Sales leaders searching for CRM and sales management solutions typically have Dashboards and Reports high on their shopping list. Unfortunately, they’re often misled by the sexy demos they see and only learn about key limitations after they’ve made a commitment and it’s too late.
Imagine two car sales people traveling to the Amazon to sell cars.
One sells Kias and the other sells Cadillacs. Deep in the Amazon where the
natives have scarcely seen a car, they’re not likely to appreciate the depth of features and quality that the Cadillac salesperson can point out.
It’s only after driving a Kia for a while that you can really appreciate a Cadillac.
It’s the same with sales management reports and CRM customization.
Most CRM vendors will show you dashboards that do generic things like measure leads by source or by vertical market or sales opportunities by product or territory. And if you’ve never been able to get that type of report without putting your accounting department, marketing department and your assistant through torture for weeks, then those reports look like game changers.
But, it’s only after looking at a report of sales opportunities by product each week for a few weeks that it begins to dawn on you…. You need something slightly different. Your business is unique and even your direct competitors probably want to measure their sales pipeline in different ways.
CRM Customization Breakdown Example:
A standard report or dashboard in most CRM systems is Calls made by sales person. Again, if you’ve never been able to get that data easily, then it is a very nice report! But, can you look at that report and know which sales person on your team needs some attention regarding their call volume? Probably not. Sally might have logged on 50 calls today but, that’s been the case for a few months and her sales keep coming in under quota. On the other hand, Sam only logs 10 or 15 calls in the CRM but, he kills his quota consistently. There’s something missing. It could be the potential size of the accounts Sally and Sam are calling on. Maybe Sally is very comfortable calling on customers in the industry she used to work in but, those accounts are typically smaller. Sam on the other hand is always focused on big fish.
The solution is that your call dashboard needs to clearly show calls logged for large accounts vs. small account. Or perhaps its certain vertical markets that need to be highlighted in your reporting.
The point is that it’s this simple little bit of detail that always does two things:
- It makes the information actionable – you can look at the dashboard and know which sales person needs some training or some praise and take action immediately.
- It breaks most CRMs
Most CRM solutions are built to do all sorts of need things with the default structure of their system and the fields built into their system. But, when you create custom fields to track unique bits of information that are crucial to your business, taking those pre-built, ready to go, great looking reports and adding that additional information in leads to one of these road blocks:
- It just can’t be done in the basic product – purchase and configuration of add-ons or upgrades required.
- It can be done but, it takes a skilled technician – start spending time and money with consultants.
Here are some conversations from the Salesforce.com support site:
Interpretation: “Yes, it can be done but, I’m probably going to need to do it for you.”
Interpretation: “Yes, it can be done but, you’ll need to purchase additional products or add-ons.”
This is why SalesNexus offers a far lower risk decision for sales managers:
- All features are built to work seamlessly with your customizations. Custom fields can be the basis of your reports, dashboards, campaigns, etc.
- SalesNexus provides unlimited support and consulting itself. If you can’t do something with SalesNexus that’s important to you, we work with you to create it rather than referring you to outside consultants and vendors. This keeps things simple and affordable as your needs grow and change