Sales Force Collaboration Using CRM

Effective Sales Forces Collaborate and Communicate

Numerous companies often deal with an ineffective Sales force by increasing the number of sales people.  However, this approach often fails to have the desired effect and can actually cause additional problems for the very sales force the company is trying to improve.  For example, an increase in the number of sales contact points creates confusion for the customer and even competition amongst sales teams; pressure to increase lead accumulation and territory coverage can lead to reductions in time spent with customers, resulting in a gradual loss of understanding of what the customer really wants.

Instead of simply adding people to the sales team, it may be more efficient to improve other areas of the sales process and also perhaps restructure the sales organisation to help facilitate improvements in information sharing within the sales organization, within the company, and with the customer; thus helping to consolidate all sales communication and provide a platform to allow collaboration of sales activities between sales teams.

Sales processes, internal communication within the sales team, and then communication between the sales team and the customer needs to be standardised and unified.  As companies grow and add more specialised sales staff, various communications / messages are relayed to the customer. With this in mind it is important that companies try to ensure that sales people don't deliver the same message or same quotation that may have been delivered by another representative of the company.  Or worse, that messages are out of sync or even in direct competition with each other, quoting different terms or different prices.  This all goes towards creating confusion for the customer and damage to the customer’s perception of your company.

To achieve this end goal a company needs a robust, reliable information sharing platform.  This is essential to the success of any sales force, in particular to those businesses which may have sales teams in multiple distant locations who may be selling different products to the same customer.  To best improve communication, all sales information needs to be institutionalized and centralised.  

This is best done with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. A CRM is a web based tool that allows business to manage customer relationships and provides sales managers with a detailed, real time insight into sales processes.  In addition to this a CRM can most definitely help companies to improve their sales team efficiency and thus gain substantial improvements in sales revenue.

A CRM system also helps companies reduce sales ‘ramp time’ for new sales representatives and makes companies less dependent on ’process champions’ or individual sales representatives, which can be very problematic during times of turnover.

More than this, effective use of a CRM will allow improved communication between representatives so they can target the right products, at the right time, to the right customers. New sales representatives will have access to the correct information and (when you consider the fact a CRM also contains a very powerful Marketing module) it also gives them access to marketing information and therefore gain insight into any marketing campaigns that are in the pipeline. The end result of this of course is that your company teams can work together, consolidating not only the sales team, but the sales and the marketing teams as well.

In short, a good CRM strategy makes companies less dependent on individual sales people, while making the sales force more effective (boosting your company image and standardising processes and communications with customers) and efficient (avoiding repetitive or unnecessary tasks).

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