Sales Modeling

When evaluating and ultimately selecting a CRM tool do not rely on traditional content such as industry magazines, research websites , analyst reports, or advertising-oriented whitepapers.

Many industry analyst firms require software vendors pay for the opportunity to brief their analysts and subsequently “get on the radar.”  An analyst report is a proprietary product which guards how its market share is calculated and what other information they used in order to form their recommendation.

The closely-held secret is most companies do not get the benefits they expect from their CRM investments.  CRM’s promise of connecting companies and their customers to the benefit of both has not been matched by the reality.  Where most companies fall down is in believing that technical functionality alone is enough.

That is a mistake.  You must understand that technology is most valuable when it enables customer-friendly business processes that actually drive the bottom line, and when employees embrace it as a tool to improve customer relationships.

Be sure to focus upon which metrics really drives your bottom line and identify specific CRM initiatives, such as income from improvements in customer acquisition, retention, and cross-sell.

Open source, on-demand, or predecessor premise-based solutions each provide feasible alternatives with inherent benefits.  Again, remember higher-functionality and higher-cost CRM is mainly for those businesses in which team selling is important, the sales force is sophisticated, and cycles and buying influences are complex.

More likely, regardless of what you choose you will open the box it does 120 things and you only need 14.