Author Archives: Brian Gardner

When consulting with distributors implementing CRM technology, I’m often involved in the training of the sales team. I like to start each sales team training session with this question: “Why do you think your company is moving forward with CRM?”

On Tuesday, I presented an MDM webcast on long-term CRM success, just two days after the Patriots won Super Bowl LI. I couldn’t resist drawing a parallel between a contributor to their success and a characteristic of successful sales teams: teamwork.

Managing CRM according to the status quo will only yield status-quo results. I’ll be presenting three focus areas you can focus on for long-term success with CRM in my upcoming Feb. 7 webcast with MDM.com. It’s free: Register today.

The most common CRM-related problems I’ve found for companies over the years revolve around sales processes. For example, most industrial sales organizations are giving nonqualified leads to the sales team with no follow-up process, resulting in wasted effort.

I’m pleased to announce I will be presenting Day 2 of Louisiana State University’s Advanced Professional Sales Certificate Program, which will run April 10-11, 2017.

I’ll share how to fuse sales process improvements and CRM to gain an edge over the competition. This interactive workshop will provide best practices to help sales executives drive organic growth.

Learn more about the certificate program on the LSU website.

I’m excited to announce I’ll be a featured speaker at the first Sales GPS 2017 conference on March 1-2 in Austin, co-hosted by Modern Distribution Management and Indian River Consulting Group.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by CRM.

But rather than let technology get in the way of better process, I’ve learned that the most effective way for industrial sales organizations to get the most from CRM is to approach it systematically— with sales process top of mind.

The No. 1 reason I see that companies aren’t getting ROI from CRM is culture. This isn’t surprising: Many have 10, 20 or 30 years of culture under their belts, and bringing CRM in is a big change. They’ve been successful without CRM, so why should they change?

It will take time, but you can clear the culture barrier.

One-dimensional account profiling, typically using A, B, C or D based on the current business from each customer, is a step in the right direction. But if you want to take a more proactive approach to uncover new opportunities with existing and potential customers, take your profiling a step further.

In the second webcast of the MDM-SalesProcess360 quarterly series, Brian Gardner, author of ROI from CRM: It’s About Sales Process, Not Just Technology, will home in on a critical part of that process: sales opportunity management.

Learn more about this webinar here or register now.