There are few absolutes in life.
Death and taxes are the common ones.
I would postulate that there are two more specifically for your reps:
- Reps HATE to update CRM
- Reps are LASER FOCUSED on hitting their accelerators
If these two truths are correct, why do we bog down our sales reps with updating a system that only values the leadership? Shouldn’t we focus our time on REMOVING all of the barriers to closing business? Shouldn’t we drive excellence through coaching – not drive them to type more data into the CRM? These are the types of questions I asked which eventually drove me to leave the comfort and friends at Microsoft and start a journey to help sales reps everywhere.
Let’s face it: Reps HATE CRM because it is a “leadership only” system meant to provide value to leadership and zero value for to reps. Most reps spend 10-15 hours, or more, a week updating the CRM so that someone (usually in sales ops) can tell them that they are not going to hit their number.
This is so frustrating.
To top it off, the dreaded “you are out of compliance” email always makes it’s way to your inbox. Now you have to spend an additional few hours finding the issues and resolving them before you end up on CRM-POLICE radar….and you are NO closer to hitting your number.
Let me net this out: We are putting too much admin work on our reps and this is a contributing cause to why they miss their number. In the scenario described above, each rep spends between 10-15 hours a week updating CRM. What would happen to your rep’s attitude and your revenue numbers if you gave them their time back? What could they do with 10-15 hours? Most importantly, what if you could give them this time back AND get the details you needed to understand your business?
There are a series of steps that you can take to help them.
First, you need a robust coaching platform that captures your unique sales process that also gives you real-time insights into EVERY deal WITHOUT your rep putting a single activity or relationship update into CRM.
Then, you need to have smart software that watches your rep’s activities that will also ASSIST them in updating the CRM (not burden them).
Lastly, you need a sales coach to help them figure out what to do next based on real-time updates from the customer. Only then will your reps close their deals and hit their accelerators.
None of the platforms that you are using do this today, except for one. Now I won’t bore you with all the awesome technical details but suffice it to say this thing has been a game changer for all of our customers.
But don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself for 30 days.