Explains the practical CRM tools that can help to introduce repeatable, proven process to your sales team. So you can help them figure out what works best.
Marketing Agility: The Missing Metric?Shelly Lucas
Marketing agility isn’t just about doing things faster. It’s about being adaptable to abrupt shifts in customer needs and industry developments. In most cases, dialing up your nimbleness requires more than a team tune-up—usually, it requires nothing short of a transformation. Why, then, don’t CMOs measure their agility progress?
In this white paper, you’ll learn how and why marketers should consider measuring adaptability.
The typical marketer and sales person, in a complex B2B sales environment,understands the value of a truly qualified “sales-ready” lead over a marketing ready prospect, because it meets a designated set of criteria and progresses into a sale faster with fewer selling resources
Marketing Agility: The Missing Metric?Shelly Lucas
Marketing agility isn’t just about doing things faster. It’s about being adaptable to abrupt shifts in customer needs and industry developments. In most cases, dialing up your nimbleness requires more than a team tune-up—usually, it requires nothing short of a transformation. Why, then, don’t CMOs measure their agility progress?
In this white paper, you’ll learn how and why marketers should consider measuring adaptability.
The typical marketer and sales person, in a complex B2B sales environment,understands the value of a truly qualified “sales-ready” lead over a marketing ready prospect, because it meets a designated set of criteria and progresses into a sale faster with fewer selling resources
CRM definition
CRM characteristics
Components
The role of CRM
Examples of a successful CRM
The challenges that CRM faces
Success factors of CRM
Research discussion
Companies fiddle constantly with their incentive plans and sales executives are always looking for ingenious ways to motivate their teams. If sales targets are missed, they blame the sales compensation plan and start over. Meanwhile, The finance organization views the comp plan as an expense to manage. That’s not
surprising: Sales force compensation represents the single largest marketing
investment for most B2B companies. So naturally finance tries to ensure that comp
plans have cost-control measures designed into them. Additionally, many companies
respond to cost-cutting pressure from the finance department with incentives that
backfire. More often than not, controls encourage salespeople to spend time with
customers according to the company’s internal needs, rather than when the customer
is ready to buy.
This is the world of the sales machine, built to outsell less focused, less disciplined competitors through brute efficiency and world-class tools and training. Recently
sales has been caught off guard by dramatic changes in customers’ buying behavior and sales performance has grown increasingly erratic. The very approaches that made the sales machine so effective now make selling harder. The sales machine is stalling. Leaders must abandon their fixation on process compliance and embrace a flexible approach to selling driven by sales reps’ reliance on insight and judgment.
Social networks are critical in sales. Companies and salespeople can improve
performance significantly by understanding the interplay among the different webs
of customers, leads and colleagues they develop.
The sales process can be represented as four distinct stages, which all require a
different set of abilities and network configuration. If salespeople and managers
understand how networks function, they can pinpoint the most effective network
configuration for each stage of a sale and take the actions necessary to create it and
outshine competitors. In each stage of the sales process, the salesperson’s efforts
come down to two essential and complementary types of network-management
actions: managing the information flow and coordinating the efforts of contacts. This
article offers a framework for systematically managing different social networks, by
matching the network to the task. The article also presents three levers managers
can use to encourage salespeople to integrate the network-based view and make the
best possible use of social networks.
This is a presentation based on customer relationship management, which is now-a-days a very important issue for every company as well for the customers. For capturing more and more customers satisfyingly, every firm need to get into this CRM.
CRM definition
CRM characteristics
Components
The role of CRM
Examples of a successful CRM
The challenges that CRM faces
Success factors of CRM
Research discussion
Companies fiddle constantly with their incentive plans and sales executives are always looking for ingenious ways to motivate their teams. If sales targets are missed, they blame the sales compensation plan and start over. Meanwhile, The finance organization views the comp plan as an expense to manage. That’s not
surprising: Sales force compensation represents the single largest marketing
investment for most B2B companies. So naturally finance tries to ensure that comp
plans have cost-control measures designed into them. Additionally, many companies
respond to cost-cutting pressure from the finance department with incentives that
backfire. More often than not, controls encourage salespeople to spend time with
customers according to the company’s internal needs, rather than when the customer
is ready to buy.
