Accelerating Growth Through Better Sales & Marketing Decisions

What the History of CRM Can Teach You

History is all about learning from the past so we can apply it to the future.  Being familiar with the history of CRM will teach you exactly what CRM is, what it will become and, hopefully, help your current solution or pending implementation be successful. 

This Infographic: Lessons from the History of CRM, outlines the history of CRM in a brief but clear and understandable format.

Learn more about Compare Business Products. This organization is a great resource for business product information to buyers at small, medium and large enterprises.

And for more information on anything to do with CRM, I encourage you to visit our CRM page.  With over 24 years in CRM expertise, we can provide you with CRM assessments, implementation, customization, training, top of the line add-ons, consultations, or anything else you may need. Oh…and a great blog for even more valuable CRM knowledge and advice. 

In the Market for a New CRM?

Most forward-thinking companies have invested in CRM, realizing  that years of studies, reports, and surveys by leading sales and marketing researchers showed that CRM is a ‘must have’ and not a thing they can do someday down the road.  But CRM has to be done right the first time to reap the desired benefits and, if necessary, as it will often be with software, to upgrade to a newer system in the future.

Like everything in life – especially business life – not all things go as planned.  So, you have to analyze, adjust and sometimes make new decisions regarding what you desired then, what worked, what didn’t work and, most of all, what you need now from CRM. 

So, maybe you need a new system or just need to ‘tweak’ your old system.  There are experts available to help you with that.  InfoGrow is one of them, but I am going to point you to an article from Compare Business Products titled “The Case for a New CRM Solution”. 

This article will show you, among other items:

• Data from an IDC study showed that a successful CRM project results in an 8% revenue growth in the first year and 16% growth within two years.
• A study by the Insight Technology Group indicated even better results – well run CRM projects showed revenue increases of as much as 42%, reduction in sales costs of up to 35%, reductions in the sell-cycle length of 25%, margins improvement of 2% and customer satisfaction increases by as much as 20%.
• Problems Associated with Older CRM Solutions
• Calculating the ROI for a CRM Solution
• Building a Case for a New CRM Solution

Next, I’m going to send you to InfoGrow’s white paper, 16 Steps to CRM Success, which I think will give you more valuable information to ponder. We are always available to discuss your CRM issues.

B2B Marketers Recognize the Value of Content Marketing

Nine out of ten B2B marketers in North America are using content marketing. Read this third annual research from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs to get answers to these types of questions:

• What types of content are most popular?
• What social channels marketers use to distribute their content?
• How effective do marketers consider themselves to be? 

To learn more about how content marketing is being used by and benefiting B2B marketers, don’t miss reviewing this essential report from research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends–North America

Just as we have seen in the previous two years, content marketing remains a top priority for marketers going into 2013: 9 out of 10 marketers are using content marketing. In many respects, content marketers are doing more, but uncertainty still exists. Here are some of the key findings from this year’s report.

 

Author: Joe Pulizzi

Joe Pulizzi considers himself the poster boy for content marketing. Founder of the Content Marketing Institute, Joe evangelizes content marketing around the world through keynotes, articles, tweets and his books, Managing Content Marketing and Get Content Get Customers. If you want to get on his good side, send him something orange. For more on Joe, check out his personal site or follow him on Twitter @juntajoe.

Guest Blog - How to Make CRM Drive Greater ROI with Marketing Automation

Today we have a special guest blogger Chris Peer, owner and president of SyncShow Interactive!

How to Make CRM Drive Greater ROI with Marketing Automation

If you have customer relationship management (CRM) software in use at your company, you either love it or hate it. I hear this all the time from sales teams and administrators that work with CRM. It is often the lifeblood from which your company drives sales and customer relationships or it’s the empty investment that never took off. No matter which side you are on it’s not the CRM that failed or made you wildly successful, it’s your process. No matter what CRM software you use it all comes down to your business' culture around how it is used and how it is integrated into your business systems. So many companies, even the "CRM lovers" fail to integrate CRM into the critical business systems within both sales and marketing. After all, it’s not the software that yields a return on your investment, it’s the data and how you use it.

