- May 1, 2006
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- Alex
If the system is not sales rep friendly, then everything is a mess. Customers get lost, reports are junk, reps just blindly push buttons to try to shut the schedules down to shut it up (because the choices don't match the reps needs). If the system is not intuitive for the sales rep, then we get the age old computer classic: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
There you go Joe - that is the make or break factor of a CRM. The other portion is the duplicate prospect checking. Get those two things straight and now you're cooking. Sounds simple doesn't it?
Our reps (on average) have 70+ open tasks in their "Daily Work Plan" area every morning. That's right... 70 incomplete tasks, all presented in a multi-page list, but, NOT ALL TASKS ARE EQUAL. A rep wants to attack the fresh prospects that came in overnight. There is NO TASK RANKING SYSTEM. Reps need to be smart, so they have to manually review the list to find the fresh leads first...AND finding them fast is not easy.
Two things here:
1. Yes, you're absolutely right. Tasks should be weighted. The question is: who determines the weight? The sales agent or the CRM architect?
2. If your sales agents have 70+ to-do items each day, then you should relook at the process plans you're feeding them. What is the threshold of your sales staff? Can they handle 50 to-do's a day? 30 to-do's a day? 20 to-do's a day? This is a paramount metric each manager should know about his/her staff because this metric is what pushes the needle when applied properly.