How important is CRM when managing your sales leads?

Carlos, Great point and I couldn't agree more. I want to make sure I clarify/qualify my statement so it is not confusing.

In practice, I have seen lots of the small to mid-sized businesses struggle to use CRM and MA apps effectively and wanting to just use one due to the time and resource constraints they have. I agree that the purpose of both is quiet different, but the user requirements are driven by the time constraints they have and the natural evolution of their expectation in wanting to have sales force automation and marketing automation together. I have also seen scenarios where a solution like LeadLander is used a lot more passionately by sales teams than their CRM/SFA application.

So in principle, one should definitely have a CRM, Marketing Automation and an Analytics solution that works together to create a closed loop sales & marketing process. But if you have limited resources then you have to consider if you are marketing heavy or sales heavy (by that I mean, are you mainly marketing aggressively and just calling/managing the inbound leads or are you doing a systematic inside sales/field sales driven program) and proceed accordingly.

Best,
Vaibhav Domkundwar

It definitely depends on the business, but few companies would not find use in a CRM. If you take WORKetc for example, here's how it could help you with your CRM:

- Organize all leads/clients/companies/contacts
- Have all information you could want to know about a client at a glance:
- Previous conversations
- Associated dates, reminders, to-dos
- All necessary contact information
- Special fields for notes/details
- Sales pipelines
- Set sales actions/alerts
- Collaborate on leads
- Get reports

This is to name just a few. The cool thing about WORKetc is, it goes past CRM into project management and billing as well. You could essentially manage your entire business through WORKetc, from collaborating on a project for a client to sending out the invoice.

For more features (compared to other main competitors): http://www.worketc.com/compare

Hi Chris,

Before I can answer your question would you be able to tell me what type of business you are in?

Best Regards
Dan

Hi Chris,

You can start with contact and calendar management to help you organize your contacts and events/meetings. For example, you set reminder such as touch base with contact A first Monday of every month. It basically provides you with your own personal assistant.

The next step would be to manage your sales process, i.e., creating lead and putting relevant info into the lead/opportunity.

You can have a look at http://www.borneosoft.com. It can even help you to generate quotation automatically. So, it saves a lot of work, so that you can concentrate in closing the deal.

The most important thing for sales person is to concentrate on customer's need and match it with what you offer that leads to closing the sales. The CRM provides you with the tools that allows you to work efficiently. Try to find tools that can automate part of your work, usually on the administrative work.

Hi Chris:

That's a great question. I think a lot depends on your sales and marketing process. If its primarily sales focused where inside/field sales teams are making calls and building opportunities then a simple CRM application is the way to go. While Salesforce.com is the leader in the space, I think much simpler apps like Highrise are also equally "useful" to track leads and conversations.

However, if your revenue generation is more marketing centric, then opting for a marketing automation application like Eloqua, Marketo or Nurture might be a better alternative. This is especially true if you are doing a lot of marketing campaigns and using the responses from them to mainly channel to sales for them to get on the call. In such a situation - one that I see a lot more these days - a marketing automation application is more critical than a generic CRM/SFA application.

Any one or both of these are important to make sure your sales and marketing process is systematic and scientific.

Hope this helps.

--
Vaibhav Domkundwar
Founder & CEO
http://www.readycontacts.com
http://www.nurturehq.com
http://www.emailifiedhq.com

Chris:

I'd like to provide you with insight as both a CRM consultant AND a business owner (aka salesperson for my company). Being new to the sales role when I started my company, I had to quickly learn the ropes and figure out the best way to navigate this new land. As a CRM person, the natural thing for me to do was to implement a tool to use personally and have it manage my entire business, not just sales.

I don't know if you are the only salesperson at your company, or if there are others. I also don't know if you are looking for a tool for just yourself or for others to share with you. Those will make the rest of the answers very different.

If you are sole salesperson, having a CRM tool will allow you to manage the various leads, prospects, and clients you are working with. It will manage your appointments, to-dos, communications, etc. You will be able to see how many/which prospects are at each stage of the sales cycle, which ones to focus your attention on, and then track where your efforts are best spent based on results.

Like Carlos said, CRM can really help make sure nothing falls through the cracks (when used correctly, of course!).

If you are on a team of salespeople, then CRM can really help the team navigate the waters of prospects and leads, and make sure no two people are going after the same piece of business. It can also be used to show who else in your company may know someone at a company you're trying to get into, leveraging internal knowledge which can help close a deal easier.

That's just the tip of the iceburg when it comes to what the CRM tool can do for you. I personally would not try to sell or run a company without CRM!