CRM tools to give time back to your sales team

Pres­sure on sales­peo­ple is greater than ever. Increased com­pe­ti­tion between brands, cus­tomers expect­ing per­son­alised, instan­ta­neous ser­vice, and con­tin­u­ing eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal uncer­tain­ty mean that the very peo­ple whose respon­si­bil­i­ty it is to dri­ve rev­enues need to per­form bet­ter than ever.

CRM sys­tems such as Sales­force offer new oppor­tu­ni­ties for sales­peo­ple seek­ing to devel­op their poten­tial and increase their rev­enues. Rapid­ly grow­ing automa­tion capa­bil­i­ties are speed­ing up admin­is­tra­tive tasks, giv­ing time back to sales reps so they can do what algo­rithms and soft­ware nev­er can – devel­op bet­ter rela­tion­ships with new and exist­ing cus­tomers.

How­ev­er, too few sales­peo­ple are tak­ing full advan­tage of this oppor­tu­ni­ty, argues David Oates, vice pres­i­dent inter­na­tion­al at Con­ga, a Sales­force Plat­inum ISV Part­ner and appli­ca­tion provider for com­pa­nies look­ing to auto­mate and enhance their busi­ness pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“Putting togeth­er quotes, writ­ing pro­pos­als, under­tak­ing con­tract nego­ti­a­tion, try­ing to under­stand red­lines in con­tracts, all these process­es are still tak­ing up too much of a salesperson’s valu­able time because they don’t use avail­able tools to make them­selves more effi­cient,” he says. “Automa­tion will nev­er dri­ve rev­enue or replace the skills need­ed to make a deal, but what it will do is to give you more time to focus on these things. It’s worth remem­ber­ing that all sales­peo­ple are mea­sured and paid based on activ­i­ties that direct­ly gen­er­ate rev­enue.”

To ben­e­fit from the promis­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by this evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy, com­pa­nies are turn­ing to solu­tions devel­oped by Con­ga

Accord­ing to Mr Oates, this fail­ure to cap­i­talise on the ben­e­fits of automa­tion is due to under­stand­able con­cerns about change. “Tech­nol­o­gy is chang­ing so fast that peo­ple sim­ply can’t keep up,” he says. “Added to this is the long­stand­ing prob­lem that too many sales­peo­ple regard Sales­force as an admin­is­tra­tive bur­den and as a tool used by their man­ag­er to report on their activ­i­ty, rather than a tool for improv­ing their effi­cien­cy.”

The result is that many sales reps use Sales­force and oth­er CRM sys­tems sim­ply as a data­base and that rep­re­sents a very small per­cent­age of its val­ue, says Mr Oates.

“These data­bas­es are use­less, of course, if you don’t exploit the data that they hold,” he says. “The data­base itself isn’t use­ful; it’s what it con­tains that’s price­less if you use it well. So the trick is to work out how to use that data effec­tive­ly and employ the lat­est tools to max­imise the ben­e­fit you derive from it. You need to iden­ti­fy those per­for­mance enhance­ments that give you your time back so you can spend it devel­op­ing your new and exist­ing client base.”

To ben­e­fit from the promis­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by this evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy, com­pa­nies are turn­ing to solu­tions devel­oped by Con­ga. The company’s cus­tomers include Hilton World­wide, Sony and Qual­comm, along with some 8,000 oth­ers around the world.

Conga’s data solu­tion Action­Grid cre­ates the data insights that dri­ve busi­ness growth, pro­vid­ing dynam­ic views so users can see, update and act on all rel­e­vant data on a sin­gle screen. This elim­i­nates the need to click through var­i­ous records or to update them one by one.

“You can then employ Conga’s doc­u­ment gen­er­a­tion plat­form to gen­er­ate pro­pos­als, invoic­es or con­tracts auto­mat­i­cal­ly. This takes the CRM data and puts it into a Word, Pow­er­Point or Excel tem­plate, almost instant­ly,” says Mr Oates.

“No one else has equiv­a­lent capa­bil­i­ty, pro­vid­ing doc­u­ment gen­er­a­tion and man­age­ment sys­tems to go with it. It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant when sales­peo­ple are gen­er­at­ing and send­ing out con­tracts. We’ve devel­oped our Con­ga Con­tracts solu­tion to help speed up the sales cycle, espe­cial­ly dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions when you have mul­ti­ple, red­lined ver­sions going back and forth.”

Clients who use Con­ga Con­tracts have reduced their con­tract nego­ti­a­tion cycles by as much as a half. The solu­tion elim­i­nates com­mon bot­tle­necks in the nego­ti­a­tion process and allows sales­peo­ple to com­pare doc­u­ment ver­sions with­out ever leav­ing Sales­force. They can also enjoy the free­dom to under­take nego­ti­a­tions them­selves using terms with­in a frame­work pre-approved by their legal depart­ment, there­by sav­ing time and pre­serv­ing legal pro­tec­tions.

In addi­tion, automa­tion reduces errors and improves fore­cast­ing for bet­ter deci­sion-mak­ing, while increased vis­i­bil­i­ty enables sales­peo­ple to approve changes to busi­ness terms more eas­i­ly and to main­tain a full con­tract his­to­ry with­in their Sales­force CRM.

Anoth­er increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar con­tract solu­tion is Nova­tus, a com­pre­hen­sive con­tract man­age­ment sys­tem that pro­vides com­pa­ny-stan­dard agree­ments, nego­ti­a­tion in a secure envi­ron­ment, ver­sion com­par­i­son, deploy­ment of tasks and elec­tron­ic sig­na­tures, among oth­er fea­tures.

Unlike almost all oth­er providers in this sec­tor, Con­ga is a glob­al busi­ness with offices world­wide and a team of more than 300 staff who can use local knowl­edge and exper­tise to pro­vide ser­vice to their clients. The company’s glob­al reach and its capac­i­ty to research and devel­op new solu­tions puts it in an ide­al posi­tion to sup­port its clients as they face the chal­lenges of increas­ing­ly rapid inno­va­tion, and the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty that lies ahead.

“Sales­force as a plat­form will only con­tin­ue to get stronger,” pre­dicts Mr Oates. “Any organ­i­sa­tion that doesn’t exploit its grow­ing poten­tial to gain com­pet­i­tive advan­tage will be left behind. Com­pa­nies also need to enhance their capa­bil­i­ty by intro­duc­ing third-par­ty appli­ca­tions. I tell sales­peo­ple: ‘You’ve already invest­ed in this tech­nol­o­gy – now is the time to make the most of it’.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it getconga.com