CRM Case Study: How a lack of data renders a CRM as ineffective
Back ground: Our client is a major Telecommunications, Data and collocation hosting company focusing on medium to enterprise sized clients. As a successful business, they utilize marketing, inside sales and outside sales to convert leads into customers.
Business Challenges: Like many companies, our client had limited visibility into the sales cycle. This included:
· Understanding the quantity and quality of leads being created by their marketing efforts
· Understanding how these leads were qualified by the inside sales team
· The lead to qualified sales cycle ratio generated by the inside sales team for the purpose of transitioning to an outside sales rep.
· With what urgency and frequency were leads and prospects being contacted
· How many interactions with a lead or prospect were required to move the sales process to an outside rep
· How many interactions with a prospect were required to close a customer once it reached the outside sales team
· The amount of activity generated by each member of the team, rolling up to regional, district and company wide reports
· The opportunity to refine the sales process based on combining best practices with eliminating inefficiencies
· Visibility into closing ratios and selling cycles
This is combined with under a 20% utilization and millions of dollars invested into their current CRM system which ultimately did not provide real time reporting.
The Solution: The Front Solutions Sales Engineers met with the clients and stake holders agreeing on the following steps:
· A custom activity card was created to focus on the seven key criteria that moved an opportunity from a prospect to a client
· The activity card reduced the amount of time required to input the data from 7 minutes to 30 seconds
· Front Row CRM was layered onto their existing CRM reducing downtime and increasing the effectiveness of their current CRM
· The Front Row Sales Pro application was installed on all sales staff blackberries allowing for mobile real time data to be collected
· The Front Row system date and time stamped a new prospect to allow for visibility into lead engagement
· A management dashboard was created to provide real time visibility into the sales cycle, where and how prospects moved through the 7 stage activity card, the date and time that each record was touched while sorting by rep, region, rolling up to a national level
· Information from Front Row Solutions was to flow through the legacy CRM creating meaningful data that was now usable by the entire organization
The Results: Within 6 months, the client reported the following results:
· Marketing was able to receive real time analytics critical to understanding where the best leads were coming from resulting in more targeted campaigns that generated higher quality leads
· Management was now able to understand the sales cycle process, the activity associated with a customer acquisition, close ratios and conversation rates
· Best practices and key performance coaching were implemented resulting in improved performance of the sales team at every level
· Sales rep CRM compliance is over 90%
· Sales rep productivity has increased resulting in more sales
· The legacy CRM system is now being used to its potential
· Revenue and profit are on the rise
What we have seen with this client is a common set of sales issues among many of our customers. With a customised activity card and set activities that drive the sales process forward, we have seen some tremendous results.
A successful CRM starts with adoption. Without data, a CRM system will not work. The next step is to take that data, put it into meaningful and timely reports. This is where Front Row CRM gets results for our customers.
