US & Canada: (866) 824-5452
For many organizations, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is akin to the heartbeat of the business. It’s where essential information about new and potential customers lives. In essence, it’s a repository of all the details about your most important business relationships. It helps your sales and business development (BD) professionals connect the dots between companies, contacts, and opportunities, and manage relationships and interactions with current and prospective customers. Moreover, it helps them keep track of and harness this complex web of information for the good of the business.
Unfortunately, we hear far too many stories of firms frustrated by lack of CRM adoption within their BD teams. Told that the CRM platform is difficult or time-consuming to use, many organizations react by abandoning it in favor of another vendor’s solution. But that knee-jerk reaction often doesn’t yield the desired result. Why? Because in most cases the failure to adopt wasn’t due to the software itself. Instead, it can be pinned on the BD team not knowing how to use the software effectively.
In our survey of 185 sales and BD professionals, we heard that 70% spend at least four hours a week entering data into their CRM. Sixty percent spend an additional four hours a week deciphering that data. Over a year, that adds up to far too many hours spent on data entry and analysis instead of selling. It’s no wonder sales and business development reps are slow when it comes to CRM adoption.
The good news is that organizations can take steps to get the most from their existing CRM systems. For all the details, download this eBook chock-full of advice from industry experts from firms like EY, Forrester and more.
