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In Part 1 of this post, we went through 7 Proven Ways Sales Operations Can Optimize Your CRM. In Part 2, we expand the list.
A Recap From Part 1
We gave an overview of the Sales Operations function and in-depth explanations around sales strategy, territory planning, CPQ (configure, price, & quote), compensation plans, lead management, CRM automation, and data analysis. With that, let’s add to the list.
Table of Contents
8. Data Audits
What is it?
Data audits in any system refer to the process of examination, review, and verification of the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of said data. The purpose of audits is to ensure that the data you have is of high quality and up-to-date, so when you run reports or pull metrics, it’s reliable.
How it relates to your CRM:
There are several types of audits for Sales Operations to perform in your CRM. I believe it’s best to categorize audits based on the system objects: deals, contacts, companies, and marketing data. Based on the functionality of your CRM, you may be able to audit emails, workflows, forms, segmentations, images, videos, documents, and more.
One or more members of your Sales Operations team should perform audits on a weekly basis to ensure your database is clean, accurate, and organized.
Stay tuned and subscribe for more in-depth articles on specific audits you should run.
9. CRM Administrator
What is it?
A CRM administrator is an individual or team responsible for the management and maintenance of the system within an organization. You could have a technical admin who is in control of the backend, such as the creation of new fields and workflows while you may have a second admin whose main focus is the front end such as the performance of audits to ensure quality of data. Whether you have one or more administrators, this role is crucial to ensure your CRM operates effectively, meets your needs, and supports your company’s strategy.
If you have one admin, it should likely be Sales Operations that takes on this responsibility. However, if you have a complex system that requires an extremely tech savvy person to handle the backend duties, it may be assigned to the IT department. Regardless of the system, Sales Operations should take responsibility for front end data.
How it relates to your CRM:
A few of these should already be familiar as we just discussed them, albeit briefly.
System Configuration
Administrators configure the CRM system according to the organization’s specific requirements. This includes the set up of custom fields, workflows, user roles, security settings, and other system parameters.
Data Management
The CRM administrator oversees data management within the CRM platform. They ensure data accuracy, completeness, and consistency as they conduct regular data audits, resolve data discrepancies, and handle data imports and exports.
User Management
They manage user accounts and permissions. They create and maintain user profiles, grant access rights, and ensure that the appropriate team members have the necessary access to data and functions.
Integrations
CRM administrators work on the integration of the system with other business applications and tools, such as marketing automation platforms, customer support software, or CPQ (configure, price, & quote) platforms.
Data Security and Compliance
The admin is responsible for data security and compliance with relevant data protection rules & regulations (e.g. HIPPA) and company policies. Please reach out to an attorney if you have questions about specific compliance issues you may have.
Vendor Management
Lastly, this person needs to liaise with the CRM vendor to handle contracts, pricing, renewals, and support when needed.
10. CRM Training
What is it?
Your Sales Operations team should train other departments on how to use your CRM. Let’s state the obvious: people will not use the CRM unless they are trained. Even more so, teams will not use the CRM unless they see their leaders use it.
How it relates to your CRM:
Train The Leaders
Let’s assume that your Head of Sales (HoS) has a Monday morning sales call with their team of 10 sales reps. Now imagine that the HoS reviews deals in Excel instead of in your CRM. The end result is that your reps will use Excel instead of your CRM. It doesn’t matter if you train the reps on system functionality every single week; if the HoS does not use the system, the reps won’t. Accordingly, it’s vital to train everyone on your team, especially the leaders.
Ongoing Training and Support
Once we have people in the system, we now want to get the most out of it. Ongoing training ensures that users are aware of all the features and functions of the CRM. This allows them to use the platform to its full potential, which should boost productivity and your ROI. I recommend that your Sales Ops team blocks off time for a weekly or bi-weekly call for to train the team.
Data Accuracy and Consistency
A well-trained team is less likely to make errors, which Sales Operations likely has to fix. Accurate and consistent data entry is essential to get reliable reports and to make well-informed decisions.
