“I’ve Been Burned In the Past…” Part Deux

Finally….  How To Get CRM Right And Get Real Business Outcomes – Without All The Risk.

 

Author: Chuck Ingram

Customers are hesitant to buy new CRM. Rightly so.

Over the last five years, companies have invested nearly half a trillion dollars in revenue technology.

About half also say they aren’t getting the results they are looking for.

 

They feel like they have been “Burned in the Past.” 

Quota attainment, sales meetings, deal size, sales cycle length, and customer satisfaction with sales are going in the wrong direction. Sending more AI-generated prospecting emails is not the correct answer either.

Deciding on what to do with CRM can feel like no decision is the safest. It would be best to have a solution to streamline processes, boost sales, and enhance customer relationships. However, the plethora of options, marketplace noise, and fear of making a wrong decision leave you paralyzed. On top of that – if you hire a consulting company to help – they typically put all the risk on YOU!

 

But why all the indecision? Matt Dixon, author of “The Challenger Sale and the JOLT Effect,” sheds light through his research on “no decision losses” – situations where customers abandon the buying journey without making a choice.

 

He discovered a surprising culprit: fear. Customers aren’t just overwhelmed by choices; they’re petrified of choosing the wrong solution and facing the consequences. This fear gets them stuck in making a decision, and then they end up making no decision at all.

 

They feel like they have been “Burned in the Past.” 

That said, the reality of no decision could be deciding to be below average.   When you get CRM right – revenue can lift by up to 41% per salesperson, average overall sales increase by 29%, sales productivity increase by 34%, and forecast accuracy improvement by 42%.

 

It sounds oversimplified because we’re so used to hearing about the tech side of things – aligning people with the technology and the business outcomes is the answer. And there are only four things you have to get right to Get CRM Right.

 

“My Team Says it Takes Too Much Time to Enter the Data In CRM.”

Get Data Right By Taking The Friction Out Of Data Entry

Studies indicate that ease of use is a significant factor in CRM adoption. When you make data entry less of a chore, usage goes up – way up. This is where Microsoft Sales Copilot comes into the picture. Our research has shown that tools like Sales Copilot can increase CRM usage by a significant margin and save sellers 4 to 6 hours a week. It’s not just a tool; it’s a catalyst for change.

 

Now, why is this important? Well, accurate CRM data is the cornerstone of strategic decision-making. The research is clear: companies with accurate CRM data are more likely to align their sales strategies effectively, identify market opportunities, and understand customer needs.

Sales Copilot can transform your CRM from a passive data repository to an active tool for strategic growth. It’s about getting your CRM data right and making decisions that propel your company forward.

One of the most significant opportunities is driving CRM adoption by providing users with contextual experiences instead of overwhelming them with large, complex forms.

The best companies typically integrate smaller, context-specific interactions into users’ workflows, significantly enhancing user engagement and data quality and making CRM tools more intuitive and user-friendly.

One of the biggest highlights of mistakes is building large forms over data CRM application experiences. This is often in the misguided view that 360-degree view means that the user must always see everything about the customer.

A best practice is to think about what the person is trying to do and figure out what they need at that moment, making it functional, easy, and enjoyable. With the Power Platform, you can start fast and iterate.

 

“Even if We Get Data in CRM – What is the Value?”

Get Playbooks Right By Putting The Coach On The Field With The Team

Chief Revenue Officers (CROs), whether they’re part-time fractional leaders or full-time executives, often have only 18 months to get their plan in place and show results. They build impressive Go to Market strategies and playbooks.

We consistently hear – with insufficient data, it is impossible to tell if the plan is working.

Companies outperforming their peers have grasped this reality and are leveraging AI to drive CRM adoption, ensuring they gather the accurate data needed to execute their playbooks. Through this symbiosis of AI and CRM, these companies can finally establish the predictable revenue engines they’ve been striving for, transforming ambition into measurable success.

At the top companies – AI is revolutionizing customer interactions by extracting valuable insights from sales calls. First, the conversation is analyzed through a research-backed framework that decodes the participants’ personalities, guiding the most effective communication strategies. It then aligns the dialogue with specific sales playbooks, recognizing that not all calls are created equal—what works for a discovery call may not suit a presentation. DialoguePrime excels here, offering tailored coaching to sellers for each call type, ensuring they deliver their best performance.

The platform doesn’t stop there; it evaluates the calls, scores them, and offers insights that drive improvement. This goes beyond mere analytics; it’s about understanding and enhancing every interaction. And perhaps most impressively, it crafts a research-informed summary of the call. This summary can swiftly be turned into a client email with minimal editing, accelerating the sales process and driving the impressive results we aim for. All are built on the Microsoft tech your IT department is already comfortable with.

 

“OK, So the Team Uses CRM – Why is my Rev Ops Team Still Using Spreadsheets?

