential, especially for field salespeople, and how it can drive your growth.
Each of the following 4 points has only one consequence: to increase your growth by putting the customer back at the heart of your business.
Customer loyalty is the cornerstone of any successful business. Building loyalty costs your company far less than acquiring new customers. In fact,acquisition is 5 times more expensive than retention.
And it's the same when the customer is a point of sale. Keep your distributors happy, increase your loyalty rate and preserve your revenues. You'll then have more time to devote to your sales effort, than to preventing churn.
Several actions can be taken to achieve this:
Thus, each year, instead of losing 20% of your customers, you will keep up to 95% of your turnover. You will then only have to make a 5% sales effort to keep your n-1 turnover.
By analyzing customer data, a CRM will help you anticipate their needs and offer solutions before they even ask for them, creating an unrivalled customer experience.
It's a bit of a cliché, but it's true. For sale: time is money.
On average, salespeople spend 30% of their time on administrative tasks. A good CRM can automate all low value-added tasks, freeing sales reps from routine and repetitive tasks. They can then concentrate on selling.
What's more, a sales CRM centralizes information so that it can be retrieved more quickly. Your sales reps will no longer waste time searching through their mailboxes for exchanges they've had with a prospect.
A good way to measure your teams' access to information is to ask each sales rep for a relatively old file - plus or minus 6 months - and measure the response time to retrieve the information.
Beyond understanding how much time your sales people can save with a CRM, this exercise will highlight the unreliability of your current methods... you can easily miss an exchange, information or action that should have been carried out.
Collaboration between sales and marketing teams is crucial. It's important that these two departments are aligned, for several reasons:
Have you ever noticed a lack of communication between marketing and sales when they should be working hand in hand?
Have you ever seen a salesperson unknowingly approach a prospect who is in fact already a customer?
In either case, you may not have delivered the right message and/or discredited your company.
A sales CRM serves as a unified platform where information is shared in real time, eliminating information silos. For example, when a sales rep updates customer information, the marketing team can immediately use this data for targeted campaigns, creating synergy between departments.
What's more, field sales staff can immediately see exactly which actions have been carried out with a prospect, and by whom. No more phone calls to colleagues who left the company... 3 years ago!
If your sales development is geographical, equipping your field sales staff with CRM software will facilitate territory transfers. When your regional manager leaves his place to his colleague, with only a list of prospects on Excel, he often feels misunderstood, and this is logical, as it's a personal working document, not a collaborative one. CRM structures actions and communication, facilitating collaboration.
A CRM is not just about managing existing customers; it's also a powerful tool for acquiring new ones.
By providing detailed data on prospects and tracking every interaction, a CRM enables sales reps to personalize their approach and close more sales.
What's more, with real-time dashboards and reports, managers can track performance (sales, product presence, sell-in, sell-out...) and adjust strategies accordingly. It also lets you know the percentage of achievement of objectives, overall or per sales rep.
As you can see, a CRM helps you to build loyalty, sign up more customers, understand your business challenges and therefore significantly develop your growth. You put the customer at the heart of your business, while optimizing your internal processes.
Your teams will no longer waste time on non-value-added tasks, managers will have standardized and reliable information, and collaboration will be strengthened.
Before delving deeper into this subject, I invite you to consult our white paper entitled "How to navigate the CRM jungle". In it, you'll discover the different types of CRM, learn how to choose the one that best suits your needs, and how to successfully integrate it into your teams.
Below, we answer the most frequently asked questions about buying a CRM for field sales staff.
Whether you already have a CRM solution or are in the selection phase, it's crucial to take into account certain key criteria when choosing the right CRM for your field sales force.
Recognizing these needs can help you choose one CRM over another. However, regardless of your specific needs, certain criteria remain fundamental:
To find out more about the essential functionalities of a CRM designed for field sales representatives, please consult this page.
Here are some of the key features to look for in a CRM for field salespeople:
As mentioned earlier in this article, a CRM offers a number of advantages for sales management, including :
Proper preparation for CRM implementation is crucial, and can be a challenge. It is estimated that 50% of the success of a CRM project is downstream, and 50% downstream.
Upstream :
During set-up :
Downstream :
When choosing your CRM software, you will come across two fundamentally different approaches:
In both cases, customization is possible to adapt your CRM to your company's specific processes and requirements. Sidely offers the following options, among others:
Ready to see how a Commercial CRM can revolutionize your business?
Try Sidely free for 15 days or request a demo to discover its potential.
