How to use CRM to get the most of your sales

Wondering how to improve your CRM to get the most out of it? Or still looking for the best one that would be matching your business needs? Or don’t know how to improve your sales performance? We have combined for you the most important measurable and non-measurable CRM metrics to help you optimize your campaigns to achieve the best results.

Everything starts with the opportunity. Opportunity is the most important overall metric for the B2B sector which is created from the  qualified lead. What does it mean - a qualified lead?  If the customer has the urgent need, has the  budget and is willing to buy - it’s called a qualified lead. And here the decision-maker needs to be involved by all means. Simple as it is. 

1. Lifetime of the opportunity

The opportunity helps to monitor the entire sales journey of every customer. And what’s more important is the lifetime of the opportunity. In other words how many days the sales rep needs to close the opportunity. Try reaching the decision makers regardless of the company size. Most probably you will communicate with the one when dealing with smaller companies. This way you’ll have high chances to close the deal fast. In big companies the inner structure is more complicated with more processes and people involved. And definitely it takes longer time from initial contact, continued by a long negotiation process with many stakeholders up to contract signing. 

The sooner the salesperson is able to close the opportunity the higher the chances to win the deal and close it successfully. Efficiency and speed are crucial at this point.

2. Win ratio

Another important metric is the win ratio. Meaning the rate between the number of win opportunities and the total number of opportunities. For example if the sales person created 20 opportunities in May and won 8 deals, his Opportunity Win Ratio for May would be 8/20=40%.  The higher the ratio is - the better the sales rep works. 

3. Activity

Next important metric is the activity. Which means the number of activities recorded to the opportunity. And here we speak about different interactions with the customer like meetings, phone calls, sending emails, etc. It goes without saying that the more activities are done by the salesperson, the chances to close the deal faster are increasing, which, in its turn, boosts the number of closed deals.

The salesperson with the highest win ratio is considered a benchmark. This metric is monitored on a constant basis: why does some sales rep need, let’s say, 20 days to close the deal and another one 30 days? What is he doing differently? And if you dig deeper you’ll see that your best sales rep. is doing 30% more sales activities compared to the others. He makes a follow-up call a day after he has sent the proposal. And another sales rep  does it a week later. If the opportunity is really hot you need to take the bull by the horns. Don’t ask your prospect: when will you have time to talk to me? Try Instead: Will you have time to talk to me tomorrow?

The good thing about Salesforce is that every action is recorded. We use the expression which we genuinely like: What’s not in the Salesforce - it didn’t happen. It’s really crucial to record every touch with the customer: initial call, reminder, proposal, follow up call, etc.

4. Value

It is worth mentioning that the value of the opportunity needs to be monitored just as attentively.  Here we’re talking about the price offered to the customer. During the sales cycle the opportunity value can be decreasing and in order to close the deal faster sales people quite often tend to give discounts which leads to the decrease of the sales margin. Which isn’t good, of course. Maybe it’s better to reconsider your efforts towards this customer or maybe it’s not your customer at all.

5. Contact with different stakeholders

When working on the opportunity sales reps communicate with different stakeholders. It can be a decision maker, a champion (someone who will use the product and interested in purchasing it), finance manager (a person responsible for the budget), technical or IT executive. The more of them you speak to regarding the purchase - the higher are the chances to close the deal faster. And, of course, as a final chord - you need to contact the decision maker. He\she is the sacred key that opens the door of any successful deal.

These are the main and most important metrics that can be measured with the help of Salesforce CRM. They make the lives of sales reps much easier. But we all know that there’s more on top of that which can’t be measured. And efficient use of these non-measurable tools makes your sales teams super successful.

So what are they? Let’s dig deeper.

Know well your customer

Sounds obvious, right? Still it’s worth mentioning. Before making the first contact with the customer make a short research: visit the website, read the company news, check social media, find out who is the decision maker and other possible stakeholders and check their profiles on LinkedIn. Surf through every available source to know more about the customer. The more you know your target persona - the better you will be able to find the touchpoints.

Find out what are the business needs of the customer

During the first contact try to find out as much information as possible: what are the pain points of the customer, what are his business needs, can you offer the solution that solves his problems or whom can you address his pain points to find the best solution. If you’re able to do that - you can make the business.

Find out if the need is urgent

You need to make sure that the business need or the pain point of the customer is really urgent, in other words how likely he’s ready to purchase. If his problem isn’t that critical and not causing real problems at the moment, your chances to close the deal are very low. In such a case it’s better to close the opportunity with the note about the customer's intention to buy later and reopen it within some time again.

Know your competitors

Ask your customer who is taking part in the tender together with you. Make a research on their strengths and weaknesses. After you find out this information it’s important to keep it in your CRM system in order to use it afterwards when talking with a prospect. This data gives you the complete picture why your CRM system is better than the one of the competitor and it also helps to avoid the negotiation if it yields to your competitor’s CRM.

When you measure your results, they are obliged to improve. Your CRM metrics are important to evaluate the success of your sales efforts. Use them to optimize your achievements, benchmark your campaigns and forecast the revenue. If your results are supported by hard data, be sure that your team and your customers will be confident in your future success.