No Lead Left Behind

What’s the point of CRM?

Depending on where you sit, several possibilities present themselves for why companies use CRM systems: 

• “Developing the relationship” with your customer (whatever that means)
• Providing a 360° view of the customer
• Assisting in the forecasting process or giving visibility into “sales funnel”
• As a foundation for keeping in touch with customers
• Developing metrics about your customers and prospects (and sales reps)
• Giving sales people a real-time view of account status and activity across the entire organization

There are at least another dozen we could list that would also be descriptive of CRM.

In our world (which deals primarily with lead management for reseller networks), it’s the visibility and action-tracking benefits which resonate most with our clients.  Once a contact has accumulated activities which indicate it’s “sales ready”, it is passed on to the channel partner as a lead.  The activities posted to the lead record by sales folks during the sales process give clients and their dealer partner managers insights into how well various sales people “pay attention” to that lead.  And as sales are posted, collections of activities can be analyzed to determine which ones have the most influence in closing the sale, and how to better deploy lead qualification, lead distribution and lead nurturing systems.

If activities are the most important element for your CRM purposes, you can also get away with a “less is more” philosophy.  Choose a package that’s simpler and not weighed down with lots of features which aren’t used.  Sales person and dealer adoption will go up and your knowledge about which dealers follow up on leads will expand as well.

JT McDonald, Guest Author and president, MarketNet Services, LLC

For more information on what we call “CRM Lite”, visit http://www.marketnetservices.com/solutions/lead-distribution-software.aspx