[Opinion] Sales reps don't use CRM... and rightly so

Sunny Paris, co-founder and CEO of noCRM.io, looks back at the use of CRM and the importance of choosing a tool tailored to the needs and priorities of the company.

Sunny Paris:

How many times have I heard company directors or sales managers complain that their CRM was out of date, that the information was fragmented and that sales people weren't using it? How many times have I heard salespeople complaining about the additional administrative tasks imposed on them by CRM?

Yet on closer examination, there are objective reasons for this confrontation. All parties have legitimate arguments. Rather, the problem stems from mistaken expectations about the type of solutions being implemented.

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What is a CRM?

As the name suggests, it's a Customer Relationship Management tool. In other words, it's a way of organizing the information a company has on its customers. CRMs are therefore first and foremost structured databases containing all customer information: current contracts, invoices, interaction histories...

These tools are used by many people in different departments of the company: managers, marketing teams, customer support, administration, sales and sometimes even logistics. In general, a CRM is put in place to meet a need for organization, business visibility, to support company growth or increase process efficiency. Implementing a CRM is often a heavy and structuring investment for the company. The people behind it - usually management - want as many people as possible to use the tool, so as to make its deployment profitable.

But in practice...

For sales forces, a CRM is above all a reporting tool, and therefore a constraint. Salespeople are obliged to fill in information so that management or marketing can build reports or create segments. In their day-to-day work, salespeople make little use of CRM, too often filling it in quickly before their sales meeting. As a result, the CRM is updated after the fact, rather than being the trigger for sales practice.

But salespeople are not judged on the quality of the information they enter in a database. Salespeople are judged on their performance: number of calls, appointments, signatures, etc. They need to be equipped with a tool that will improve their performance on these indicators. A tool that will help him make more calls, land more appointments, win more business, but above all not a tool that cannibalizes his time dedicated to prospecting by imposing additional administrative tasks.

See all software Customer relationship management

So, what should you do before implementing a CRM?

The first question to ask is: what is its purpose, and who is going to use it first - the back office, the marketing team or the sales team?

If the aim is to increase B2B sales, then before embarking on the selection of a tool, you need to start by observing how sales people work: look at the tasks they perform over and over again, and see how they can be improved by IT. Trying to change the way sales people work because it's important for the rest of the company is a losing battle. You can improve the way sales people work on specific points, but you can't change the way they work if the change doesn't directly benefit them.

That's why, for sales teams, specialized software for prospecting (Lead Management Software) often brings more benefits than general CRMs. They have a number of advantages: they provide a simple overview of the progress of current deals, they focus on the next follow-up, on how to move prospects forward in the sales process. They can be connected to VOIP, email and calendar applications. But most importantly, they're easy to use. The salesperson arrives in the morning, immediately knows what he or she has to do, and the precise status of each deal in progress.

However, choosing Lead Management software doesn't necessarily mean giving up on implementing a CRM. You just need to know what your company's priority is. If the priority is to manage the customer base, then the first step is to set up a CRM. If the priority is the sales team, then the first step is certainly to use a Lead Management solution.
Once either solution has been implemented and adopted, it will be possible - if the need arises - to implement the second and connect it to the first. The great strength of modern SaaS software is that it is relatively easy to interconnect.

In conclusion, you need to be careful when equipping sales staff with software, because the aim is for them to use the chosen application, not because they have to, but because it's useful.
After observing the way they work on a day-to-day basis, identifying problem areas, selecting software that can potentially solve these problems, it's important to involve several sales reps in a real-life test - modern SaaS tools make this possible at low cost. It's the reality of use, and not the supposed benefits, that will then enable you to make a definitive, informed choice. It's important to remember that, even beyond the sales force, it's always essential to align the benefits of the tools deployed with the needs of the users, to ensure that they are actually used.