This is the world of the sales machine, built to outsell less focused, less disciplined competitors through brute efficiency and world-class tools and training. Recently
sales has been caught off guard by dramatic changes in customers’ buying behavior and sales performance has grown increasingly erratic. The very approaches that made the sales machine so effective now make selling harder. The sales machine is stalling. Leaders must abandon their fixation on process compliance and embrace a flexible approach to selling driven by sales reps’ reliance on insight and judgment.
Social networks are critical in sales. Companies and salespeople can improve
performance significantly by understanding the interplay among the different webs
of customers, leads and colleagues they develop.
The sales process can be represented as four distinct stages, which all require a
different set of abilities and network configuration. If salespeople and managers
understand how networks function, they can pinpoint the most effective network
configuration for each stage of a sale and take the actions necessary to create it and
outshine competitors. In each stage of the sales process, the salesperson’s efforts
come down to two essential and complementary types of network-management
actions: managing the information flow and coordinating the efforts of contacts. This
article offers a framework for systematically managing different social networks, by
matching the network to the task. The article also presents three levers managers
can use to encourage salespeople to integrate the network-based view and make the
best possible use of social networks.
This is a presentation based on customer relationship management, which is now-a-days a very important issue for every company as well for the customers. For capturing more and more customers satisfyingly, every firm need to get into this CRM.
What Is a Customer Worth? Understanding Customer Lifetime ValueAdam Toporek
On November 29, 2011 we posted a “back of the napkin” guide for calculating the economic value a customer brings over their “lifetime” with a business. We designed Understanding Customer Lifetime Value: A Non-Geek’s Guide as a thorough, yet non-academic, approach to determining the lifetime value of customers
The step-by-step process of determining customer lifetime value seemed like a natural fit for SlideShare, so we decided to re-release the post in a presentation format.
Check out What Is a Customer Worth to learn more about Customer Lifetime Value and to make better decisions about marketing and retention.
Social CRM - Concept, Benefits and Approach to adoptFabio Cipriani
A call for reviewing current CRM Strategy, Processes and Mindset throughout companies
- Concept
- Comparison with traditional CRM
- Benefits
- Approach for adoption
- How to put it to work
50 Facts That Will Make Businesses Rethink their Customer ServiceDesk
Take a look at these cold, hard facts that might persuade you to rethink how you run your organization's customer service.
Curious about Desk.com? Download this free kit to get started: http://bit.ly/FreeCustomerServiceKit
Sales is an area where many companies find the outcomes belie investments and outcomes. Many companies attempt sales transformation in a piece-meal fashion. In this paper, we discuss the framework for sales transformation and five fundamental levers of sales transformation.
This folder introduces customer insight expert emnos, an international consultancy which helps retailers and consumer businesses across the world make better commercial decisions.
emnos offers a unique combination of data analytics, consulting, solutions and services that enable its clients to effectively use, and benefit from, customer insight. With this, clients are able to optimise communications, pricing, promotions, ranging and store layout and make marketing communication relevant and integrated across multiple channels.
More information: www.emnos.com
6 Key Steps For a Successful Pipeline Management ProcessNavinNair24
A structured pipeline management is the lifeblood of successful sales organizations. It serves as a guide to sales team members in the complex journey of converting leads into customers. Benefits of having robust pipeline management are manyfold.
Rewiring sales organization for growth and scaleBrowne & Mohan
With markets becoming volatile and uncertain, shortening of products and commoditization, sales function is facing huge challenges. Companies need to rewire their sales organization to provide it with enough flexibility, visibility, actionable intelligence and ownership for employees. In this Whitepaper, Browne & Mohan consultants share how to rewire sales organization to set the company for revenue growth and scaling up.
6 ways to achieve sales and marketing alignment throughout the buyer's journeyxoombi
Alignment between Marketing and Sales is potentially the largest opportunity for improving business performance today. When marketing and sales teams unite around a single buyer's journey, they dramatically improve marketing ROI, sales productivity, and, most importantly, top-line growth.
