While starting a new business the founders usually think of an accurate sales process development; they are more concerned about the lack of sales. A weak sales team in a company, which typically consists of the executive and one or two managers, gains full access to the customers and does what it thinks to be right.

It is relatively easy to control sales at the beginning of the journey of a small company, when there are not too many requests and deals. But when the company starts to scale, grow, sales management ceases to be so simple.

As a company hires new employees it becomes more difficult to monitor what is happening in the sales department. Consequently, some of the personnel can even “disappear from the radar”. In this case it is often unclear what the managers are working on, whether the deals are moving forward and what their prospects are. And without a standardized process, whether a deal happens or not, the success will greatly depend on the employee who works with the lead.

When the sales process is not defined, it suffers greatly. Employee teaching, sales training, executive coaching can fix this situation to some extent, and help to align some indicators for a short time. But the CRM-system will be the best solution in this case.

Basically, the sales process is the infrastructure that exists in the business and helps the managers to study the company's products or services and even complete a deal with a customer. The sales process in the CRM is a set of documents, rules and procedures that make up this infrastructure, lightweight and optimized due to availability and automation.

Now we are going to describe 10 possibilities of CRM-systems with which you can improve the sales process in any company.

1. It Enables To Describe The Processes.

The description of the sales process usually originates in the head of the founder or sales manager. Eventually, it makes its way onto a piece of paper. But scaling up a sales strategy by word of mouth or in scattered documents is unlikely to be successful.

To make the sales process work as a clock you should embed all the information into a system that will document the entire process - from its stages to the rules and actions that managers must perform at each of them.

Defining the sales stages will help you to streamline the sales process for both your current team and new hires. Using the CRM allows new managers to quickly gain speed without a clear understanding of your sales process concept.

2. It Enables To Standardise The Processes.

If managers were completely free in the way of selling, your company would have as many sales processes as there are managers. The CRM can be a great tool for standardizing interactions between managers and customers.

Repetitive processes provide consistent customer interactions and save your managers’ valuable time and energy.

3. Provides The Possibility To Automate The Data Entry Process.

Some companies in their sales departments still use Excel spreadsheets, for example, to track relationships with potential customers before entering them into the CRM. Though the simple integration setup with traffic sources can help CRM users to save time by avoiding the burden of entering data into spreadsheets.

Managers who use the Excel spend a lot of energy on tedious time-consuming tasks like typing, copying and pasting. This kind of job usually frustrates managers. Most of them are more likely to enjoy talking to clients than doing administrative work.

The CRM-system, with the help of synchronization and automatic completion functions, can help simplify and shorten the data entry process that managers have to do in companies that do not use the CRM.

More time spent on the sales brings more clients, which means - more sales. By reducing your salespeople's tedious workloads, you empower them to focus on what they really need to do - selling.

Learn more about the possibility of the CRM and traffic source integration

4. It Enables To Predict The Deal Probability.

“Accuracy” is not the word which can be associated with Excel reports. Incorrect formulas, incorrect data entry, arithmetic errors - the chances of mistakes in spreadsheets are endless.

Your decisions will always be as good as the information they are based on. By implementing the best CRM solutions in the software market, organizations can fundamentally improve the accuracy of their reports and forecasts.

Instead of using Excel formulas or manual calculations the CRM will automatically assign the correct value to the deal depending on what stage it is in and many other parameters. With this technology in place, your sales managers are much less likely to experience unexpected results at the end of the month or quarter.

5. It Allows To Monitor The Plan Integration.

When managers complete a plan, they want the executives to know about it. At the same time, executives want to know when managers are not following the plan. But when the tracking system is ineffective, it is easy to overlook both positive and negative performance trends.

The best managers will definitely be upset with not being noticed by the chief. If the executive does not see which of the managers is performing worse, he will not be able to determine in a timely manner which of his employees may need additional education and training.

Automating the sales process using a CRM-system allows managers to monitor the implementation of plans more closely. With the CRM, they can easily identify trends in real time and, most importantly, react accordingly. If the data on the implementation of the plan is readily available to both managers and executives, the likelihood of not fulfilling the plan reduces significantly.

6. It Allows The Executive To Monitor The Managers Work.

If the company does not use the CRM-system it will be very difficult to find out how active the managers are. The only way to know is to ask the employee in person. And as you might guess, it will not be the most reliable information source.

The CRM allows the executives to see a clear picture of the employees activity. They can update the information at any time and see how many calls the manager made, how many emails he sent, how many meetings he planned and held. It is important to have this information as it provides an opportunity to determine if the manager is active enough to complete the plan.

In addition, the CRM enables the head of the sales department to avoid the constant harassment of managers because of anxiety about their sufficient or insufficient activity.

7. Provides Sustainability And Stability In The Sales Department.

What does CRM stand for in sales? First of all, you can use a CRM system for sales automation. Let's say one of the managers enters sales data into a spreadsheet that everyone uses. As long as he works for the company, everything goes smoothly.

But what will happen when this manager leaves the company? Will customer and transaction data and other documentation collected over months or years disappear from the organization? What would you do in such a situation?

The CRM acts as a shared knowledge system that documents the entire sales process involving managers and executives. Thus, any individual employee departure does not threaten the company's sales infrastructure.

8. Improves Access To Customer Information For Employees Of Other Departments.

The data about clients which you and your managers are gaining during the sales process does not apply only to the sales department. Marketing and support professionals can also make great use of this information.

The CRM ensures that the information received by the sales staff can be accessed when needed by the employees of the entire company. Among other things, the CRM is a centralized data storage system which provides easy access to sales data.

In this way, the customer support and marketing department is able to better serve customers.

Better work with clients leads to the strengthening of these relationships which can become permanent.

And long-term customer relationships turn into profit.

9.It Promotes Healthy Competition.

Healthy competition provides the sales process an added edge. Therefore, most CRMs have tools for ranking the achievements of managers: dashboards on which the whole team can see how their colleagues are working.

Having a simple visual representation of team activity can increase sales effectiveness. This naturally increases the responsibility of individual employees and serves as an immediate incentive for them to either keep up or succeed.

Ultimately, this is a good way to speed up the sales process.

10. Gives An Opportunity To Effectively Control The Sales Funnels.

The sales reference process described in the funnel is designed to help managers efficiently move deals from stage to stage until they are closed. Almost all CRMs have tools that allow you to understand how effectively transactions are being promoted.

CRMs provide complete information about company's sales funnels. With the help of such tools, executives can get a clear idea of how deals are progressing. The CRM with these features allows you to see if there are any problematic stages in your funnels and which deals are delayed or "fall off".

The sales process is very important for every business. The company needs well-thought-out processes, policies and procedures to manage its relationship with customers and employees. A CRM-system is the difference between how you can consistently achieve your sales goals or undermine your growth potential.

Controlling the process is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. But with the help of the CRM, you will definitely get benefits and improve the performance in your sales department.

Choose the CRM for the company