Posted by Commence on April 8, 2010 under CEO Corner | 
Is your sales team working on the most qualified opportunities, or chasing tire kickers? Do you even know? Most companies rely on the expertise of their sales representatives to qualify opportunities, but this has proven over and over again to be inefficient and costly. The problem with relying on your sales organization is a lack of consistency. Most sales organizations have people with different levels of experience. The senior people may be good at determining a qualified opportunity from an unqualified one, but even they make mistakes. The people with limited experience are right only 50 percent of the time and the inexperienced ones may place an account on the forecast because the prospect asked for a brochure. My point is this, the amount of time your sales team may be spending following up on poorly qualified opportunities may be costing your business much more than you think.
Commence Corporation has moved beyond traditional Customer Relationship Management software programs that are primarily focused on managing the sales cycle to delivering a solution that enables you to increase the effectiveness of your sales organization and focus on business with the greatest potential. Commence has introduced an automated business process that ranks and scores leads based a set of pre-defined criteria. The criteria consist of a series of questions that are used to automatically score each lead based on the responses entered into the system. The questions are completely customizable and users may create as many as required. (See sample below):
Lead Scoring Questions
The lead qualification questions and rating criteria are determined by sales management and ensure that every new opportunity is ranked according to the criteria. It’s an efficient process that results in a high level of consistency because every opportunity is scored using a standardized set of qualifiers and is no longer dependent on the experience level of the sales representative.
Each lead is then automatically color coded as highly qualified (red), requires additional follow-up (yellow), or not qualified (blue). (See diagram below)
Lead Qualification
The value here is twofold: First, there is no question with regard to where the sales team should be focusing their attention. The leads coded red are the most qualified opportunities based on the company’s lead qualification criteria and need immediate attention. Secondly, sales management can quickly view the most qualified opportunities and assist with the process of moving them toward closure.
Part of the Commence value proposition also comes from an integrated marketing application that is directly tied to the lead qualification system. Yellow and blue coded leads may be placed in an automated drip-marketing program that nurtures each lead with periodic mailings while your team is focused on the most qualified opportunities.
The Commence lead scoring capability provides critical intelligence and has proven to deliver measurable results. It will ensure that your sales team has a laser-sharp focus on the most qualified sales opportunities. With Commence, you’ll shrink the sales cycle and improve your bottom line results. I guarantee it.
About the author: Larry Caretsky is the president of Commence Corporation, a leading provider of CRM software which can be deployed in a web-based, cloud-computing environment or on premise. Caretsky is considered an expert in Customer Relationship Management and has written numerous white papers on the subject, which may be accessed via the company’s web site at www.commence.com.
Posted by Commence on December 1, 2009 under CEO Corner |
It seems like manufacturers of Customer Relationship Management software are doing almost anything these days to add new subscribers. Some are offering free utilization for the first few months, others money back guarantees and a few are even offering utilization of their software as a monthly service with no contract at all. Price points are all over the map and they have consistently changed to attract new customers. It’s gotten so crazy that if you need a CRM system right away some vendors will allow you to enter your credit card and for a few bucks you’ll be up and running in minutes. In some cases the service is even free. But wait a minute. Is this a business solution that is going to address my requirements for improving how I sell and provide services to my customers? It sounds more like I am buying an out of the box contact manager.
The fast sale & low cost craze must be working however, because CRM vendors like Salesforce and Microsoft — two of the recognized leaders — have continued to repackage their offering and lower their price. Just a few weeks ago a small company of two people could purchase Salesforce CRM for $9 per user per month. A few months earlier up to ten users could take advantage of this offer. Recently the program changed again and now five users can purchase the product for $5 per user. I appreciate that CRM vendors are having a tough time differentiating themselves, but are they now convinced that the sole driver of CRM decisions among small to mid-size companies is price? This CEO is not.
Warren Buffet once said, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” Seems appropriate here doesn’t it. My firm Commence Corporation has been providing CRM software solutions to small and mid-size business for two decades. Most of the executives we work with are entrepreneurial and savvy operators. Sure they want the best price they can get, but they are more interested in addressing their business requirements and improving their business than finding the lowest price. Sometimes their requirements are as simple as data consolidation. They may be managing their customer data using excel spreadsheets or a contact manager and are unable to consolidate and share the information with the people and departments that need it to efficiently do their jobs. Some are frustrated with their inability to organize and manage their sales organization and are looking for tools and expertise to assist them. But one thing is for sure: they recognize that a CRM tool on its own at any price is not going to solve their business needs. They want a CRM partner.