So Little Time... So Much Data

Filling your CRM with useless data is not the answer either. To be truly fruitful you must ensure that your data is of high quality and actionable. These days everyone is tasked with doing more for less, less time, less money and less resources. This is where marketing automation comes in. Marketing automation is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the automation of meaningful marketing tactics that when implemented properly can dramatically improve your sales leads, fill your CRM with actionable data, and perform tasks for you while you are sleeping. As defined by Wikipedia:

"Marketing automation refers to software platforms designed for marketing departments and organizations to automate repetitive tasks. Marketing departments, consultants and part-time marketing employees benefit by specifying criteria and outcomes for tasks and processes which are then interpreted, stored and executed by software, which increases efficiency and reduces human error. Originally focused on email marketing automation, marketing automation refers to a broad range of automation and analytic tools for marketing.

The use of a marketing automation platform is to streamline sales and marketing organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions."

An example of this is the use of marketing automation software such as Act-On or HubSpot to identify, qualify and nurture sales leads for you. If set up properly these tools can track visitors to your website or blog and entice visitors to convert to a sales lead through various inbound marketing efforts. Then with marketing automation, these tools nurture the leads over a period of time with automated emails, all strategically composed ahead of time, based on the individual sales lead's place in the buying process. As the leads progress through the nurturing process the emails become more and more specific to their needs and the sales lifecycle. As the leads engage with your website, emails, and digital sales and marketing tools, the marketing automation software stores all of this data and pushes the "actionable" data to CRM when appropriate. From here your sales team can use this data to convert leads to customers. 

 The Benefits of Marketing Automation Integrated with CRM

• Shorter sale cycles as marketing automation does all the work before your sales team is involved
• Higher lead-to-sales conversion rates
• Lower cost per sale
• Better data in your CRM software for intelligent action

 Chris Peer is the Owner and President of SyncShow Interactive and has 15 years of experience in Digital Communications. Chris is an outdoor enthusiast regularly hiking, camping, and scuba diving. Click here to clue into Chris's other interests.

 

Considering an Investment in CRM? Three Must- Answer Questions Part 3

If you are a CEO, a C-Level Executive, or a decision maker in any size or type of company and are seriously considering a CRM investment, there are three questions that you must ask and answer. 

1. What is driving your need to make this kind of investment?
2. What are the business outcome deliverables you expect?
3. What are the risks that you may anticipate?

 The final question – question 3:

What are the risks that you may anticipate?  

It is not unusual for most companies to be wondering about CRM investment risks, such as:

• What if it doesn’t work as planned?
• How much will the company, or I, lose? 
• The cost of no CRM versus any potential loss from a failed CRM? 

There are far fewer risks in implementing the right CRM system as opposed to no CRM.  Again, I invite you to read http://blog.infogrowcorp.com/sales_marketing_effective/2007/10/what-costs-more.html

The trick is in defining your exact sales and marketing processes, then selecting the right system provider to bond everything into one “custom fit” for your company needs.  Often, the provider can help you define your current processes and future needs.   

The biggest risk is in not implementing CRM to gain, analyze, retain, and act upon all customer / prospect knowledge and finding that your competitors are using CRM to its fullest potential.   

 

Considering an Investment in CRM? Three Must- Answer Questions Part 2

If you are a CEO, a C-Level Executive, or a decision maker in any size or type of company and are seriously considering a CRM investment, there are three questions that you must ask and answer. 

1. What is driving your need to make this kind of investment?
2. What are the business outcome deliverables you expect?
3. What are the risks that you may anticipate?

As promised in my last post, let’s look at question 2: 

What are the business outcome deliverables you expect?

All businesses are hopeful of, and need to achieve the following results:    

• Maintain and retain their best customers
• Turn best customers into advocates for their product/service
• Nurture their best prospects into more best customers and keep their pipeline filled
• Integrate sales and marketing teams
• Grow market share and brand recognition
• Spend less money, make more profit

If you can gain the above results with CRM, would you?  (Another question, I know)

But think about it.  Think about what you desire – what you need to achieve – through CRM.  While you are at that, take a look at another post that might help you understand more here.

 

Considering an Investment in CRM? Three Must- Answer Questions

If you are a CEO, a C-Level Executive, or a decision maker in any size or type of company and are seriously considering a CRM investment, there are three questions that you must ask and answer. 

