Everyone runs their companies technology based on the unique business needs of the company and strategy.  We wanted to offer a few suggestions on common pain points that all CRM Management professionals can use.

Listed below you will find a few tips and trick to support keep these areas maintained.

Modern CRM Design

Now that CRM’s are designed with whole organizational teams accessing the system in mind, the whole process of thinking of the desired list, submitting a request to the database administrator and waiting for that person to go through the often cumbersome process of setting up a query and then exporting that data into a usable report.

Using List Views

Sometimes a change in verbiage reflects a larger shift in functionality and this has certainly been the case in CRM’s now referring to queries as views.

I’ll review how you can look at CRM software views as a tool to support productivity with your salesforce processes.

Even if you try on the two words, you immediately sense the difference.

Queries sound scientific and serious, while views sound expansive and inviting.

It’s a shift from having to mine to extract hard to get at information to simply open the shutters to reveal what is already there in all its potential.

As designers have simplified CRM user interfaces across the board, one of the biggest changes has been the recognition that it shouldn’t take a special skill set to see data organized into subsets and lists.

Thankfully all of the cumbersome steps required in the past are no more!

They have been replaced by simple filters that can yield specific results in seconds within the same window the user is currently accessing.

These list views can then be acted upon immediately, such as sending out a mass email to a particular group, or they can be used to generate reports that can then be automatically updated.

List views can also be saved locally so users can simply click on a drop-down menu to bring up a specific filtered group.

Views are unique to each user, you can keep what is relevant for you in your particular role without cluttering up the system with a mass of views.

In addition, you can switch views between tasks so that you don’t have to pull up a report and consider it alongside what you are trying to do, the view that is most relevant to your task is simply what you choose, see, and work within.

When you are done with the task you just simply revert to the regular view.

All this leads to much more efficiency in executing tasks, running reports, sending email and social campaigns, and organizing your activities.

Want to see a list of all the leads you have not contacted in the last quarter so you can send them a quick email?

Wondering how many proposals are in the closed/won stage so you can use that information for a budget update? Just use views to give you those lists with ease.

Even the actual search criteria options have become both more refined and more broadly responsive to how different users might think to search.

For instance, you could look up all the records that “contain” a particular word within a particular field to generate a list.

The sophistication of queries remains, but with a far more intuitive process.

Queries were one of the great hindering factors in the democratization of the CRM for nontechnical users, isolating a seemingly inaccessible mountain of data and allowing only the most technical of climbers access.

The shift toward powerfully intuitive list views should not be underestimated.

One is that your whole business becomes more open, efficient, and connected because more people are actually using your CRM.

The other is that everyone is then using data to drive the key decisions and actions that empower your sales team and business goals, and that is where the real gain lies.

CRM software makes another leap – enjoy the view!

 

System And Record Coding (Don’t Over Do It)

As we’ve worked with dozens of companies over the years one of the first things I do is take a look at their code tables.

This truly lets me know where the business is and how organized their data is.

Trying to convince yourself that “your business is SPECIAL.”  Like my second in command in my last job used to tell me

“It’s Not Always About You.”

I would love to have a conversation with anyone in business about how much of their work isn’t even supporting their sales and customer journey.

Look at your coding and how you look at the tasks your company is executing.

In some cases, companies have finally let go of work and tasks they have been performing for a year when we put their work under this kind of lens.

If you want to truly measure what your business is doing, you should be asking yourself with each activity you perform in your business “is it in related to”:

Is this one of the listed below:

• Identification
• Cultivation
• Solicitation
• Stewardship?

Managing And Tracking Data And Report Requests In Your CRM

I recently had the opportunity to stop in on a Facebook Page for CRM users and a new CRM system manager was discussing how she had an immediate report request from her boss and needed a little help.

Well after I provided the answer another user jumped on and discussed how she was making the industry more difficult for other because she did not force the person making the reporting request wait 7 days to deliver it.

I totally understand this person point of view and for a time I believed it myself.

However, as you begin to understand that the world and business do not work that way!

Business and opportunities present themselves at any time and it doesn’t come down to the need to provide structure and time for how you work.

Your right, database managers are very busy and are the superman/women for the office.

There are steps we can take to make handling the normal pace of chaos in our roles with a few proactive approaches that we cover in the video in this blog post.

A true professional in this field takes full responsibility for their role in the company, though most of the time our role is a thankless role we have to think long-term and strategically to support the needs of all areas of the business.

If you’ve been a CRM system manager at any time, you’ve experienced the situation where just a few months earlier you ask leadership if certain data points should be captured and they say “NO”.

Just to come back later and explain they need reporting on that data they asked you not to collect?

Staying organized and not letting data and reporting request slip through the crack has to be a priority when providing information for the company.

Make sure you have a logical systematic process in place for managing those requests to keep the flow of information going.

View the video below to walk through managing data requests in your CRM and how it can make the entire business more productive.