information leveraging & sales 2.0

Sales 2.0 & CRM

Leveraging Customer Information For More Effective Selling

Daniel P. Strunk

• Managing Director , Center for Sales Leadership DePaul University, Chicago, IL

Sales:

Marketing:

Consulting Clients

Co-Author

Today’s Sales Challenge

Today’s Business Challenge:

• To increase productivity and improve return on investment

• Translating that challenge to the sales is simple, right?– Improve sales volume while

decreasing overhead!

It’s Not That Simple

• In order to reduce sales expense you must:– Review the complete sales process &

resource requirements– Evaluate the state of current

relationships– Understand the business development

process for existing accounts– Recognize the cost and effort required

to develop new accounts • Ignoring these steps results in lost revenue

Leadership: A Definition

• The Encarta Dictionary defines leadership as follows:– The office or position of a leader such as the head of a

business, government, or political party

– The ability to guide, direct or influence people and organizations

Leadership Defined:

Guidance or direction

Leadership, Sales & Technology

• In business today we refer to that as “best practice”– Simply put is the ability to create a business

approach that create an industry specific competitive advantage

– Technology is to provide that advantage

Sales Productivity

• Sales has turned to technology to achieve increasingly demanding productivity objectives:– CRM is the foundation for a new sales mentality that

reflects an sales improved process

– Information is used to improve the visibility of customer issues and mobilizing the resources of their organization to create customer value

A new set of sales process concerns

• Customers aren’t bricks and mortar, they are people with different: – Personal needs,

– Communication requirements

– Organizational pressures

Information Leveraging

• Every sales model from Rackham’s “SPIN Selling” to Miller Heiman, preaches:– The best way to serve a customer is to know

them better (discovery process)

• Enabling sales professional is at the heart of CRM and Sales

What is “Sales 2.0”

SFA Sales 0.1

According to Selling Power Magazine

• 3 major trends have profoundly transformed sales:– CRM

– Internet Technology

– The rich on-line data explosion

So what is “Sales 2.0”?

• Sales 2.0 is the integration of customer-focused methodologies and productivity-enhancing technologies that transform selling from an art to a science.– Sales 2.0 is transforming how companies promote,

market and run their sales organizations.

– Sales 2.0 empowers sales and marketing to work together

Sales 2.0 Characteristics

As the world of selling organizes itself around the customer, five distinct characteristics arise consistently in conversations about Sales 2.0:

1. Sales 2.0 is about acceleration

2. Sales 2.0 is about collaboration

3. Sales 2.0 is about professionalization

4. Sales 2.0 is about accountability

5. Sales 2.0 is about alignment

So How Does CRM Apply?

A Definition

CRM: Is a disciplined business strategy to create and sustain long-term, profitable

customer relationships

What does CRM do?

According to Gartner Research:•CRM integrates marketing, sales and service functions through business process automation, technology solutions and information resources to maximize the outcome of each business contact!

•Simply put, information leveraging

How does a company begin?

CRM begins with a mentality that:– Focuses business process on addressing customer

needs

– Utilizes technology to enhance company operations, improve productivity and add value to the customer business relationships

– Recognizes the value of customer relationship development

What does CRM Do?

CRM:• Improves access to customer

knowledge across departments• Identifies and differentiates

your most profitable customers• Improves sales and marketing

effectiveness and productivity

What does CRM Do?

• Leverages valuable customer knowledge

• Builds loyalty through improved customer relationships , reduced administrative time, fewer errors, lower costs

• Affords informed business decisions through improved analysis and reporting

• Track sales performance quantitatively (metrics)

Why hasn’t CRM been more successful?

• Poor goal setting for early CRM projects.

• Technology was seen as the solution, not enabling a solution

• CRM implementation is complex

• Sales was presented with a solution without participating in the selection process

Why will CRM be more successful in the future?

• The CRM concept is maturing and is now understood as a business mentality.

• New on-demand CRM solutions (cloud computing) have made the discipline more:– User friendly

– Customer leveragable

– Efficient

What is the Strategy of CRM?

CRM Strategy

• You can’t build without a plan!

• Regardless of how promising technology can be it isn’t the solution.

• The key to CRM success is in the corporate will to adopt a system.

• The culture of a company must change.

Building Successful CRM

Goals

Metrics

Sale

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Strategies

Mar

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Cus

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Serv

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Technology

Process F

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Corporate Culture

CRM Development Steps • Establish and prioritize goals and strategy

• Define requirements of all users

• Identify process interference in the current business model

• Implement CRM in planned phases

• Get user buy-in at every stage of the process

What is the affect of Sales 2.0 & CRM?

Information Leveraging….The Impact on Selling

• Greater sale proficiency through more efficient information management – Mobile technology bring sales professionals

people closer to the information and the decision process

• Customer Relationship Optimization – Value at each customer touch point (share,

satisfaction, loyalty)

• Automation of Sales Tasks – Lower Cost of Sale

How does information access within a company improve sales performance?

Access to information means:• Better reaction time to serve customer needs

• Better visibility to customer issues means engagement of corporate resources to resolve problems

• Customers are better understood

• Relationships are built on improved performance

Sales & Technology• Technology enables sales professionals to

achieve their objectives: – SFA provides the tools required today

– CRM provides a data leveraging platform for better customer management

– Sales 2.0 establishes a professional approach to sales that is sustainable and duplicatable for the new era of difficult economic times and intense competition of today and tomorrow