1. What is driving your need to make this kind of investment?
2. What are the business outcome deliverables you expect?
3. What are the risks that you may anticipate? 

I will address these questions in three separate posts, so keep in touch.
Starting with question 1: What is driving your need to make this kind of investment?

For most companies, a CRM investment decision often includes their needs to:

• Capture additional sales from all channels
• Build sales that represent improved profits
• Gain a larger market share
• Provide best customer service
• Win a strong competitive advantage
• Align sales and marketing teams
• Improve lead generation efforts and results
• Track and manage all sales from conception through retention

Think about what is driving your needs. CRM history has shown that a solid CRM, with a proven provider and a well planned implementation strategy based upon your sales and marketing processes will fulfill your needs and pay for itself over and over. 

I will address question 2 in our next post, but in the meantime, I thought the following article would be helpful.  http://blog.infogrowcorp.com/sales_marketing_effective/2012/04/still-not-using-crm.html

Maps Add Value to CRM: How Sales Reps Benefit

What do you think of when you think of maps? Vacations, treasure hunts, weather forecasts?

Maps do more than display a place or how to get from one place to another. In sales, for example, maps let you visualize and conceptualize spatial relationships more easily than with rows and columns in spreadsheet data.

Even better: When combined with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, mapping is changing the name of the game. With InfoGrow's "CRM Call Planner" mapping tool, in just one click, you can convert CRM data into a map with street and satellite images.  

So, what value does a map add for sales reps?

• Save time in planning trips by coordinating travel time to see other customers and prospects.
• Find all customers and prospects in a particular area: Let’s say you are travelling to location X and want to visit customers and prospects in a radius of, say, 10 miles of that location. With a map inside CRM, you can easily make callbacks and work out appointments to visit all nearby key customers and prospects.
• Find missed sales opportunities: On a map, see a point for every won or lost opportunity. You might be surprised to find that you have not targeted companies in a particular area for some time. Although you could look at the data in a table, a map makes your data much more visible, jumping out to you for better decision making. 
• Filter sales calls by specific CRM data (such as sales per year and number of employees), build a radius around a call location, and spend time setting appointments with higher valued targets. Because not all customers or prospects are created equally, you need to ask, "With limited resources, where do I spend my limited time?" 

I'd like to tell you more about how maps can help accelerate your growth through "CRM Call Planner" and our mobile app for responding to last-minute customer needs and prospect leads on the road. Please call me: 800-897-9807, x224, or email: bsullivan@InfoGrowCorp.com.

You, too, will know, indeed, "If a picture tells a thousand words, then a map tells ten thousand.”

Reps Make Better Sales Calls Decisions with Mobile App for "CRM Call Planner"

InfoGrow announces a mobile app for its popular “CRM Call Planner” module.  The CRM Call Planner takes CRM information and, through the power of Bing Maps, creates a visual representation of accounts and contacts on an online real-world map. This helps sales reps to better plan sales calls.  A big plus for users is that the app works without CRM being installed on the mobile device.

And now, with a mobile app for tablets and smart phones, reps can respond to last-minute customer needs and prospect leads -- on the road. Using the CRM Call Planner, with or without the mobile app, is easy, selecting by radius, type of company, sales volume, and more within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

InfoGrow's mobile app is in keeping with current trends; for example, according to market-research firm, IDC, three out of ten C-suite executives say that: (a) CRM is the most wanted mobile application, and (b) mobile CRM and social capabilities are boosting productivity for sales workers by 25%. 

With visualized sales information, maps point the way for marketing and sales teams to make better decisions for their limited time resources. If a picture tells a thousand words, then a map tells ten thousand.

Learn more at www.crmcallplanner.com and sign up for a demo today! 

What is the Most Powerful Lead Generation Tool?

What is the Most Powerful Lead Generation Tool? 

Marketers choose email marketing!

According to 1,915 marketers surveyed for the 2012 MarketingSherpa Lead Generation Benchmark Report, a whopping 81% use email marketing for their lead generation efforts.  Furthermore, these marketers rate the level of email marketing effectiveness high. Review the report data at the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog.

In a comment on this, Jimmy Diffee, Vice President and Chief Effectiveness Officer of The Bokka Group referred to email marketing as “An opportunity to turn all leads into A-leads.”

