Salespeople always start in the same place - with a new prospect. You probably pay your sales staff well to achieve results with new prospects. And, in your company, after finding, calling and meeting the prospect, where does your sales team keep the information on the prospect?

If you answered "I don't know" or, "in their heads" or nearly as horrific, "in a spreadsheet" - you have invested too much of your money into prospect information you don't really own or control. Aside from the obvious problem of a sales person taking the information with them if they leave, you must be technically equipped to effeciently move information from marketing to sales, to service delivery, to accounting, and back again to maximize profits and improve client service.

There are a number of database options available for the small and medium sized business. Microsoft Dynamic CRM, Sugar CRM, Goldmine and others are all great products.  Some companies want a very customized solution and have technical staff or hire consultants to create one for them. Either way, once you select a solution the real challenge is to create a process for USING the solution to achieve great results.

After clarifying your data and reporting needs, set up, train and begin using your system immediately. Import the spreadsheets, transfer the information from the stack of business cards, give your sales team time to enter their knowledge into the database. Once that's done, delete the spreadsheets, hide the business cards, and require everyone on your team to use the database exclusively. If you do, you'll find you have much better information on sales funnels, number of prospects being pursued, client sales activity and much more.

Using data to drive business decisions will make you more profitable and provide your clients with better service. To learn more, give us a call. Wilson-Mercer Marketing will help you get your sales on track with good data and great processes!