Among the many sales challenges faced by an organisation, we all know how annoying it is to do data input and 700+ sales professionals highlight this in a recent Sales Professional Survey report from Hubspot – the most common CRM obstacle is “bad processes” (i.e. manual data entry). But how can you fix it? How can you stop manually logging data into your CRM?
Sales Challenges Overview
This survey analyses the 8 biggest sales challenges and how to solve them. It goes into:
- Effective ways to get Sales Professionals to use CRM
- The biggest disconnect between sales reps and leaders
- What Sales Professionals need to be successful
- The most important sales metric
It is a fantastic report which underlines the issues involved during CRM adoption but also emphasises how important it is to find the solutions to overcome them. I provide an brief overview of the takeaways from the survey below which will hopefully whet your appetite to download the full survey from Hubspot.
- Sales professionals require better training to increase adoption of CRM.
In addition to staggering adoption rates, companies also struggle to get their sales teams to make use of the full functionality of their CRM. The results are wasted resources and loss of potential sales revenue. - Top Sales Challenges Ranked by CRM Admins
Sales professionals using CRM; Inaccurate pipeline information; Getting timely accurate information into the system; Bad processes - Biggest Challenge Based on Position
Top Challenges Ranked by CRM Admins: Sales professionals using CRM; Inaccurate pipeline information; Getting timely accurate information into the system; Bad processes
Top Challenges Ranked by Sales Management: Sales professionals using CRM correctly; Inaccurate pipeline information; Bad processes
Top Challenges Ranked by Sales Professionals: Bad processes; Getting timely accurate information into the system; Inaccurate pipeline information - Breakdown of Salesforce & Hubspot CRM Among Organizations
Smaller organizations prefer HubSpot and larger organizations overwhelmingly favor Salesforce. - Are You Using Any Form of Lead Nurturing System?
Over half of companies surveyed DO NOT have a lead nurturing system. - Do you feel that Sales Professionals at your organization have the information required to make educated selling decisions?
70% of respondents feel their sales professionals already have the information required to make smart selling decisions. - What do Sales Professionals at your organization need the most to be successful?
The biggest challenge that is preventing sales professionals’ success is the need for better processes. - The Most Important Sales Metric
Salesforce Administrators, Sales Managers, and Sales Professionals are not in agreement on what the most important sales metric is. - What is the average length of your sales lifecycle?
The majority of businesses have an average sales lifecycle length that requires adequate CRM adoption and usage.
In conclusion, a CRM can be the single most valuable (but, even if implemented, the most under-utilized tool) that a business has today. The two main obstacles that limit adoption and usage of CRMs bad processes and lack of training.
Download the full Sales Professional Survey from Hubspot
If you have your own sales challenges and would like to see how a CRM could benefit your business or how your existing system could work harder to improve your processes and customer relationships, then please get in touch to request a free CRM consultation.