How true.  And integrating the out-bound email marketing with an in-bound strategy of landing pages, links to web pages, webinars and other call to actions that you can manage from a solid marketing automation tool will maximize your investment return. Just think of what you can achieve by linking the action taken to your CRM?  Would this approach boost lead generation effectiveness and provide more A-leads to your sales team? 

If you aren’t reaping the benefits of email marketing and/or CRM, take some time to read a few of our previous articles:

E-Mail Marketing is Still a Powerful B-to-B Tool

Combine CRM and Email Marketing to Grow Your Business

Plus learn more on getting the most from your out-bound and in-bound email marketing efforts, lower sales costs, shorten the sales cycle, and track leads from click-to-close through marketing automation at http://www.infogrowcorp.com/Marketing+Automation/default.aspx.

Clone ‘A’ Sales Reps and Help ‘B’ Players Improve Focus on Core Customers

InfoGrow just released our CRM Call Planner module that integrates Bing Maps directly into Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

CRM Call Planner is a one of a kind sales planning tool no sales rep should be without. This powerful tool takes YOUR CRM information and, through the power of Bing Maps, provides a visual representation of your accounts and contacts on an online real world map that drives  reps to better plan sales calls with prospects and follow up calls with customers.

CRM Call Planner really is your road map to success!

• Clone what your best reps are doing to stay in front of key customer and prospects.

• Help all reps make better prospecting decisions and more efficient utilization of their time.

• Provide sales management with increased visibility into their reps prospecting decisions for improved coaching and greater sales success.

• Drive user acceptance of CRM and exceed expected ROI.

See how you can be more productive, visit more customers, and close more sales using CRM Call Planner by visiting http://www.CRMCallPlanner.com.

Seven Successful Marketing Habits Used by Top SMB Performers

In a November 2012 Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Act-On, a leading provider of cloud-based integrated software, entitled "Driving SMB Revenue in a Tough Economy". In this study, decision makers from 208 companies were asked to share their perceptions about a multitude of activities, including online marketing, business planning and programs, organization and process, and technologies used to support online customer acquisition.

The results of the study paint an interesting and informative picture of the top-performing SMBs. Seven key factors emerged from the results that help us to understand why some SMBs are succeeding while others continue to struggle.

The following seven habits are those that have been widely adopted by top performers:

• An emphasis on online over offline marketing strategies
• A focus on new business leads and customer lifetime value over customer acquisition cost savings
• The execution of highly-optimized, multi-channel campaigns leveraging email, web and social media
• Nurturing leads carefully until the time is right rather than trying to sell from the get-go
• Collecting the metrics that matter and measuring results in order to iterate and improve
• Increasing collaboration between sales and marketing, made easier through quantifiable measures of success
• Maintaining -- or even increasing -- marketing budgets during a difficult economy in order to increase business momentum, seize new opportunities, and gain the competitive advantage

Have you adopted these habits?  If not, isn’t it time to start?  Take your first step by visiting InfoGrow Corporation.

Why a “Clean” Address is Important for Mapping

Before B2B places (such as customers and prospects) can be put on a map, their database addresses are first converted into geographic coordinates. The process is called “geocoding,” done with Geographic Information System (GIS) software that matches each database place record with geographic reference files. 

The degree of exactness of places on a GIS map depends on what geographic level you are looking for, such as county or an address. A specific place needs a “clean” address: street, city, state, and zip code. “Clean” means a database address with no problems, errors, or limitations which can result in places displayed in wrong locations, or not displayed at all. 

For clean address data and minimized mapping errors:

• Use the true, complete name of the street, such as “2140 Front Street,” not just “2140 Front”
• Include “directions,” such as “123 East Main Street”
• Use standardized address information, such as correct abbreviations, “St,”
•   for “Street”
• Include the street number, not just the street name
• Spell out street addresses and cities, such as “Martin Luther King” instead of “MLK”5
• Do not use “Post Office Box” numbers
• Do not include extensions in database fields for street addresses, such as an “apartment number,” “suite,” and “building name” (which should be in a separate database field)
• Make database address fields “text” columns, not numeric
• Make sure database fields are complete (no missing data)
• Use a unique “ID” field for each database record, with no blanks and no duplicated IDs
• Update database addresses periodically
• Use GIS geocoding software that has the latest streets (such as new subdivisions) and the best possible reference data sets
• Do a quality control on your final geocoded data by examining a sample.

