5 Quick Tips On Increasing Productivity With A CRM Solution

A good content relationship management (CRM) solution can greatly assist your sales team in increasing sales and customer service effectiveness at each step of the sales process. From the early stages of gaining leads and investigating potential opportunities, to fulfilling orders and sending out invoices, a good CRM can keep it all under control--and increase productivity at the same time. Here are a few quick tips...

1. Choose the best solution for your company. There are a number of excellent competing CRM solutions available, all with their own good points. It can be hard to make the right choice, especially if you have no previous experience.

Take time to examine the available options. Do you want a desktop program, or a web-based solution? There are pros and cons for each, but generally the desktop solution has the edge in all round flexibility. Does it have all the features you need? The ability to report on just about everything is a big advantage. Not every CRM can do this. Ease of use with a low learning curve is another consideration. You don't want your staff taking weeks just to learn how to use it. The leading makes, like GoldMine or ACT!, and especially the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM, can do these things, some are better than others, of course.

2. Use the built-in reporting features of your CRM to maximize efficiency. This is one of the areas of a good CRM that is often underused. If you chose a CRM application that is unable to produce meaningful reports, or one that can only do a few basic reports, then you did not choose wisely.

The best CRM's will let you set up rules that force users to enter data in a certain way. That standardizes the input data, and when the data is always entered the same way, it can be filtered and output in the same way too. Meaningful reports from live data in other words. Reports that actually let you pinpoint the problems or weak areas and eliminate them or modify them. Reports that can highlight the opportunities or underused possibilities and exploit them or maximize them.

Most good CRM applications will do this for you. Microsoft Dynamics CRM, for example, is one of the best and easiest to use to produce reports that can analyze and dissect everything imaginable.

3. Allow your sales people to effectively monitor themselves. Sales people want to do well. Their performance is crucial to results. When they can see where their weak spots are, and where their strong points are, they can adjust the way they work to produce better results in future. All this is child's play with a good analytics and reporting capability CRM, such as the Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Its reporting and workflow features allow operatives to monitor and view sales and lead data filtered in a variety of ways.

Increasing productivity with a CRM solution is easy when you make use of all its features. This is only possible when you fully understand what each feature does, and how it affects and complements other features. First and foremost, start out by knowing all there is to know about the application, and make sure that everyone else does too. Then, if that knowledge is not being properly applied, there can be no excuse.

Syed Ali, is the lead CRM Analyst for a Toronto based company. His company, offers Microsoft CRM software Solutions www.crmsoftwareprovider.com Syed can be reached at Tel : (905) 815- 1995 ext 22, email :asyed@cqsolutions.com.

CRM Training Is Essential For Success

Imagine yourself wanting to run an airline company ? a budding Freddy Laker. What do you need? Well, planes of course, but let?s say you have a bundle of these. What do you really need to make them work?

That?s right ? pilots! So how are you going to train them? Will you introduce them to an airliner? Take them up the steps and show them the insides ? the aisles, the seats, the toilets? Why not take them into the cabin and show them the instruments, the dials, the communications system, the . . . Or how about showing them how it works. That?s right, get a pilot and get him to take off, fly about a bit while they watch, then land.

Then would you give them their wings, fill the plane full of passengers and ask them to do just what the pilot did? No, of course you wouldn?t.

Then why is it that this is precisely the way that many companies train their employees in how to use newly installed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software? Failure to train staff properly is the path to failure. Your business will crash just as effectively as that plane would ? and just as quickly, without effective CRM training.

The major reason for the failure in implementation of CRM systems is the failure of a planned and structured training and implementation procedure. That is the Number One reason. CRM training is essential for success.

Customer Relationship Management is a science ? it is not the art that the old-style reps would have you believe. It absolutely true that the personal touch is with the customer is critical to success, but the day-to-day management of a CRM system requires the application of science and the provision of adequate tools to manage all of the stages of an integrated customer relationship management system.

There are many companies that provide computer CRM training classes, though the corporations that develop the software frequently develop the software with the customer?s training requirements in mind. Microsoft, for example, integrate training resources right into the software systems they develop, and this is as true for their CRM software as it is for Office applications.

Applications such as Marketing Analysis, Event Managing, Sales Forecasting and Incentive Compensation and Bonuses are but a few of those which computer based CRM training cover, though the Microsoft CRM 3.0 training course is more easy to understand than most due to the seamless integration with Microsoft Office applications and Outlook. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 software sits nicely alongside other Microsoft suites and integrates perfectly to provide a CRM solution for small to corporate size businesses which is simple for employees acquainted with Microsoft Windows applications to learn.

CRM training is essential for success, and it is essential that it is carried out effectively. How much simpler to do so if it is already programmed to be an integral part of an accepted suite of business programs! CRM training will not only be easier, but accepted by employees as an extension of their existing knowledge, rather than an addition burden placed upon them.
Syed Ali, is the lead CRM Analyst for a Toronto based company. His company, offers Microsoft CRM software Solutions www.crmsoftwareprovider.com Syed can be reached at Tel : (905) 815- 1995 ext 22, email :asyed@cqsolutions.com

Getting The Right CRM Software Package

Learning how to use a complex software package is usually a daunting task, and trying to learn all the ins and outs within the time limits of a free trial is even harder. Not only do you need to find out how the CRM software package works, but you need also to learn if you can apply it to the specific needs of your business.

For the inexperienced person, choosing the best Customer Relationship Management system can be a difficult. Does your business need an on demand solution, meaning a hosted, accessible over the Internet platform, or can your organization use a real run-on-Windows application.

The basic acronyms CRM (Customer Relations Management), ERP (Enterprise resource planning, integrating all data and processes of an organization into a unified system), SFA (Sales Force Automation, automated, time saving systems that help the sales people) can be intimidating, but you should know them. A simple Google search will usually tell you what the acronym means.

To make the best of it, you should stick to a few simple rules that can show you what systems are worth looking into and what packages should be avoided. Having these pointers will let you quickly find a system that will work for you.

First, you should make sure the product can be customized to fit your needs. There are many systems out there but most likely none of them will work for your business right out of the box.

To make sure a system can be customized, look for companies that sell multiple editions of their product, this usually means they have tailored their products to other customers and that they will be willing to meet your needs, and make the product work for you.

Also, you should look for a road map for the product. Having a road map usually indicates that the company believes in their product and that they are here to stay. You want a product that stays in the market as you grow and grows with you.

A product that is usable for you entire company is desirable, paying for a fully hosted CRM you should make sure that it is backed by a Service Level Agreement as well.

Getting the right CRM software package is no easy task, but if you use the above rules as you research the field you should be able to find a system that works for you and your organization.

Kim writes stuff about CRM software over at crmsystem.blogspot.com