8 Critical Success Factorsfor Lead GenerationGil.B
Until now, "lead generation" was associated with direct mail campaigns, sometimes supported by a flashy website, sporadic trade show appearances, intense email blasts or stabs at telemarketing, but with very little, if any, special attention brought to bear on the complex sale.
Meanwhile, marketers are constantly reminded that the company needs more sales leads NOW. Unfortunately, that immediacy often means sacrificing quality for sheer quantity.
A flood of ordinary, low-quality leads doesn\'t mean better sales - so why waste your time? The challenge is to adopt lead generation programs that will increase the odds of creating better sales leads, ultimately resulting in long-term, happy and profitable customers.
Pivotal Mobile Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications provide a range of solutions that ensure a sale is never delayed because of limited access to critical data.
The Pivotal CRM team at CDC Software is a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software applications. Pivotal CRM is the only CRM solution offering rich functionality, a full application suite, and best-in-class customization capabilities, all with a low total cost of ownership
The Pivotal Service suite has been designed to drive improvements in customer service while reducing operating and maintenance costs throughout the customer lifecycle — while improving the quality of customer interactions.
Pivotal CRM for Home Building and Real Estate is a clear choice for single- and multi-family home builders and other real estate industry firms looking to increase operational efficiency, gain competitive advantage, and meet the challenges of a market slowdown.
Wird ein Social CRM Tool mit dem Anspruch implementiert, die ohnehin nur mäßig funktionierende CRM Installation zu verbessern, führt dies so gut wie sicher zu einer Enttäuschung. Die besten Projektergebnisse erzielt ein Social CRM als natürliche Erweiterung der bisherigen CRM-Tools und-Strategien
Implementing lead management best practices through marketing automation reduces the cost of marketing, fills the sales pipeline faster with better quality leads, and grows revenue
Pivotal SyndMail is a complete e-mail marketing solution that lets you segment your audience, send electronic communications, and analyze the success of your campaign.
Institutional asset managers need to become more customer-centric to differentiate themselves in the market and retain current clients. When institutional account contracts come up for renewal, client satisfaction plays a critical role in their decision-making.
Explains how businesses can use CRM to foster and implement customer-centric innovation, enhancing the customer experience and creating internal efficiencies to establish a clear competitive edge.
Explains the real, practical advantages healthcare payer organizations can experience by using CRM technology to streamline and minimize paper-based processes.
From Complexity and Frustration to Simplicity and Effectiveness it is the most viable foundation for discovering new opportunities that build momentum and inspire growth.
How financial services companies are using customer relationship management to converge people, processes, and products more effectively to earn the position of valued partner, and embark on true relationship banking — with the end result of growing business momentum
The executive Guide to CRM architechturePivotal CRM
Explains the importance of flexible software architecture, and how the right CRM solution can support and even advance an organization’s ability to evolve in lock-step with changes as they occur—enabling them to attain and maintain a competitive advantage.
Implementing lead management best practices through marketing automation reduces the cost of marketing, fills the sales pipeline faster with better quality leads, and grows revenue
The crm journey from productivity to profitPivotal CRM
How companies across a vast selection of industries are using customer relationship management to converge people, processes, and products more efficiently.
Addressing the contact center opportunity, discuss five important contact center trends, and explain how companies can embrace these trends to create a smart strategy that can improve the top and bottom line.
Pivotal CRM for Financial Services offers comprehensive, integrated, industry-specific capabilities that increase insight into operational performance, streamline processes across the firm, and improve responsiveness to client demands
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
FIDO Alliance Osaka Seminar: Passkeys at Amazon.pdf
Sales leader point of view
1. The Sales Leader’s CRM Point of View
Connecting the dots in your customer-facing process.
