What is sales if not more than an ongoing relationship between consumer and provider? Even in an increasingly digital world, the core characteristics of a relationship is the same and just as important in building a customer base. With an increase of bots and automated replies, most consumers still want a human-to-human interaction. This is, believe it or not, causing sales teams to increase in size. More sales reps mean you need experienced, quality sales managers to lead their teams to success.
Not only do our fearless sales managers lead their teams, but they are responsible for reporting sales data to executives and managing the technology and tools their teams use. Technology has become an essential part of business and sales success in today’s world. However, it seems sometimes technology can cause more of a headache than it can be helpful. An important tool most sales teams have implemented or are considering implementing is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. A CRM is meant to be helpful to everyone involved with the selling process, including our sales managers. CRM Destination highlights four ways a sales manager can leverage a CRM to be its friend as they lead their team.
1. Workflow
The CRM application is meant to enhance your sales workflows. It should allow your reps to understand what they need to do to be successful anytime they login to the application. Not only should they easily be able to find their prospects to start reaching out, but they should be able to see who they have already contacted and follow up appropriately. Speaking of reaching out and following up to your prospects, a CRM should provide features that make communicating more efficient. For example, click-to-dial and automatic activity logging helps fuel the sales process by eliminating manual effort. A CRM holds the features your team needs to improve its sales workflow, you just need to know how to leverage them.
2. Collaboration
“Teamwork makes the dream work.” That statement holds true with your CRM system. It is difficult for a sales team that cannot collaborate and is unaware of what the team is accomplishing to be successful. This is where a CRM can help. CRM tools are built to allow collaboration amongst sales teams with features like sharing access into each other’s records (but not too much access if need be), historical tracking of activities and notes so that new reps can quickly understand all previous communication with an account, and the ability to communicate as a team though collaboration feeds. Sales managers should leverage these collaboration tools and keep their teams updated with real-time data so they will never be caught off-guard.
3. Automation
Automation stands to benefit every user of a CRM. It can help eliminate manual work by automatically updating records or scheduling activities. An area where it can specifically benefit sales managers is by automatically alerting them about sales rep activities. This removes the need for managers to track down their reps looking for an update on xyz opportunity. If the rep makes an update to the opportunity, the manager can automatically receive a notification letting them know exactly when and what was updated and by whom. Without the need to micromanage, sales managers have more time to invest back into their teams to help them close their next deal.
4. Integrations
A CRM will most likely not be the only sales-boosting tool your team is using but it should get along well with others. A good CRM application can integrate with your other tools should be the hub that your other tools work through. Your contracts, invoices, or email marketing efforts should seamlessly integrate into your CRM helping the sales manager to have a full understanding of every aspect of a sale.
All-in-all, technology is changing the way we do business, and it is of upmost importance that sales managers leverage that technology to improve their teams.
AMPED is a CRM application designed to benefit every member of a sales team, including the managers. AMPED contains features like one-click calling and emailing that help sales managers improve their sales processes and allows their teams to communicate with one another, so nobody misses a beat. As a sales manager you need to know what your team is accomplishing, and with automated emails and insightful reports, AMPED gives managers the information they need to help their teams be successful. Additionally, AMPED integrates with Zapier so you can easily connect your suite of sales-boosting tools with AMPED.
Try AMPED for free today at https://amped.ai/free-trial.