Richard James invented the slinky by accident (read the slinky story: http://www.slinkyprint.com/slinky_history.htm) and it became a wildly successful toy over the past 40 years. Although some things are found by accident and become extremely successful; I am sure that is not the way you want to run your business! It is critical for your sales and marketing force to know whether their approach is effective or not.
- Do you depend on your sales staff to attain new leads and win new business by accident?
- Do you know where your new leads come from?
- Do you know where in your sales process you lose the prospect and why?
- Do you know what steps in your sales process take the longest to progress to the next level and why?
- Are you able to determine each of these items per sales person and coach them during the process?
- Do you know who your current customers are and why they chose you over the competition?
- Does your marketing department know what campaigns are the most effective?
- Do you know what your customers value in their relationship with you?
Now days there are no excuses for not being able to answer all of these questions with confidence. CRM systems not only enable the sales force in their prospecting and closing efforts, they house critical information about your customers.
Have you harnessed your CRM to help answers to these questions, or are you still using an expensive Rolodex?
Isn’t it time to stop trying to run your business by accident and start running it with an explicit and purposeful approach!