Every company aspires to connect the dots in its processes to grow and
Abstract
be profitable. Because sales is the most direct line to revenue, a great
For success, you need to
deal of the burden to perform rests on the shoulders of the reps in the field
learn what your top guns are
to close more deals, faster.
doing and empower the rest
No matter what steps your company is taking to energize your sales team, of your team to follow those
they probably map to the following key sales objectives: best practices. In this guide,
we have distilled down the
1. Focus on your customers.
best-practices you need to
2. Grow your organization to keep pace with the changing marketplace. implement a CRM process for
3. Align your organization to be an efficient selling machine. your team.
Now, you’re probably thinking, ‘Tell me something I don’t already know.’ Your highest-level corporate objectives
can often seem so ideal, so all-encompassing that they can lose meaning in the day-to-day operation of your
company. It can be a challenge to deconstruct them in order to identify a sensible, measurable plan of action.
The goal of this guide is to deconstruct the key objectives of sales today. There are practical CRM tools out
there that can help to introduce repeatable, proven process to your sales team. So you can help them figure out
what works best— and do it more often.
About the Author
Jason Rushforth is President of Front Office Solutions–overseeing sales and marketing
for CDC Software’s CRM and complaint management solutions. He is known for his
keynote speaking engagements for such events as the Wealth Management Forum and
webcasts with Wall Street & Technology and TowerGroup, and he frequently contributes
to industry articles in publications such as CRM Magazine.
CDC Software | The Customer-Driven Company™ CRM White Paper | 1
2. Objective 1: Being Customer-Driven
Focusing on your customers is about being able to deliver more professional, more engaging interactions that
hit the mark more often. When your sales team follows proven steps to increase efficiencies, they keep focused
where they should be — on the activity of selling, rather than on details and logistics.
A mandated sales process is the key to customer focus, and provides consistency to drive business results
faster. The sales process includes:
• The internal and external steps of selling
• The way an organization communicates
• The unique differentiators that win deals
A cohesive sales process can be a competitive advantage in terms of customer acquisition and retention, but
it also brings the big advantage of aligning your company so that everyone understands their role in customer
management.
Establish a common selling framework
A cohesive sales It all begins with the adoption of a common vocabulary or sales framework—an
enterprise approach for talking about opportunities and customers. This common
process can be
language facilitates discussions so that each team member can quickly get up to
a competitive speed on an opportunity without requiring a detailed step-by-step account of every
component. Key components to a company-wide selling framework include:
advantage in
• What it is that we are trying to sell to the customer
terms of customer • The reason the customer needs what we are selling
acquisition and • The catalyst for the customer to act on this need
retention. • The decision-makers involved in the process
• The different levels of influence that each decision maker has on the sale
• The potential obstacles for winning the business
• The action plan to overcome these obstacles
When you can talk about prospects and customers consistently throughout your organization, you can forecast
with much more reliability. For example, if someone says they have a ‘Hot Prospect’, it does not mean anything
unless there is some definition around it. For instance, does a Hot Prospect have budget allocated? Are they
making a decision within 30 days? Have they agreed to some sort of trial demonstration?
By detailing the steps around the levels of prospect development, you begin to develop an easy tool for
forecasting and for addressing the obstacles that prevent you from winning business.
Provide a constant connection to deals-in-progress
Less-than desirable results in the short-term can dishearten anyone, especially those in sales who count on
step-by-step achievements along the way to keep them inspired.
With a constant connection to deals-in-progress, sales reps and teams can be more proactive within accounts.
If one approach is proving to be less than impactful, shift gears mid-deal. If the situation changes—such as a
competitor entering the deal — respond decisively to re-position to the prospect. And if the deal slows due to
internal issues with the prospect, sharpen the offer to give your sponsor more leverage with decision-makers.
CDC Software | The Customer-Driven Company™ CRM White Paper | 2
3. When the unexpected occurs within deals, this visibility empowers reps and managers to escalate the deal
and collaborate with additional team members. From technical insight to competitive perspective, bring the
resources you need to your side with ease and efficiency.
Sales professionals need a constant connection to the realities of every account—and how their efforts would
pay off down the line. The resulting reward has exponential impact on their motivation, persistence, and
ultimately, their results as a whole.
