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"How Your Customer Relationship Management System Makes Cold Calling Profits!"The ability of a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) to function well for sales professionals who cold call is turned on its ear by one critical misconception about selling and cold calling! What is that misconception? “If you can sell … you can cold call.” Truth is the skills used to cold call are considerably different from the skills used to sell. Said another way, your plans for getting leads to your sales pipeline are considerably different from those for getting prospects through your sales pipeline. So, it should come as no surprise that the science needed to measure cold-call related activities is significantly different from the science used to measure sales-related activities. What has become clear in recent years is that designers of each Customer Relationship Management System, Business Leaders, Sales Leaders, Sales Professionals, and Business Owners have done their best to make your System be all things to all people. The unintended impact of that positioning is that tremendous frustration with the science of cold calling. What is also clear is that as a community of sales professionals and sales managers are beginning to understand, deal with, and make accommodations for the differences between the sciences needed for cold calling and the science needed for selling and their respective software systems. You may feel as though I am adding salt to an open wound but I must remind you that THE number one reason a Customer Relationship Management System ,such as Sales Force; ACT!; and Goldmine fail is because sales professionals don’t adopt them. When expected to use these technologies for cold calling, these sales pros "push back", dig in their heels and say: “I spend more time clicking my mouse and fulfilling administrative requirements than I do cold calling” ... these software systems have the look and administrative feel of tormenting paperwork. Given a choice, sales pros will choose their “informal system” of notes on cocktail napkins and yellow sticky notes over anything that even hints of paperwork – the bane of a sales pro’s existence! However, when you buckle down and capture efficiencies and activities, your eyes will open to a whole new way of managing and directing your cold call process – ways that a marketing-customer service - forecasting Customer Relationship Management System simply cannot do. Here are several ways your CRM can serve Sales Managers: • Is high turnover of new sales reps an issue? You can know in 4 weeks whether or not each new rep is on track for success in cold calling. • Are you having a tough time figuring out how to manage your cold callers? You do not have to do a thing other than point to an area on a report and say here is the plan for success, here is where you are on track, and here is where you are off. • Already committed to a big CRM that requires half-a-day or more of data entry from your sales professionals - when you really need them out selling? Look for a CRM to serve your cold calling needs that integrates with your current software. No need to throw out the old - just make sure the new fits in front of what you already have. Your final step of the software demonstration must be to ask the vendor "Who provides the cold calling 'art'?", that is, your pre-approach letters, scripting, email follow-up and so forth. Take the time to think all of this through. When you find a good fit, you are well on your way to leveraging your cold call process for increased revenues.
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