In the world of sales, there’s a valley that separates effort from outcomes. Every company tries its best to build a bridge over this valley. But the problem is that most of these bridges look like planks of wood tied with ropes. Naturally, sales professionals find these bridges hard to navigate, and most of them topple into the valley of frustration.
Here’s why this happens. Meaningful sales processes are inherently complex. Take, for instance, one of our clients that develops marketing automation software for small businesses.
Their typical sales process involves 12 steps:
- Generate leads through digital marketing.
- Engage with interested customers.
- Explain the unique selling points.
- Respond to queries.
- Send quotations.
- Conduct follow-up meetings upon request.
- Update and share revised quotes.
- Close agreements.
- Send payment links.
- Confirm payments.
- Deliver the product.
- Onboard the customer.
These are 12 steps, with 11 gaps between them, through which most deals fall. New sales professionals on your team will take months to truly learn the process and to truly master all the different processes, departments, and applications that overlap with these steps. As a result, the expected increase in productivity remains elusive. Of course, every organization tries different flavours of sales CRM, but the results are far from impressive.
Now, let’s explore why traditional Sales CRMs fail to deliver the solutions they promise.
Why Do Traditional Sales CRMs Fail to Solve This Problem?
The promise of traditional CRMs crumbles under the weight of their own rigidity – that’s the biggest flaw. These CRMs are hard to customize and costly to adapt, but why is this so crucial? The sales process is not simple. It involves comprehensive process design, including a SWOT analysis of the company or product, identifying customer fits, precise market positioning, sales steps to follow and much more. These intricate steps cannot be standardized from one company to another, even if they are in the same industry.
Furthermore, as businesses evolve, their sales processes must also adapt. Traditional CRMs fail to keep up with these dynamic needs because of their rigid, monolithic design. They become an iron glove that everyone must wear, yet they fit no one properly. Instead of aiding productivity, they become a maze in which people remain lost. What happens next is that salespeople become eager to bypass these systems. Within a few years, even the best of old-school CRM systems are reduced to mere repositories of vanity data – a far cry from the ‘sales engines’ they promised to be.
However, Low-Code sales CRMs offer a promising solution. They fulfil the promise of CRM as a true sales engine, and they do so by changing the ‘change your process to fit the CRM’ paradigm to ‘shape your CRM to fit your processes’ paradigm. And this shift triggers a snowball effect that eventually makes everyone in your sales team do more with less.
How Do Low-Code Sales CRMs Provide the Solution?
It might seem like a tall claim, but this is true: Low-Code sales CRMs work by making it nearly impossible for your sales teams to fail. Low-Code means everyone can develop the feature or enhancement they need so that the CRM makes their work faster and more enjoyable. Such a CRM is so flexible that you can envision any sales process as a series of well-defined tasks, and then stitch together those tasks in the CRM, to create a faithful digital replica of the on-ground workflow.
This is a game changer for any sales professional, because:
- They don’t have to think of a hazy, distant goal of ‘closure’ and instead know exactly what to focus on ‘today’.
- They don’t have to remember complicated workflows and will never miss a follow-up with their leads – whether to request a meeting, to get the agreement signed, or to get the invoice paid.
This is also the essence of how a Low-Code sales CRM becomes the ‘sales engine with super fuel’ that your organization needs already (or will need very soon when you need to ramp up the sales team but won’t have the mind space to mentor everyone). The transformation from being ‘just a CRM’ to being a ‘sales engine’ relies on whether the CRM can bring out two key principles:
- Everyone does the work that matters
- Everyone knows how well they are doing that work
First, let’s talk about doing the right thing.
Traditional sales teams depend heavily on having highly motivated salespeople. Leaders hope that their team’s drive and hunger will overcome the complexities of the sales process. However, this is not a strategy. A much better solution is to use a well-designed CRM system that makes it easy for anyone to create structured pathways that can guide salespeople through each step in a way that digressions become impossible.
For instance, a salesperson will know that they need to send an edited quotation back to a potential customer within their workday, rather than daze about whether the deal will be closed or not. When salespersons focus on meaningful conversations focused on the micro-moments that are valuable to customers, they naturally reduce risks of deal attrition and reduce their reliance on luck to close deals.
Such a system shifts focus from lag measures, like the number of closures, to lead measures that drive everyday activities. Lead measures are actionable steps that salespeople can take daily, such as the number of customer visits or follow-up calls. It’s proven that when teams focus on the activities defined by lead measures, the system ensures that the lag measures, like deal closures, will naturally follow.
Secondly, knowing how well everyone in your team is doing, is crucial. This is where scorecards in the CRM come into play. Scorecards provide real-time feedback on performance and nudge salespeople to stay on the right path. For example, consider the sales process we discussed earlier, and consider how thoughtfully designed flowcharts ensure that salespeople stay on course in spite of the protracted process. Here are some example scorecards:
- Lead Generation Scorecard: To show salespeople how their lead generation efforts compare to their peers.
- Customer Engagement Scorecard: Measures the number of customer visits and follow-up meetings and helps salespeople understand the importance of staying engaged with potential clients.
- Quotation and Closure Scorecard: This scorecard highlights the crucial steps leading to closure and for that, it monitors the time taken to get quotations and agreements signed off.
These scorecards serve as daily motivators. They ensure that salespeople know exactly what tasks they need to focus on. They also provide a clear benchmark of performance relative to their peers. The best part of using such a Low-Code CRM is that even if management sometimes fails to articulate specific goals clearly, these scorecards ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same objectives. The gist is that you need a CRM that doesn’t just track data but actively propels your team forward; one that leaves no room for missteps.
These thoughts drove us when we designed our Low-Code Sales CRM. Our vision is to create a tool engineered from the ground up for productivity, yet flexible enough to give control to the end users. That’s precisely what Amoga’s Low-Code sales CRM delivers.
What Makes Amoga’s Sales CRM Stand Out?
One of the main goals of Amoga’s Sales CRM is to empower every member of your sales team. Even those with no coding experience can develop CRM features that suit their specific tasks. This reduces reliance on external software development teams. This is crucial because the core development team can then focus on more complex, game-changing functionalities rather than resolving everyday bugs.
With Amoga’s Sales CRM, growing sales teams no longer need to worry about high costs and delays. Developing with Amoga’s Low-Code platform takes one-fourth the cost and one-tenth the time compared to traditional methods. Plus, everything operates within an enterprise-ready, secure environment, eliminating the risks of shadow IT.
Our clients have experienced these benefits firsthand, and we are eager to understand your specific sales challenges. Please don’t hesitate to book a conversation. Let us show you how Amoga’s Sales CRM can transform your sales process.