Do not use zip codes for geocoding

Zip codes for geocoding have limitations and are only approximations. Zip codes are mail-delivery routes, not areas with exact spatial boundaries. Zip code assignments are linked to mail volume, delivery area size, geographic location, and topography, but not necessarily to community boundaries. Some zip codes do not have contiguous areas, so the same zip code may represent addresses several miles apart, with other zip codes in-between.  

Completeness and accuracy

Completeness is the proportion of addresses that are successfully geocoded. If many records in a database can’t be geocoded, mapped data may be misleading. Different reference data sets vary in the geocoding software algorithms used to match an address to a street segment. 

Although geocoded data may have completeness, accuracy may be more important. For example, a database may have an address at 100 Main Street, Middleburg Heights, OH, and 100 Main Street, Middleburg, OH. A geocoding system might consider both to be the same. Although both addresses were geocoded, one of them is inaccurate. 

If your business maps are incomplete or misleading, or if your database is not yielding productive results (such as too many nondeliverable target emails and postal mails), let me tell you more about clean addresses. And then create a results-oriented map for cost-effective mailings, better sales territory assignments, and more productive sales calls.

Win with Marketing Automation

Are you trying to decide if you need Marketing Automation?  Simple!  Just decide if you need the following:

• The need for sales and marketing reports that provide data for analysis, planning, and determination of return on investment.
• The need to simplify the management and coordination of activities, such as marketing campaigns, channel management, reporting, and analytics.
• The need to manage and coordinate multiple point tools such as email and webinar management applications, and/or the need to integrate such tools with contact management and CRM platforms and programs. 
• The need to manage lead generation, lead nurturing, and the transfer of leads to sales in an organized, time-sensitive manner that enhances conversion and closing rates.
• The need to use time strategically: e.g., reduce the time needed to create and deploy campaigns, or respond to sales-ready leads in real time. 

If you find yourself in need of these vital sales and marketing items, then click here for this great checklist from Act On for evaluating marketing automation solutions.   

Then, for more information about how Marketing Automation with CRM will empower your business, I invite you to visit InfoGrow Corporation here. Learn how Marketing Automation with CRM will enable you (among other benefits) to:

•    Enhance cross-channel communication
•    Increase ROI while reducing costs
•    Better qualify leads
•    Nurture leads through highly targeted drip emails
•    Track leads from click to close 

Add the Power of Marketing Automation to Your CRM

We all know that customers and prospects are more in control of the buying conversation. Not that long ago, sales were almost exclusive achieved by us looking for strong sales hunters. 

Voice mail barriers, more informed buyers, and less time on everyone’s part has dramatically changed the sale process.  In addition, sale reps are expensive. If we are honest with ourselves we know them to be poor prospectors. 

So now we are asking ourselves, “How can prospects find us better, and how do we engage them, qualify them and then move them into our sales reps’ “line of sight”?  

Marketing has evolved to how do we effectively use technology to nurture prospects and maintain a strong relationship with customers, especially, in an economy, where many of us have found it necessary to expand our focus nationally, if not globally.  

The promise of CRM is found in the name - Relationship Management.  Yet few of us are in love with the results we have achieved from our CRM systems.

I believe this lack of excitement with CRM, if not the out-right failure of CRM can, in part, be attributed to two missing components:

First – marketing has not stepped up to the plate and taken charge of CRM --   has not taken the responsibility for CRM away from IT and/or sales.

After all, as marketers we are responsible for lead generation and customer retention.  Who else is better positioned to manage the data?  We should be the ones that are queuing up the sales teams and monitoring their activities.

Second – Until now CRM has not provided us with the complete suite for building relationships – that drip / nurture marketing process.  We have had to rely on individual tools, often not integrated with our CRM. 

Those days are over! There is a new product category - Marketing Automation.

I invite you to comment on what you know about Marketing Automation.  Are you using it?  What are your current results? 

If not using, are you considering it?  If so, why?

Just put your fingers to the keyboard and let us know so we can help answer questions, concerns about how to effectively select a provider and use Marketing Automation in your organization.

