Articles

Ensuring you have the right CRM for your sales team is a big component of sales success. You need something that will have all the features to meet your business goals, while being at the right price point, with the right level of security and ease of use. With so many options on the market today, here’s what to consider when choosing the right CRM for your sales team.

What Problems Do You Need Your CRM to Solve?

 What’s right for your sales team might not be for any other. Seeing as all CRM solutions are slightly different, you need to go into your search with an idea of what are the biggest issues your team faces and prioritize them. As a starting point, number these solutions in order of importance to figure out what’s most important to your sales team:

• Ability to track customer base

• Ability to track leads
• Ability to track opportunities
• Ability to track closing rates
• The way it connects teams and team members
• Accessibility
• Reporting functionality
• Level of customization available
• Customer insights functionality
• Ease of use
• Price point and ROI
• Multiple business uses vs. sales only

Customization

Modern CRMs are cloud-based and give your team greater access than ever, so this shouldn’t be an issue. They also offer a great deal of flexibility in terms of different features at different price-points, add-ons and customization. See what’s available and how these offerings stack up against your priority list.

Remember to look ahead as you search for the right CRM for your sales team. How will each product perform down the line as your organization grows? Does it offer enough flexibility to meet your needs now AND five years down the line?

Compatibility with Existing Tools

Your sales team make use of a number of apps and tools to complete their day to day functions. So do an audit of all the tools they are currently using and for what purpose. Also take into account tools they would like to access in the future. As you choose your new CRM, find out which existing tools will be compatible and which won’t. If there are important tools that don’t integrate, weigh up alternate solutions when deciding if the switch would be worthwhile.

Implementation and User Adoption

Another thing to consider when choosing the right CRM for your team is how easy/cost effective it will be to implement and get your sales team using.

Find out how long it will take to install and whether there will be a period when your team can’t access their data. Also, ask whether an outside consultant will be needed to complete the installation or whether it can be done in-house.

There can be tricky transition periods where data is lost or compromised. Be fully aware of the risks and find out what protocols the CRM provider has in place to ensure a smooth transition with no loss of data integrity.  Training and ease of use are two other aspects about which you should inquire. In general, people aren’t fond of change, so see what the CRM provider offers to ensure user adoption is painless. To get greater buy-in from your sales team, consult with them on the decision so they can share what’s important to them in a new CRM and have some ownership over the decision.