Faster Onboarding for New Employees
A CRM isn’t just about data entry. A great CRM should help reps to sell more effectively (along with a great sales process of course). Thus, when new employees, specifically sales reps, join your organization, it’s imperative for Sales Operations to get them trained and knowledgeable in the system. The sooner a new rep learns how to use the CRM, the sooner they can start to contribute to sales and customer management efforts.
Effective Customer Interactions
When Sales Operations equips employees with the skills to navigate the CRM and access customer information promptly, they can quickly engage in informed conversations with said customers. This enhances interactions and allows for a more personalized and satisfactory customer experience.
11. Proper CRM Reimplementation and Adoption
What is it?
A reimplementation is the process of reconfiguration and redeployment of your current system. It requires the leader of the project to make significant changes to the existing CRM setup. This includes, but is not limited to backend set up (e.g. create new fields, templates, etc.), data migration if needed, and new user training to improve functionality and alignment with business processes.
The details in our previous post, 7 Great Moves To Make Before You Buy a CRM, explain how to set yourself up for success when you are ready to purchase and implement a CRM. Check it out as the details also apply for when you want to reimplement.
How it relates to your CRM:
When your team does not use your CRM, Sales Operations should work to train them (see the section directly above). However, sometimes that is not enough. Below are a number of CRM issues you may face and why a reimplementation may be needed. Remember, this is part of what Sales Operations is for.
Underutilization
If the CRM system is not being used to its full potential or if users do not take advantage of its key features, a reimplementation can help re-engage the team and encourage better adoption.
Process Changes
A reimplementation ensures that the system aligns with new requirements when an organization undergoes significant process changes or restructures.
Rebrand or Reposition
Similar to Process Changes above, a CRM reimplementation may be needed if an organization rebrands or repositions. If for example, your company sold products and now only sells services, the data fields that you need to capture in your CRM may have changed.
Data Quality Issues
When a system suffers from data quality problems, a reimplementation allows for data to be cleansed, data to be freshly migrated from other systems, and the establishment of new data management best practices.
Performance Improvement
Different departments may add one or two fields here and there. However, you may find that after a number of years that many of these fields become abandoned and are a waste of space. This could bog down your system’s performance, but even worse it could confuse your team. Nothing is worse than when you see the same field 3 different times and are unsure of which one to fill out. I’ve seen it happen. A reimplementation can address inefficiencies and optimize the system for better performance both from a computing and personnel adoption standpoint.
Whatever the reason for a reimplementation, your Sales Operations team should be there to lead the way.
12. First Purchase or Switch
What is it?
A first purchase refers to the first CRM we ever use for our company. A switch is when we get rid of our old CRM for a new one. Whether this is your first purchase or fifth, we should have at least one Sales Operations personnel on our team, even if it’s a consultant to help with the project. This is a big part of why the department exists: to create cohesiveness between sales and other departments, bring data together, improve processes, and lead the way on major sales related changes.
How it relates to your CRM:
There are a large number of reasons why we would want to switch our CRM. It could be due to functionality, integrations, user interface, user experience, customization, data security, reports, and the list goes on.
An install is no small feat if you want to get it done properly. The project leader on this implementation needs to work across teams to get a buy-in from all departments, ensure the system meets the requirements of everyone involved, execute the actual implementation, and train the team. The skillset needed to get this done should be part of your Sales Operations personnel/consultant’s talents.
Please note that an implementation can consume quite a bit of time. Thus, the project leader needs to make time in their calendar for the implementation to be a success.
13. Pipeline Health
What is it?
It’s important to check up on the health of your pipeline (e.g. the quality of your opportunity data). It doesn’t even take a week for data to get stale. Stale data equals unreliable data. Unreliable data means you can’t properly analyze the income generation portion of your business. This is where Sales Operations can help.
How it relates to your CRM:
Deal data sits in our CRM, so it’s important to keep tabs as to what goes on. Here are a few deal details that your Sales Operations employee should keep you abreast of:
Deal Momentum
I highly recommend that you keep track of changes in deal stages, amounts, and close dates. If, for example, your team has 100 deals in the pipeline, there is no way to remember all of the values that get updated for each opportunity. Changes in stage let you know if your reps make progress or not, amounts let you know if the value is greater or less than previously forecasted, and close dates let you know when the business is projected to close, which helps to understand when your company can expect revenue and cash.
