"Can Your Customer Relationship Management System Grow Cold Calling Sales?"

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The ability of a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) to function well for sales professionals who cold call is turned on its ear by one critical misconception about selling and cold calling!

What is that misconception? “If you can sell … you can cold call.”

Truth is the skills used to cold call are considerably different from the skills used to sell. Said another way, your plans for getting leads to your sales pipeline are considerably different from those for getting prospects through your sales pipeline.

So, it should come as no surprise that the science needed to measure cold-call related activities is significantly different from the science used to measure sales-related activities.

What has become clear in recent years is that designers of each Customer Relationship Management System, Business Leaders, Sales Leaders, Sales Professionals, and Business Owners have done their best to make your System be all things to all people. The unintended impact of that positioning is that tremendous frustration with the science of cold calling.

What is also clear is that as a community of sales professionals and sales managers are beginning to understand, deal with, and make accommodations for the differences between the sciences needed for cold calling and the science needed for selling and their respective software systems.

You may feel as though I am adding salt to an open wound but I must remind you that THE number one reason a Customer Relationship Management System ,such as Sales Force; ACT!; and Goldmine fail is because sales professionals don’t adopt them. When expected to use these technologies for cold calling, these sales pros "push back", dig in their heels and say:

“I spend more time clicking my mouse and fulfilling administrative requirements than I do cold calling” ... these software systems have the look and administrative feel of tormenting paperwork.

Given a choice, sales pros will choose their “informal system” of notes on cocktail napkins and yellow sticky notes over anything that even hints of paperwork – the bane of a sales pro’s existence!

However, when you buckle down and capture efficiencies and activities, your eyes will open to a whole new way of managing and directing your cold call process – ways that a marketing-customer service - forecasting Customer Relationship Management System simply cannot do.

By way of brief example here are some of the ways cold calling metrics serve managers:

• Is high turnover of new sales reps an issue … you can know in 4 weeks whether or not each new rep is on track for success in cold calling.

• Are you having a tough time figuring out how to manage your cold callers … management doesn’t have to do a thing other than point to an area on a report and say here’s the plan for success, here is where you are on track, and here is where you are off.

• Already committed to a Customer Relationship Management System … you can get better data put into your current system with software that integrates on the front end … making your data cleaner, more accurate, able to provide the best forecasting data that you’ve seen to date.

As you begin your search for systems to serve your process-centric sales systems - read a select-few, free CRM white papers for tips on how to overcome low utilization; what you need in a Customer Relationship Management System to improve performance; and so forth.

Identify software systems that handle lead management (cold call processes) AND the sales pipeline (selling processes).

Vendors will be glad to give you an online Go-To-Meeting type product demo. After attending many of these kinds of demos, my opinion is the meetings could be more effective. A good portion of the time the "hosts" are techies who focus on the many, many features of the product rather than the hone in on the benefits to the users. This overwhelms listeners.

To make sure you don't get lost in the features and that learn what you need to learn: plan to demo Customer Relationship Management System of 3-5 vendors; and draft a list of questions that you want answered prior to each session. After each demo, expect for a few new questions to come to mind. Add those to your list. Collectively the answers you gather will prove to be significant for your decision-making.

Know that these systems may have clients from a variety of industries, but they will most likely fit a couple industries in particular. You will find a specialized Customer Relationship Management System, for example, that dovetails well with Hi Tech and Manufacturing environments; where other software is a better fit for Insurance companies. So, ask, "What primary industries are served by your CRM?"

Additionally, these systems fit small to medium size business best (such as ACT CRM Software) while others accommodate small, medium and large business needs.

As a final step during the software demonstration, ask for your art of cold calling , that is, your pre-approach letters, scripting, email follow-up and so forth, be used as an example. Take the time to think all of this through. When you find a good fit, you are well on your way to leveraging your cold call process for increased revenues.

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