Bring Your Excel Data Alive with Mapping

Spreadsheets only show one simple, loose view.  A row of names, addresses, (which are often not complete), sometimes a phone number (if you’re lucky) and then, pray to the lord… that they all match up.  Meaning line # 30 might really match up to line #1.  Or, well…you get my drift. 

With mapping added, you will gain an entire new sales/marketing view.  You will gain a tool that will turn the lowly spreadsheet into a force to be reckoned with.  Not to mention increased ROI, sales and market share. 

By combining maps with spreadsheets, you can instantly see what your charts and graphs have been busting at the seams to show you :

• A complete view of customer, prospect and competitor locations and how they relate.
• Sales territories – those that are doing well and those that need fixed, so you can balance them.
• Understand and manage your trade areas better than ever.
• Profile your customers and prospects like never before for fantastic target marketing.
• Select the best sites for your next locations.
• Analyze your market share and your competitors’ share.

Now, you can see it all clearly.  Instead of mind-boggling sets of rows and numbers, mapping opens the clouds and enables you to see everything.   

Esri Maps for Office is a new product that allows you to quickly create dynamic, interactive maps of your Excel data and start exploring it in a whole new way. Esri Maps for Office enables you to uncover patterns and trends not evident in tabular data and charts. The process of creating a map in Excel is painless, and is much the same as creating a graph or chart of your data. Maps can be shared immediately through PowerPoint presentations or by one-click publishing to Esri’s mapping cloud, ArcGIS Online.

The ability to visualize data, such as customer and competitor locations, sales territories, trade areas, and demographics enables executives to improve the quality of business decisions, enhance sales, and expand market share.

We at InfoGrow have been expounding on combining mapping with spreadsheets and CRM/SFA applications for over a decade.  There’s nothing better than visualizing your CRM data.  Let us help you exceed your marketing and sales goals by leveraging your internal data with map and dashboard application development. 

Email Overkill

When does email become overkill? To me, it is when a company insists on bombarding me with daily emails about the same issue or product.  

Good God, I made a simple online purchase, or I applied for a possibly intelligent whitepaper, I signed up for a survey from a noted sales and marketing organization, or some such similar thing. Heh, at the same time, I steered clear of the box that asks, “do you want further notices about our specials, new offers, newsletters!   But, low and behold, I get it anyhow – every day, some every hour. 

Why do any of us need constant emails – sometimes as many as 5 a day – to remind us of what? 

• Their webinar?  Sorry, I received 6 of your company’s messages today already.  Take my not signing up, for a big fat ‘NO’.
• A new survey?   Gee, I heard about this more times than I want to remember.  Guess what, since I did not respond that might mean that I declined to participate. 
• Yes, I purchased a product online. No, I don’t need another product (if this one lasts) and if I wanted a related one, I will decide. I’m a big boy now. No need for the last 15 emails. 
• Oh, another white paper? Just read 4 on the same subject. Entice me with a different, thought-provoking point of view.   
• A tradeshow? A new book? A new website? What else, for God’s sake? It just goes on and on and on!

Revolving daily email from the same companies is my definition of overkill.   

When is enough simply enough? When does email become like the sellers at the door? Or, like the telemarketers who interrupt a nice breakfast on a quiet Sunday morning? When do they make you feel like really wanting to use swear words?    

We, at InfoGrow, love the benefits that email provides. Yes we have a fantastic email program that we use for our own sales and marketing purposes, plus tout to our clients. Feel free to view it at CRM2Emails.

But, we don’t believe in overkill. Email overkill is simply a strike against the purpose of good email processes and programs! Effective email is all about targeting the right people, with the right message, the right offer, at the right time. Not about sending out constant random emails regarding whatever program is currently available. 

There is a definite line between nurturing and pestering. Which side of the fence are you on? Those who receive or those who send?

