Mike Lewis has spent his career automating processes to help customers remove bottlenecks and operate more efficiently.
Mike Lewis has spent his career automating processes to help customers remove bottlenecks and operate more efficiently.
The goal of customer relationship management (CRM) is to efficiently and effectively grow your business while improving the customer experience. When implemented properly, CRM can give companies a competitive edge.
Brian Gardner, Founder and Lead Evangelist for SalesProcess360, knows firsthand how to get the most out of your CRM.
“I was the son of the boss. I grew up in an industrial sales organization from the time I was a small kid, stocking shelves and playing with demos in the back of my dad’s car. I worked inside sales, outside sales, was a division manager and ultimately the VP of sales. I lived and breathed distribution.”
For a variety of reasons, most service providers (VARs and integrators) are closely affiliated with a major CRM company. Often, it’s for the installed base access. In this relationship, the company hands over a list of customers (installed base), usually in a geographic territory, so the provider can service the accounts, push modifications, and new add-on capabilities. However, CRM systems are not all the same, and they don’t carry the same feature functionality. Users must be careful to use platform-agnostic providers to get the best form, fit, and functions in their CRM solution. This approach is critical to preventing trips and costly false starts.
One of the most common reasons customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives fall short of expectations is not having a point person who takes ownership. More specifically, it’s the lack of a dedicated leader who can drive the process from a sales management perspective rather than just a technical one.
Onboarding is a challenge for most technical companies. In my 30-plus years as a hiring manager in the industrial automation business it took, on average, three months to learn the product and application basics. Even with three to five years’ experience, it took six months to become proficient enough to make effective sales calls. Despite this lag in performance, many companies have no effective policy or procedure that ensures efficient and effective onboarding.
With CRM, 80% of us suffer from low adoption leading to poor ROI-itis. Fortunately, this condition is not terminal and can be fixed by following five easy steps.
The industrial supply landscape is often a battle of having the right solution available when your customer needs it. Do this well and your customer will boost your service score. The result is you get closer to being a true partner and not just a commodity supplier.
Have you invested plenty but still struggle to get adoption and ROI on your CRM?
You don’t have to settle for an underperforming CRM. Use this guide to Identify the issues, detail a path forward and reconstitute your project with a CEO for CRM.
By all accounts, Spartan Controls is a highly successful company. For over 60 years, Spartan has been successfully providing customers with high performance solutions, industry expertise, lifecycle support, and technical training.
Get insights based on decades of experience in industrial markets, including why you should think beyond outside sales, how to take a proactive approach to sales opportunities and how to let sales process drive your CRM wish list.