Get Outcomes Right By Getting Visibility Into Your Business Across Your Revenue Engine.

Adopting CRM systems and integrating AI is not just about accumulating data; it’s about cultivating a data-driven culture within the organization. Bain & Company’s Growth Engine report: Companies with a data-driven approach to decision-making, including utilizing unit economics, experience a 15% higher growth rate and 20% higher profitability than those without.

One of the key benefits of good CRM data is the ability to analyze and understand unit economics – the direct revenues and costs associated with a particular business model expressed on a per-unit basis. This understanding is crucial for companies as it provides insights into the most profitable areas of their business, helping to identify and replicate successful strategies.

The AI Fueled Revenue Accelerator for Dynamics 365 by congruentX plays a pivotal role in this process. It helps capture and analyze data and translates it into actionable insights. This tool allows companies to break down their revenue streams, understand customer behaviors, and identify potential areas for optimization. By applying AI to unit economics, companies can gain a granular understanding of their revenue engine, enabling them to make strategic decisions that drive growth and profitability.

The Winning by Design Bowtie model offers an innovative way to visualize a revenue engine, extending beyond the traditional pipeline to resemble a bow tie, emphasizing not only the initial value derived from acquiring a customer but also the long-term value that the customer brings. The model – just like an engine – lets a revenue team visualize each engine component across three dimensions, allowing for finding constraints and optimizing them like never before.

 

“Why is My Consulting Company Not in the Boat with Us?

Get Outcomes Right with CX Pusle Subscription with Guaranteed Outcomes

CXPulse is a tech-enabled subscription that scales your IT team while driving high adoption and business outcomes.

Why be treated like a “project” and pay for just hours when you can be treated like a client and get outcomes?

Advisory Services:  congruentX solution and revenue architects will provide business advisory and solution architecture services to assist with strategic and/or complex design decisions and approaches.

System Checkups: Before each major MS release, the client system is evaluated for upgrade readiness and any impact of scheduled deprecated features.

Monitoring: Use the power of artificial intelligence to get intelligent signals from your Dynamics 365 Solution on issues, downtime, adoption, and even revenue outcomes.

Enhancements Sprints: Monthly/Quarterly, ongoing enhancement sprints are the planned activities (configurations, development, integrations, etc.) that will assist in delivering additional and ongoing business value and/or solution adoption by users.

 

“Don’t Get Burned Again” CX Outcomes Guarantee

Almost always, service companies ask their clients to carry all the risk in the engagement. We at congruentX believe this short-sighted engagement approach often leads to the 50% percent satisfaction rates for CRM implementations by these same service providers.

We are confident that our clients will yield positive results with congruentX, and our tech-enabled CX Pulse subscription service provides a performance-backed guarantee. A portion of your post-go-live subscription investment payment is contingent on successfully delivering your business outcomes.

 

How to Get Started

We take the risk off the table from the first interaction together. If you’re considering what CRM can do for your business – even if you already have CRM, a 3-hour CongruentX Envisioning Lab is the perfect next step.

In the first hour, we bring the business, IT, and Users together for a rapid design thinking session to review your strategy, processes, business outcomes, and digital friction areas.

During the second hour, we review and envision potential solutions for the constraints we identified, focusing on rapid ROI and business outcomes.

Finally, we share a readiness assessment, a blueprint for what to focus on and what order, and an impact report that speaks to business outcomes and ROI.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, navigating the complexities of CRM adoption in the wake of past disappointments requires a nuanced and comprehensive approach. As “The Jolt Effect” by Matt Dixon illuminates, the fear of repeating past failures often underlies customer indecision.

This fear can be mitigated by focusing on four key areas: simplifying data entry, implementing effective playbooks, ensuring visibility across the revenue engine, and establishing outcome-oriented partnerships. Tools like Microsoft Sales Copilot and DialoguePrime and frameworks like the AI Fueled Revenue Accelerator and the Winning by Design Bowtie model are pivotal in transforming CRM from a mere data repository to a strategic asset. Most importantly, with its outcome guarantee, services like the CX Pulse Subscription from congruentX shift the risk from the client to the service provider, fostering a more collaborative and accountable relationship.

For organizations grappling with the decision to implement or upgrade their CRM systems, the path forward lies in recognizing the importance of user-friendly technology, actionable insights, and strategic partnerships. The congruentX Envisioning Lab offers a practical starting point, providing a space to align business strategy, IT capabilities, and user needs. By prioritizing these elements and learning from past experiences, companies can move beyond the shadow of past CRM failures towards a future where CRM is a driver of growth, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

Don’t Get Burned again – Let’s finally Get CRM Right! www.congruentX.com

 

 

The post "I've Been Burned In the Past…" Part Deux appeared first on CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365.