Deal momentum is an important topic. Accordingly, stay tuned and subscribe for a future article that goes in-depth on deal momentum: how to track it and how it can help your business.
Stale Deals
Another key item to look out for are deals that have no updates or changes. Set a maximum time period for no activity before a deal is considered stale. The timeframe depends on your specific business and sales cycle. We can say a deal is stale after 2 weeks of no activity if your sales cycle is 3 months or more. Accordingly, once two weeks pass and there is no activity on the deal, Sales Operations should talk to the rep to ensure the opportunity is still active.
Deals in Later Stages
At all times, but especially when opportunities approach their close date, it’s important to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Ensure that processes are simple to follow and are actually followed. Check that deals in later stages have prices, quotes, contracts, and whatever else is needed to get opportunities across the line. I recommend at least a weekly check for deals in the later stages.
Deals in the Earlier Stages
Throughout the life of a deal, there should be opportunity qualification; a process to make sure that every deal is right for you and your potential customer. The earlier you qualify out a deal, the better. It’s preferable to find out a deal isn’t the right fit early on rather than after 3 months and countless hours spent selling. Accordingly, Sales Operations should ensure that your sales process includes qualification criteria. I recommend that Sales Operations performs weekly sanity checks on all deals in the early stages. Please note: this of course depends on how your organization is set up and how your deal stages are set up.
14. Won, Lost, Qualified Out Metrics
What is it?
In a previous post, 15 Essential Deal Fields You Need in a B2B CRM, we discussed why it’s important to capture closed deal metrics. The short version: it’s important to recognize the difference between a deal that is lost vs. qualified out because it enables us to recognize what truly happened with a deal; wins are how we know which deals have signed contracts.
How it relates to your CRM:
When you have this data in your CRM, it enables Sales Operations to analyze what happened to opportunities. They can then use that information to make changes to your processes, help reps where they struggle, and improve efficiency.
15. Contract Process
What is it?
While contracts may be created and maintained by your legal department, the creation and maintenance of the contract process itself is where Sales Operations can be of great help. Your process could involve pricing, quotes, contract creation, redlines, signature, and contract storage.
How it relates to your CRM:
Ideally, you want a CRM that enables you to execute on all of the aforementioned steps within your system.
Pricing
This is a key item that needs to be locked down before you create a contract. Sales Operations should maintain pricing in your system so that it’s never outdated. Sales Ops should review pricing with the head of sales at least once a quarter to see if changes need to be made.
Quotes
Once a rep has pricing for their deal, they need to easily create a quote without interference from other people. It’s extremely helpful to have a system that lets you turn your pricing into a quote. Sales Ops can set up workflows, automations, and quote templates. Just as with pricing, review quarterly.
Contract Creation
Once you have pricing and a quote that the customer approves, it may be time to create a contract. In an ideal world, you want to be able to go into your existing deal with the approved pricing and quote, and with the click of a button, create a contract. This contract should pull in data from the deal such as company name, key contacts, products, amounts, etc. Sales Operations should work with legal to establish which field values should be pulled into the contracts.
Redlines & Signatures
If your CRM does redlines and enables e-signatures, Sales Operations needs to audit data and follow up with sales reps to make sure these redlines and signatures are done in the system. If your system cannot do redlines and signatures, then Sales Operations should talk with reps, learn what the team currently does, and work to create improvements in the process if possible.
Contract Maintenance
Once a contract is signed, it can be stored in your CRM, another system, on a local drive, or on a company-wide drive. In my experience, the Legal and Finance departments want contracts to sit in one of their systems. However, if possible, I would recommend that your contracts sit in your CRM. The caveat is that your CRM needs to have permissions for contracts, which Sales Operations needs to be in charge of. You definitely don’t want everyone to have write access to contracts because they could be accidentally edited or deleted. Only a small set of people should have write access while you give reps and others read-only access. This is a conversation that needs to be had with Legal, Finance, and Sales to ensure that the system is secure and desired permissions are possible.
Wrap Up – Sales Operations
After two posts, we all understand the importance of Sales Ops as related to our our CRM. It’s time to go out and make some changes. Just remember not to do overburden yourself with everything all at once; one piece at a time.