Use proven sales methodologies, step-by-step
With CRM that includes a customized, proven sales methodology, companies
Sales effectively reshape their sales culture from the ground up. By integrating a proven
professionals sales methodology into your sales automation and CRM systems, you enable
individual reps to understand what approach works best, and to choose that
need a constant approach more often.
connection to the In most companies, every salesperson has their own way to approach their own
territory. There is often no common process or language. Start by defining each
realities of every
step in your unique sales process, and the workflow and business rules associated
account — and with each step. Consistently reinforce these steps to achieve a greater degree of
cultural adoption. Enhance with a sales methodology for a proven yet customized
how their efforts
sales process.
would pay off When sales process is integrated within a sales automation and CRM system, each
down the line. salesperson is required to take action on every step of the process—there is no
skipping around. This helps to build a history of success that would not have been
provable before.
Collaboration between the sales process and the CRM system also enables companies to run each lead
they receive against their ideal customer profile, providing sales people with a more targeted, accurate
understanding of each opportunity. They customize opportunities to include a calendaring system that
maps to each buying influence within the account, so salespeople can more easily keep track of the
multiple players in complex sales cycles.
And the complexity is only increasing. We’ve all noticed that sales cycles are becoming more crowded
than ever. Dollars are harder to come by, and the risk for a bad decision is greater. The roles of multiple
decision-makers and influencers puts added pressure on sales reps to adapt their approach. A proven sales
methodology is most effective when integrated into your sales process and CRM system, as it can help reps to
package their approach to keep it relevant to the concerns of every audience.
For instance, consider the people your sales team interfaces with in four buckets:
1. Technical Buyers want to make sure that the solution meets specifications and complies to budget.
2. User Buyers, or the people who will use your product, can be key influencers because of their perceived
acceptance of the solution (i.e., this product will greatly enhance/diminish my productivity).
3. Economic Buyers are the ones who can say Yes. They approve the budget and are both deal-makers and
deal-breakers. They will rely on the users and the technical buyers to help them make a good decision.
4. Coaches are key to a successful opportunity. These are people within the organization that have credibility
and want to help you win; they believe in you and your solution.
CDC Software | The Customer-Driven Company™ CRM White Paper | 3
4. An integrated sales methodology gives your reps the correct framework, language and common themes to
help bring all of these people together and move the deal forward. From a human resources perspective, an
established sales process and methodology in place within a CRM system helps new sales employees to ramp
up and become productive more quickly.
New employees receive training on the sales process first and foremost, so they can communicate with the rest
of the organization using a consistent sales language. Product training comes second, and lastly, training on the
sales system technology.
One of the biggest wins of CRM technology backing the sales process is that it reinforces the concepts on a
daily basis, while helping teams to focus on long-term success. Sales people utilize the strategies, while gaining
visibility into their sales funnels at the same time. It allows managers and executives to view and analyze the
sales funnel, and it allows reps to internalize how current activities are going to pay off down the line.
Without CRM, evaluations are often based heavily on personality and the perception of success. With CRM,
managers can make conclusions based on true results. Forecasting accuracy is greatly improved, and
managers spend their time helping their sales team on the opportunities that matter most. Sales managers have
increased visibility into their team’s successes. Managers see exactly what activities their team has going on at
any given time.
Objective 2: Keep Pace with the Changing Market
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result each time.
Companies need to make sure they continually identify and address what works and what doesn’t, so that they
have an ongoing sense of what needs to change.
The economy can have an impact on how sales teams operate, both internally and within deals:
• Sales people compete on price, not value
• Increase in administrative workload—sales reps focused on details rather than selling
• Resources are diluted among various quality opportunities
• Call reluctance is at an all-time high
Sales organizations consistently focus on opportunity identification, opportunity management, and relationship
management to drive revenue, but changes in the selling environment can shift the emphasis from one to
another.
When the economy starts sputtering, the emphasis is on relationship management. There are not as many
opportunities to pursue, and people are nervous about where the economy was heading. It makes sense to get
closer to your biggest customers.
In better times, the emphasis shifts to opportunity identification and creation. Major customers have been
stabilized, margins have been protected, and now companies need to figure out how to get the top line moving
again.
In short, they need to identify more opportunities and efficiently move those opportunities toward close. It is
this sales process that can provide the underlying framework your organization needs to sell outside of the
traditional sales department.