Value Added Services, the True Differentiator
So what do I get for $5 dollars or $9 dollars per user anyway? What level of service should I expect? Do I get a documented installation plan that will ensure the successful implementation of the CRM system? Do I get assistance with data migration? What about training? Is the CRM vendor available to assist my staff with best practices for data consolidation and data sharing, sales optimization and measurement of sales performance? Will I get the services I need to address my business challenges and improve my business? After all, this is why I began the search for a CRM system in the first place.
CRM Partner vs. CRM Vendor
Addressing your business challenges will not be met by the selection of a low cost CRM solution, but instead by engaging the expertise and domain experience of a true business partner. A partner will take responsibility of the successful implementation and utilization of the CRM system. A partner will provide a high level of service before, during and after the sale and supply the industry and product expertise to ensure that you realize the maximum value from their solution. The only problem is you cannot get a partner for $5 per user.
Commence Differentiators
Commence Corporation has taken pride not only in our top rated CRM software, but in the world-class service we have provided to our customers. For more than two decades Commence customers have relied on our expertise and domain experience to ensure the successful utilization of our product and the growth of their business. This partnership between Commence and our customers have ensured their success as well as ours.
See what customers say about Commence and take a look at my white paper “Don’t Make a CRM Buying Mistake” at www.commence.com.
Posted by Commence on October 27, 2009 under CEO Corner |
Any high-growth business strategy must begin with a consistent and disciplined sales process that is easily understood across the sales organization. Salespeople and their managers need to use the same vocabulary, and view selling opportunities as having sequential stages that must be completed before a suspect becomes a prospect, and a prospect becomes a customer. Following a consistent process reduces the anxiety and uncertainty common among both salespeople and sales managers because everyone knows what is expected and needed for every sales pursuit. Having definite requirements and policies on when and how to give a demonstration, prepare a proposal, or send a sample helps the sales force proactively control the sales process versus simply reacting to requests from potentially unqualified prospects. Better preparation, deeper research, and clearer goals for each stage of the selling process will result in a more effective sales team and better business results.
A standard approach to pursuing and tracking opportunities is a smart way to assure that all sales activities are aligned with organizational goals and the overall direction of sales management. Consistency also reduces the amount of non-value added sales activities such as drafting letters, writing reports, and having lengthy phone calls to determine what stage is next in a sales opportunity. Having standard terminology saves time and minimizes confusion.
Sales managers benefit from standardized processes because it is also easier to determine how each salesperson is performing. Opportunities that are stalled in one stage can be identified and resolved. Salespeople benefit from standardization because they waste less time determining what information is missing and what the next step should be in the workflow. Sales appointments become more productive because they are only conducted when qualified as part of a planned sequence of events.
The high level steps to implement a sales process are:
- Document your sales process
- Design your implementation
- Train your sales team
- Support the implementation
Some companies adopt branded systems such as Sandler, Solution Selling, Dale Carnegie or others. Others develop their own systems with distinct terminology; perhaps a hybrid of popular systems or a mix of the techniques used by the company’s most successful sales performers.
A standard sales process allows companies to more easily analyze events and make sense of trends. As a regional sales manager at a mid-sized organization observed, “The only way to discover what’s working and what’s not is to measure the individual steps of the sales process. If you know the percentages of prospects that proceed through each stage of the process, you accurately predict how many sales will close in the future, based upon the current pipeline. You can also compare the performance of team members and take appropriate action, like additional coaching, in order to ensure that the team remains productive.”
Applying Best Practices to Sales
Most organizations are not strangers to processes, systems, and re-engineering. For example, in the manufacturing industry, plants and warehouses couldn’t operate profitably without them and no business manager would let accounting and purchasing departments improvise. The more complex the task, it’s more likely that the effective principles and processeses for successfully completing that task have been defined and codified. In other words, much of the business world is already highly process-driven, systematized, and automated.
Yet, oftentimes, the sales department hasn’t been automated. For example, in a recent study of distributor respondents, eighty-eight percent indicated that they do not have a documented, formal sales process. Given that sales is fundamental and represents a large expense item, it was quite surprising that written sales processes were non-existent for the majority of the study participants. Without such a document to provide a consistent road map, executives have no choice but to depend on the creativity, work ethic and luck of individual sales reps and their managers.
