Summary: Although your sales force may not immediately embrace your company's new CRM system, research reveals that CRM software has a positive affect on your sales force's performance.

When companies purchase a customer relationship management (CRM) system, they are frequently surprised to find that the new solution is not always immediately embraced by the sales force.

In fact, some sales representatives believe that the primary purpose of CRM is to enhance sales management functions such as performance reporting and forecasting, and that it does little to make the day-to-day activities of the sales force easier and more effective. Others may perceive CRM to be too complicated, and fear that the solution will add a new layer of complexity to their jobs. Or they may fear that the tracking of their activities will reveal inadequacies.

But, for many businesses, CRM has clearly demonstrated its ability to provide immediate value to the sales force by improving their ability to sell, and significantly increasing their success rates. In fact, a recent survey conducted by research firm CSO Insights found that almost 72% of firms surveyed indicated that CRM was having a positive affect on sales force performance.

CRM can benefit the members of your sales force in five key ways:

1. Increased Sales Team Productivity

Almost every sales force is burdened with numerous routine, cumbersome, manual procedures that can disrupt sales cycles and interfere with actual selling time.

A CRM solution can streamline and automate pricing, order processing, and other administrative tasks, so reps can focus their efforts on those activities that directly impact revenues and profits, and spend more time working with potential customers.

2. Stronger Customer Relationships

CRM solutions provide highly-interactive analytical tools that empower a sales force with valuable, timely, and accurate insight into buyer interests and needs. This allows reps to have better, more productive conversations with their prospects so they can build stronger, more personalized relationships with buyers - which can help shorten sales cycles, increase the number of deals closed, and boost revenue-per-sale.

3. Access to Best Practices

With a CRM solution, a company can identify the activities that are most likely to result in sales success, and use that knowledge to implement and share a best practices methodology across their entire sales force.

Sales reps can gain insight into proven processes, and receive step-by-step guidance throughout the sales cycle. So, new members of the sales force can get up-to-speed faster, and more seasoned reps have the tools and intelligence they need to close more deals.

4. Enhanced Communication

CRM systems can help close the communication loop between the sales force and sales management, as well as the support teams who will service the customer after the deal is closed.

This ability to share critical, time-sensitive information about a sale in progress (for example, a rep may need to request approval from a manager before they can offer a discount to a prospective buyer) can help make the entire end-to-end sales cycle more efficient, and help the sales force close deals - and earn their commissions - faster.

5. Reduced Costs

A CRM solution can reduce sales costs by increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of related processes. For example, when the dollar value and product mix of deals are forecasted more precisely, inventory costs can be dramatically reduced.

Additionally CRM can minimize order errors, saving the sales force significant amounts of time by reducing the need to re-process incorrect orders, and eliminating the costs associated with replacing incorrect items that have been shipped to customers.

By conveying the key benefits of the new CRM system to your sales force, you can help them realize the tremendous value the solution can provide them, and help increase adoption and usage rates.

Learn More

You can learn more about the benefits of CRM for your sales force by seeing a demo or experiencing a free trial of sales force automation software from some of the top sales force automation vendors.