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5. Shifting the focus: building new opportunities
1. First, prioritize your activities. Focus on business that is ready or about to close. Then concentrate on
bringing in new opportunities.
2. Next, take care of current opportunities in progress that are earlier in the sales cycle.
3. Finally, manage your existing client base and automate as many administrative tasks as possible.
Current market conditions make it necessary to concentrate on bringing in those additional opportunities, so
this may take more of your time. It is more important than ever to qualify prior to investing in meetings. Outside
sales people need to look at how many of their time-intensive, face-to-face meetings could be conducted as
effectively with a phone call, especially in regard to managing current clients. Are the benefits of meeting face-
to-face worth the investment in every case?
By giving your sales team a clear, consistent sales process through CRM, you create for your company a more
comfortable competitive position.
Putting a CRM system in place now ensures your team and your company will be poised to be even more
successful when the economy is strong—rather than struggling with performance and efficiency issues.
Objective 3: Align Your Company to be a Selling Machine
Sales organizations are ultimately held accountable for driving revenue. But nearly every department in your
company impacts sales success.
Aligning your company means building an underlying framework that will drive effectiveness and help improve
relationships between key customer management departments, specifically between sales and marketing.
Optimize leads with marketing
• Establish what an ‘A’ or hot lead looks like for your company
• Determine your ideal customer profile
• Assess modes of receptivity — who is ready to buy?
• Segment leads based on quality of opportunity
• Distinguish sales vs. marketing activities, and set a process in place for the two to work seamlessly together
Benefits of lead optimization
• Improve resource allocation
• Identify and capture interested sales prospects
• Convert sales suspects to sales opportunities
• Ensure salespeople engage the high priority sales opportunities
• Identify opportunities to involve senior sales executives
• Reduce administrative work required of salespeople
• Reduce call reluctance
• Retain and nurture sales opportunities not ready for sales
• Track and analyze campaign/sales results, while calculating ROI
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6. First, sales needs to clearly tell marketing what their growth plan is—not just how much they have to sell,
but where it will come from. How much will come from new business? How much will come from existing
customers? How much business will go away that we have to plan to replace?
If marketing doesn’t know these things, how can it support the sales team? If sales needs help identifying
new opportunities and marketing is focused on maintaining existing relationships, then the two teams are not
aligned. This baseline understanding of where the business is going to come from is key to a productive working
relationship.
Marketing is fundamentally tasked with accelerating sales, so alignment is critically important and useful for
each team. Some of the marketing activities that have a direct impact on sales include:
• Brand Development — with a strong brand, the positive reputation of your company precedes the sales
rep in a deal. Ideally, prospects within your target market should be familiar with your company and its
differentiators. This means that once a selling dialog begins, reps don’t have to spend as much time building
credibility.
• Direct-Mail Campaigns — this common marketing vehicle is a communication to prospects within your target
market (including existing customers) with a call-to-action that is designed to spark a discussion. For instance,
an e-mail goes out to your customer base advising them of a new product, with an offer for a free business
paper discussing the benefits and favorable reviews of the product. The prospect visits your company website
to sign up to receive the business paper and learn more.
• Customer Intelligence — marketing can assist sales to segment and target the customer base, by identifying,
for example, Most Valuable Customers.
When your sales team is integrated to your marketing team through CRM, forecasts become more accurate and
the business process of selling becomes more efficient and proactive.
Summary
Your company aspires to grow and be profitable. Despite fewer people and smaller budgets, the pressure on
Sales is still to inspire prospects and derail the competition.
You’ve learned some practical steps to help to introduce repeatable process to your sales team. With proven
sales methodology integrated into your CRM system, you can connect the dots in your customer-facing
processes and focus on taking the most proven approaches more often.
Focus on your customers to be more customer-driven. Establish a common selling framework, provide a constant
connection to deals-in-progress and use proven sales methodologies, step-by-step.
Grow your organization to keep pace with the changing marketplace. Focus on opportunity identification and
creation — figure out how to get the top line moving again. Align your organization to be an efficient selling
machine. Optimize leads with marketing. Determine your ideal customer profile, and identify those who are
ready to buy. Set a process in place for sales and marketing to work seamlessly together.
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