DECEMBER 2018CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8Customer Relationship Management--The Key for Better Sales Managementnsights, analytics, raw data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence dominate the headlines every day. Advancements in compute power and capabilities is moving at a rapidly evolving pace and our customers and consumers have the power of choice like they never have before. How do we as businesses look to differentiate ourselves in this hyper competitive landscape? First, getting back to basics is important. This includes reviewing your sales processes from identifying prospects to caring and feeding your existing customers. Second, is building the proper data sets around your customers and consumers. Third, is deriving insights so you can better attract new customers and serve your existing ones. While the basics include defining your sales process, how you are going to organize your sales force, and most importantly how you will compensate them. It also includes setting up the software you will use to capture information about your customers, track activity throughout the sales process, and manage customer contacts post the sales close. Many companies have a CRM software already picked out. For Red Wing Shoe Company, we use Salesforce.com. Most CRM's can provide a sales force work flow capability, customer activity tracking, and a case management system for customer service inquiries. However, it can be a struggle to gain adoption, have a clear picture of their customers, and access data and more importantly derive insights. A common mistake is looking to the software to solve broader underlying deficiencies. So many companies believe if they implement a CRM, their sales woes will disappear. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Like any software, you have to start with defining your business. Including the process flow you will enable with the technology, the business problem you are trying to solve, and the behaviors you are looking to from your employees. No software system can do that for you. As you look to either implement a CRM or maybe re-implement your CRM, start with how you want to structure your customer base, then define the sales process that will allow you to best capture and serve your customers based on that structure. Finally, think through how you will ensure that the new system is used, and that data input into the system is set-up correctly. Thinking through these steps often leads to a realization that a Sales operations function is needed to best use and deploy a CRM tool. Sales operations functions can span from reinforcing IMARC KERMISCH, VP & CIO, RED WING SHOE CO.IN MY VIEW
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