To get the most out of your CRM, you need to use it for looking back as well as for looking forward. The obvious value in CRM is to track your potential sales funnel – leads, opportunities, deal stages, orders and sales. Whether you are selling products, services, or complex solutions, using your CRM to record your sales – including details regarding your installed base – will increase the value of your CRM investment significantly.
Unless you are starting a new organization or business venture, you are likely to have some history of legacy sales. Should you bother putting these into your CRM or simply start with new sales that you achieve after your CRM is implemented? In addition to contemplating that question, you’ll need to consider how much detail you should include.
I suggest you give as much thought to the structure and inclusion of your installed-base data as you do your sales funnel. Begin with the end in mind; how will you use this data? Here are several thoughts which only scratch the surface:
- Good data on your (and your competitors’) installed base can help you develop marketing campaigns that are specific to a customer segment, an aging product fleet or a software upgrade opportunity. Get your marketing team involved in the design of your installed-base data file! Ensure you capture the level of data they need while avoid making the information too complex to maintain.
- Good installed-based data can help you predict future opportunities which, in turn, can help your sales managers develop more appropriate territory-level sales targets. Sales managers should be given the chance to provide input on what kind of sales data should be captured and at what level of detail.
- Excellent sales reps can use good historical data to better serve their current customers. Make sure your top 2-3 sales reps are involved in your CRM installed-base planning process. They will become early adopters and can help others see the value in the tool. They will lead by example!
- New sales reps will be happy to inherit good data from their predecessor – potentially making their learning curve shorter and smoothing their transition. This could significantly reduce the costs associated with a new hire.
Once you have a good sense of how much data to capture and how you will organize it to meet your objectives, start capturing this data on new sales. Do it for a quarter. Integrate it with your sales system where possible, so that data feeds into your CRM automatically with no manual intervention required. Check in with your sales team, sales managers and marketing team to see if this installed-base data is meeting their expectations.
Once you are comfortable that you have an appropriate data structure and a consistent process for ensuring new sales information is integrated into your CRM system, find a way to import historical sales data. Make sure it is good, clean data, so that it is believable and valued by the teams which will use it. This may not be trivial, but is worth the time and investment. If your data is not clean or believable, then don’t put it in your system. Even a little garbage data may instill a sense of distrust with your teams. It is not worth it!
Lastly, you need to ensure that your sales and marketing teams understand the value of keeping this data current. As they see competitive products in use, they need to record as much detail as possible, so that it can be included in the CRM system. You may even want to create a reward or prize for capturing excellent competitive intelligence to increase their motivation for participating in this process. In addition some market research organizations provide installed-base services. They will do the research for you and will provide you with data that you can import into your CRM. However, remember that market research data is accurate for a single point in time. You’ll still need a process for keeping competitive data current, if you don’t already have one. Old, outdated data is as bad as garbage data, so keep it up-to-date!
CRM systems are an investment of time, money and human resources. Make sure you are getting the most out of your CRM by capturing, reporting and analyzing installed-base data, so that you can turn it into a competitive advantage and create programs that will drive a strong, positive ROI for your organization!
Melanie R. Varin is a Sales, Marketing and Business Process Consultant with TopLine Results Corporation. She has 25 years of professional experience across a variety of business functions with General Motors, Eastman Kodak, and General Electric. For more information about Melanie, please find her Linked In profile here.
TopLine Results Corporation is a full-service consulting firm specializing in customer relationship management (CRM) solutions using industry-leading CRM software. TopLine Results serves clients throughout the United States and internationally including Canada, Australia and Europe. They are based in the Midwest region of the United States with offices in Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri.
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