Organizations without a documented sales process often exhibit several common symptoms, such as a disconnected and manual approach to selling and a lengthy cycle time to find prospects, get quotes out the door, and close orders. This may in turn lead to irritated prospects, who expect a rapid response to their inquiries or request for a proposal. . In addition, top sales employees may become annoyed. They want to sell, not figure out the best way to put prospects in the pipeline, create quotes, enter orders and track shipments delivered. Other symptoms of process deficiencies include abundant and costly errors, evidenced by expedited orders and high volumes of returns, and inadequate margin on too many quotes, resulting in deflated profitability. This may lead to stagnant sales from the most important customers and cause engineering and other departments to be pulled into disarray when the sales team gets a request for proposal or learns about a bid opportunity.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Many executives voice issues similar to these, yet the remedy seems to be incredibly difficult. Sales teams are often extremely autonomous, and management struggles to avoid “big brother” accusations and micromanaging. Despite these legitimate concerns, it is not that difficult to successfully implement a standard sales process.
When reviewing the various sales methodologies and processes available, make sure your final selection is repeatable, predictable, and scalable. What you want is a sales process that is simply enough that, over time, it will become second nature to the sales staff. Also, make sure that it isn’t too complicated, or the sales team will not use it.
The elements of a sales process typically include:
When smart organizations are designing a sales process implementation, they focus on change management, not sales training. By implementing a formalized sales process, businesses are fundamentally changing the way people do their jobs on a daily basis. There will be natural resistance. To develop a change management plan, make sure you can answer the following questions:
Follow the Leader
One of the best ways to make sure implementations “stick” is to have the management involved. One recent study found that when sales training is reinforced by management, the sales skills taught during training produced a 15% permanent increase in productivity.
Management needs to be involved in more than a cosmetic fashion. A senior member of the management team needs to attend the training, and this same manager should inspect the sales activities for a period of time to make sure they continuously are consistent with the new sales introduced during the training.
At the end of the day, the challenge with adopting a new sales process is getting everyone to follow it. Sales management must lead by example in sales meetings and on sales calls. An automated workflow reinforced by a CRM system that quickly prompts a salesperson to enter required information before moving to the next sales stage is invaluable. Standard reports and online visibility into the sales pipeline can help monitor the progress of opportunities over time so that both the salesperson and the sales manager can spot when an opportunity is stalled.
As one sales leader summed up his company’s recipe for success: “Our company can’t grow consistently unless the sales process is repeatable, not arbitrary. For us, it is a condition of employment – you have to embrace the standards, follow the processes and use the CRM system.”
Author Larry Caretsky is the CEO of Tinton Falls, N.J.-based Commence Corporation.
Tags: CRM, Information Management, OnDemand, process management, project management, Reports, SaaS, sales, Sales Effectiveness, sales force automation, sales forecasting, social networking, software
Posted by Commence on under Commence News |
-FREE Software Up-Grade Offered to Existing Customers-
TINTON FALLS, N.J., (October 15, 2009) – Commence Corporation, a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions, today announced that it is extending its managed services offering to existing desktop customers and offering a complimentary software upgrade with its new hosting service.
“Today’s economic crisis has created an environment whereby companies are finding it difficult to upgrade and maintain their own IT infrastructure,” said Larry Caretsky, president of Commence Corporation. “Some have been forced to reduce their IT staff, making the management of their systems even more challenging. As a result, these businesses may now be working with older, fragile hardware or unsupported software and they are rightfully concerned about the impact this will have on their business.”
Commence Corporation has created a unique Managed Service designed to address this business challenge for existing customers. The service places the role of managing and maintaining the Commence Server hardware and software with Commence Corporation. It provides customers with the use of state-of-the-art high-speed server hardware at Commence Corporation’s data center as well as 24/7 management of the system by trained engineers. Customers are also entitled to a free software upgrade and continued upgrades for as long as they remain on the service. This ensures that they are always working with the highest quality server hardware and the latest version of the software.
Abhijit Joshi, president of White Hedge Inc., recently switched over to the service and is pleased with the outcome. “As a small company I did not have the resources to purchase the equipment and staff necessary to manage and maintain my Commence system,” said Joshi. “In addition, keeping up with the latest product releases became difficult. By outsourcing this function to Commence I freed up time and resources to dedicate to growing my business while Commence manages and maintains the hardware and software.”
Joshi, is not alone, several dozen new companies are already utilizing Commence’s managed service. For more information contact Commence sales at 1-877 – COMMENCE.
More About Commence Corporation
Founded in 1988, Commence develops and delivers a diverse suite of award-winning CRM products that integrate people, processes and technology. Delivered via the popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) model or implemented as on premised licensed software, Commence CRM solutions are used by thousands of companies to streamline sales and customer service front end business processes. As a result, Commence clients increase workforce productivity, generate positive customer interactions, and reduce cost. More information about Commence can be accessed at www.commence.com
