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Posted: 04/01/2011
Our clients often come to us to help them solve problems with one of the four key ingredients that profoundly impact their competitiveness and cost structure.
The four areas are: Customer or Contact relationship Management, Effective web-site design and connection with the CRM, Designing and implementing an effective sales procedure and Sales Training.
Customer or Contact Relationship Management (CRM)
Symptoms that indicate you need one:
- Problems with coordinating your communication with customers
- Difficulty with sales reporting and coordination of sales opportunities and prospects
- Client inquiries and problems are not getting processed fast enough
- Your customer base is eroding
- You are losing market share
- You feel disorganized and insecure about data and who can access it
- You are not getting the feedback you need from your sales force
We provide and implement two leading open source CRM systems, along with other hosted solutions, depending on the needs of your business, that store all data on-line in the “cloud”, which means we can offer a very effective solution for a low per-user cost and with minimal technical support required.
CRM is a key management tool for effective development of your critical company asset. Your customers and prospects are the tangible results of all of the investment you make and have ever made, in sales and marketing. Managing that asset effectively means dealing effectively with your customer’s projects, ensuring that you understand your customer’s needs and aspirations and always being sensitive to the various ways that one customer has unique challenges that everyone in your organization needs to be responsive and considerate towards. Your management and conversion rate of sales opportunities provides immediate feedback for your competitive position and highlights the effectiveness of your sales process and marketing positioning. It is the nexus of all information and the security control around the use and dissemination of that information.
Effective Web site design and connection with CRM
Symptoms that indicate you need to do something about this:
- You do not appear on the first page when you perform a keyword search in Google or any search engine
- You are not getting any inquiries from your web-site
- The inquiries you are getting are irrelevant and not for your key capability, product or service
- You are embarrassed to provide your web-site address to prospective customers
- You do not have an easy way to gather leads from your web-site and add them to your sales process
95% of all purchase decisions begin with a search of the internet rather than a contact with a “live” sales person. Consequently your web presence and what it says about you and your products and services is a critical component to your success. It is also essential that you are findable in a forest of alternatives.
Search engine ranking logic makes it very difficult to “fool” the ranking algorithm, so it is essential to pick your niche carefully and then ensure that you keep a consistent and often-updated representation of your unique capabilities. Once traffic arrives at your site it is critically important that your call to action is clear and easy, linking directly to the “Leads” in your CRM and that your key capabilities and solutions are represented clearly “at-a-glance”.
We have provided marketing analysis and web-site re-design to include the unique branding key-words in a search-engine-friendly format. SEO, (Search Engine Optimization), begins with a clear understanding of who you are and how your customers see you. It also includes concepts about what makes a perfect prospect for you. Rather like fishing for a certain species of fish, you want to make the fishing net the right size to catch the fish you are seeking. We also make it easy for an interested prospect to say “Yes” by providing a call to action and a web-form that gathers information from prospects and delivers them straight into your CRM system for immediate action.
Designing and implementing a clear sales strategy
Symptoms that indicate you need to do something about this:
- Sales forecasting is wildly inaccurate
- Some sales people are succeeding and some are failing and you don’t know why
- There is no clear leadership in providing a successful sales strategy
- Sales reporting is inconsistent and not timely enough to be useful
- You are not getting useful feedback about the competitiveness of your product or service
- Sales management is ineffective
We provide a service of sales process design and implementation that includes defining the sales stages, providing a check-list of key information that needs to be gathered during a sales process, like identifying the key decision makers and when the solution is required. The combination of the checklist and effective sales stages are then implemented in your CRM-based sales management system, providing clear unequivocal reporting on the true sales picture.
A clear sales strategy is critical to avoid unpredictable sales performances. Many businesses, particularly smaller businesses, find it very hard to predict sales or measure sales progress. Sales may happen eventually but often not at the time predicted in the sales forecast. This unpredictability means that it is hard to provide the right sized production capability to meet actual demand. This is particularly difficult and critical in areas of business that provide skilled services as these are the hardest to ramp up effectively on short notice. It is also very difficult for a smaller business that may only be available to afford one or two sales people, to discover that their hire was a mistake and that the sales person is not providing accurate forecasts or gathering effective sales information.
Sales Training
- Sales force is not asking the right questions to qualify prospects early
- Sales people lack confidence in your product and how it is sold
- Sales results are down and you are not sure why
- Sales management is not providing effective training to new hires
Training that Prodigm delivers is focused on winning the support and cooperation of the sales force in using the CRM system effectively for the benefit of everyone. We provide a level of introduction to the effective sales concepts that we support and implement.
For consistent and on-going sales training that provides coaching, accountability and reinforcement of effective habits and practices we use the services of our partners at the Rooney-Earl Sales Training Group.
Rapid positive results can be realized by making improvements in these four areas. It is our passion and focus to help your business grow and succeed in a short period of time. You may want to read Finding Gold which illustrates how effective use of technology can make an enormous difference even in a difficult situation.
Written by: Peter Coy - President, Prodigm Inc. petercoy@prodigm.ca
We provide a service of sales process design and implementation that includes defining the sales stages, providing a check-list of key information that needs to be gathered during a sales process, like identifying the key decision makers and when the solution is required. The combination of the checklist and effective sales stages are then implemented in your CRM-based sales management system, providing clear unequivocal reporting on the true sales picture.
A clear sales strategy is critical to avoid unpredictable sales performances. Many businesses, particularly smaller businesses, find it very hard to predict sales or measure sales progress. Sales may happen eventually but often not at the time predicted in the sales forecast. This unpredictability means that it is hard to provide the right sized production capability to meet actual demand. This is particularly difficult and critical in areas of business that provide skilled services as these are the hardest to ramp up effectively on short notice. It is also very difficult for a smaller business that may only be available to afford one or two sales people, to discover that their hire was a mistake and that the sales person is not providing accurate forecasts or gathering effective sales information.
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