Boosting CRM Adoption: Focus on Sales Managers

By Walter Rogers
President and CEO
Baker Communication

In these days of low margins and hyper-competition, it is important to not only work harder but work smarter. One of the best tools available to help sales organizations work smarter and drive more revenue is to deploy a full-featured CRM system that is configured to effectively support every aspect of the sales process. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency in many organizations to underutilize the CRM, focusing only on sales accounting and overlooking the potential that most CRMs have to help the entire organization drive revenue.

Which brings us to sales managers. Sales management is one of the black and white areas when it comes to driving revenue: the sales manager is measured on how well everyone on the team is growing pipeline, meeting or exceeding quota, and closing deals. End of story. If the team isn’t at least meeting quota, the sales manager should be very unhappy and also a little bit concerned. The sales manager is not leading a Cub Scout troop or a therapy group; the sales manager is charged with making sure the team is driving revenue. Sales managers can use all the help they can get when it comes to improving sales performance and the CRM can be a powerful source of help. Unfortunately, in some organizations, if the sales manager is engaged with the CRM at all, it is probably only for the purpose of filing reports and creating evaluations. The CRM can be so much more.

CRMs can be configured and leveraged so that they become revenue driving engines for the whole sales team. It comes down to this: information is power, and the CRM puts an incredible amount of real time information at the sales manager’s finger tips. Want to know what deals a sales rep has in the pipeline? It is in the CRM. Want to know how many calls a sales rep has made this week, who they have called on, and what the results were? It is in the CRM. Want to know what kind of solutions a sales rep is discussing with a particular account? It is in the CRM. Want to know what a sales rep’s account plan is, where the high priority targets are and who the key contacts are on that account? It is all in the CRM.

EVERYTHING is in the CRM. The CRM allows the sales manager to collect and manage huge chunks of data faster and more efficiently, more accurately forecast pipeline, better target solutions customers need, shorten the sales cycle, and provide sales managers with better snapshots of what is going on across the team at any given time. With this information available at the click of a mouse, the sales manager can nimbly shift priorities and develop new strategies that respond effectively to changing conditions within specific accounts. The sales manager can also conduct more productive account reviews and provide effective just-in-time coaching that will immediately impact sales rep performance. All of this serves to drive revenue in a powerful and even exponential way. At this point, the CRM becomes a sales manager’s friend instead of just another task to manage. Once the sales manager figures this out, CRM adoption really begins to climb.

Here are 10 crucial metrics that sales managers should track regularly through the CRM:

• Lead conversion ratio
• Lead response time ratio
• Pipeline to revenue target ratio
• Year over year pipeline trend ratio
• Time per sales stage ratio
• Average Revenue per sale
• Account share ratio
• Account profitability ratio
• Year over year sales trend ratio
• Win-Loss ratio
   

Once you track them, what do you do with them?

Once you have identified the metrics you want to follow with each member of your sales team, you can use this data in at least two different ways. Obviously, you want to use it to manage performance. You start this process by clearly spelling out to everyone on your team what the metrics are being followed, why they are valuable to their success, how they will be measured, how often they will be measured, and what will be done with the information gleaned from these measurements. It is crucial that everyone on the team understands every aspect of this process, so don’t skimp on your efforts. Create and distribute documentation that everyone can refer to, send out regular performance updates, and make discussions of these measurements a part of regular coaching. Don’t use them as a hammer; instead, use them as goals to aim for and benchmarks to measure progress. However, when progress is lagging, the data you follow in the CRM becomes the lever that guides your coaching strategy to help reps improve.

To a lesser extent, the CRM data can also be used to inspire and refocus the team. Make this data the defining measure of your team’s culture. Use them to mold the vision and image of your team. Work them into your conversation and help the team see that leveraging these metrics holds the key to improving performance and driving more revenue, instead of just a set of numbers hanging over their heads. Once your team knows and understands the role of the CRM plays in helping them measure and achieve success, their ability to meet and even exceed your expectations will rise dramatically.

Walter Rogers is the President and CEO of Baker Communications. Baker Communications is a sales training and development company specializing in helping client companies increase their sales and management effectiveness. He can be reached at 713-627-7700.

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