Posted on February 4, 2021
CRM Systems In Sales And Marketing
If CRM systems fail in sales, marketing, or both, you'll usually find a lack of user buy-in. Yes, things can go wrong technically, but technical issues can nearly always be overcome with the right software skills or changes to the hardware. By recording customer interactions, the CRM and marketing software allows your sales teams to effectively work together.
Products like Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sage CRM, and GoldMine Premium Edition are established and proven CRM software. But if staff doesn’t see clear advantages, find the system difficult to use, not right for them or that it doesn't seem to make their job any easier, it's a good bet the project will fail.
Reasons for lack of buy-in often start before anyone in the sales department, marketing department, or even IT, has thought about CRM. Say, for example, an operations department wanted a new planning system.
Then someone noticed it's got a CRM add-on – "Great, let’s get that for sales and marketing". Well, without taking an in-depth look at the sales processes, the company could well end up shoe-horning in a CRM add-on that does not meet the requirements of their business. If it doesn't do what sales staff want it to do and doesn't actively demonstrate any benefits, it will naturally meet with resistance.
But what if you've spent time choosing a CRM system that you know should be right for your company? It's suited to your business needs and sales and marketing processes, you know it can do what you want it to do and you've seen it work in other companies. And because it's software, it should be the IT department’s responsibility: ask them to set it up on your PC's and off we go.