The way people buy has changed. In the age of Information, buyers no longer need or want salespeople to hold their hand through their buying journey. In fact, 67% of the buyer’s journey is complete before a buyer talks to sales, which means there is a lot going on with your buyers that salespeople don’t know about.
In the modern buying landscape, buyers know these four things from their own research, online and elsewhere, before sales gets on the phone with them:
- What they want
- How much they should pay
- When they’ll purchase
- Their option(s) for purchase
And buyers have high expectations for the salespeople they do talk to. They expect that a salesperson knows what they’ve already figured out on their own, and they won’t waste time with sales reps who don’t acknowledge this.
Sales reps who start at the beginning of the buyer’s journey on their first call with a lead, essentially, take the buyer from the middle of the map and drop them back at the beginning. But, when buyers are expecting sellers to read their minds, how can salespeople get inside their heads?
Through connections with marketing and sales activities, the HubSpot CRM has the power to give salespeople insight into what happens in the earlier stages of the buying journey. Its functionality is based on helping salespeople know what their buyers expect from them.
The HubSpot CRM can be configured to automatically collect activities from online form submissions to emails sent and opened, to links clicked and to pages visited on your company website. This type of information is stored in a timeline for each contact, allowing any sales rep who looks at the contact to understand the journey they’ve been on to date and to anticipate a buyer’s needs before getting on the phone.
Why CRM Implementations Fail
Failure of a CRM implementation is due to the lack of adoption by the sales team, ultimately rendering the tool useless. CRM implementations fail for three reasons:
- Too much data entry: Manual data entry takes away time a sales rep could have used to sell. When quotas are looming, data entry will get pushed aside, especially if the data being entered isn’t valuable to the salesperson (i.e. manually logging each email a sales rep sends or each call they make).
- Overly complicated system: Any system has the potential to feel overly complicated for the sales team if they’re not given the resources to learn how to use it. If the sales team is overwhelmed by a new system, they will fall back into old habits, because it’s most comfortable for them.
- Little customer value: The CRM isn’t positioned or implemented in a way that helps salespeople connect with buyers, offering little to no value for customers; therefore, offering no value to your sales team.
Prevent CRM Implementation Failure with the HubSpot CRM & ManoByte
Because the HubSpot CRM is built around efficiency and productivity, it addresses these key issues:
- Eliminate data entry through automation: The HubSpot CRM takes away data entry, giving time back to the sales reps. Configured properly, emails and calls, and other sales activities, are automatically logged and organized into a contact’s timeline.
- Keep it simple: The HubSpot CRM user experience is designed to be simple, and its automation features help cut down on operations and clicks for your sales team. Additionally, ManoByte includes training in our implementation services to give the sales team the necessary knowledge and skills to hit the ground running.
- Obsess over customer value: The HubSpot CRM is built to help sales provide customer value through collecting insights from early buying stage activity.
Technology is often viewed as the solution to all problems. However, technology won’t solve problems if it’s not implemented properly. Blindly sending out new technology, without identifying and addressing any problems, will result in failure. As an implementation partner, ManoByte helps identify the implementation goals of a new CRM, as well as the areas of friction that may prevent salespeople from effectively doing their job.
An implementation partner does more than “flip the on the switch!” In addition to the technical expertise needed for setup and data migration, ManoByte offers a goal-focused implementation strategy and rollout plan that defines success for your organization and addresses the problems to solve through the HubSpot CRM and underlying sales process strategy. The rollout plan is a step-by-step process of how the implementation will happen and what to expect at each step. This process is structured to ensure consistency but flexible enough to meet your business needs. Our trained staff makes the process seem fluid and not intimidating to adopt, even though we are helping to influence change throughout your organization.
The success of new technology hinges on adoption from the front-line users, your sales teams. ManoByte includes sales team training as part of the implementation to show front-line users how to be successful with the HubSpot CRM. We’ll make sure they get the training and information they need to understand HubSpot CRM’s functionality, appreciate the value and support for their efforts, and aid in system adoption to turn them into power users.
Looking to start a CRM implementation project? We can help.