Increase Your Sales by Avoiding the Major Sales Botches

Even the very best sales professionals make selling mistakes from time to time.  As CEO and President of Sales, I admit that I bungle things now and again. So, does my sales team, just only once in a while. There are many reasons for bungling, such as:

• Managing internal day-to-day issues.  Employees count on me so I need to be available to them whenever necessary. 
• Putting out current client fires.  Some clients have valid problems, others just like to complain, so evaluating the differences takes time. 
• Working under pressure to land that next big account.  That often takes away from working on the smaller accounts that might add more continuity to the bottom line. 
• Dealing with cash flow issues.  Even the largest companies face this challenge. 
• Facing personal problems, which everybody experiences.  Finances, relationships, health – the list is often long. 

But, think about this.  Do those reasons simply become excuses for not following successful sales basics? Maybe we have to lean on our sales and marketing basics – like we did on our ABCs or 123s. If not, we will probably blunder, which means lost sales, and maybe even our entire business.

We’ve all read articles about sales blunders, but I would like to direct you to one, which I believe, can provide you significant insight into the major sales and marketing mistakes, along with great solutions to overcoming these blunders. 

Authored by Kelley Robertson, and titled “The Top 7 Sales Blunders” you can review at SalesDog.com

According to Robertson, The Top 7 Sales Blunders are:

# 1: Allowing a prospect to lead the sales process.

# 2: Not completing pre-meeting research.

# 3: Talking too much.

# 4: Giving the prospect information that is irrelevant.

# 5: Not being prepared.

# 6: Neglecting to ask for the sale.

# 7: Failing to prospect.

For more details and his solutions, spend some time reading the article I referred to above. 

If we would remember these basics every day before approaching our current clients and pending prospects, we would likely avoid mistakes and increase our sales.  

 

Want to Go to Market Faster?

Most CEOs do.  But, how do you make that happen?  Simple!  Combine your CRM data with mapping. 

It just makes common sense.  Combining your CRM data with mapping provides a CEO and their sales teams with insight they will not find anywhere else. 

What type of insight will a CEO and their sales teams acquire?

• See how many customers or prospects are in a given area. So, if sales reps are traveling to a given area, they can map out and visit customers and / or prospects within that determined radius.   
• Target and map out similar prospects within any given area. 
• Locate and see the locations of all your competitors on a map.  Gain knowledge of their activities. 
• Visualize where the nearest sales rep is in real time as they travel.  Respond to new leads and have the sales person visit that day.
• Use geocoding and mapping to display a map and list of targeted addresses, then overlay demographics, like income per capita, showing target areas with little chance of closing business and / or showing areas which could be potentially lucrative.

Those are only a few of the benefits. The possibilities are endless.

By combining your CRM with mapping, you will be able to see all these things at once.  See all customer, prospect, and competitor data on one simple, clear map.  Names, addresses, phone numbers, routes, current and past purchases, pending proposals…everything you need to get to market faster.     

I bet reps, back in the day, would have loved this technology and been so much more productive than with their notorious index cards flying around in the back of their company rental car. 

Though most marketers are probably aware of mapping and location intelligence, they often view these tools as costly, difficult to learn and use, labor intensive, and believe everything has to be built and maintained in-house.

But, that’s not the case anymore. There are easy, cost-effective options. Check InfoGrow’s CRM and Mapping Tools at:

Deliver Insight – Better Decisions

 

Need a CRM Manager in Your Corner?

According to many recent studies, 80% to 90% of companies surveyed, state that their current CRM / SFA system isn’t achieving what they want. Why?

Issues are plentiful and include the following:

• Your CRM system is not easily integrated with your other applications
• Users throughout your various departments haven’t been trained correctly 
• Your company culture and processes do not demand or support the use 
•  It is too complicated for your current needs

Probably, all of the above might apply but the number one reason is, “we already have a full plate and don’t have time to manage our CRM”. 

A great CRM system can be simple and powerful. Yet, without attention it falls apart.  An easy to use, accepted by all CRM system  packs effective sales and marketing results, but requires someone’s focus. 

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Simple, powerful, effective!  And that is what your CRM should be like. 

Sometimes it can be managed in-house with a dedicated marketing or sales staff, but many companies don’t have those resources.  There are options available. 

No matter where you are in your level of CRM usage, one question is universal:

How can you make CRM simpler?

One answer remains:

With InfoGrow’s CRM expertise

Learn more about getting a dedicated CRM Manager in your corner. Make CRM simple, powerful and accepted by all your users. Visit InfoGrow's CRM Manager and start knocking out your competitors.