Four essential sales team CRM requirements

As their job centers around the acquisition and retention of customers, your sales team should be at the forefront of your CRM requirements analysis.  

With this in mind, you should consider their needs carefully when selecting a new CRM. Once they realize that the time they spend getting used to the new system will be vastly overshadowed by the time saved carrying out repetitive administrative duties, they should adopt to the new methods quickly - they will have more time available to dedicate to selling, and to meeting targets for commission.

With new capabilities enabling them to use the CRM while on the road, they should find it a whole lot easier to qualify and follow up on leads as well as prioritize their meetings, calls and tasklist.

Here are just four of the CRM requirements that your sales team will have for the new software:

1. Secure mobile access

When sharing time between the office and the road, it is so easy for sales teams to lose access to essential data when they need it most. Mobile CRM functionality will prevent this by providing safe secure access to everything from customer contact details through to activity details (emails sent, phone calls made) and even details of prices quoted or orders placed - all from your sales teams’ smartphones or tablets.  

Use our CRM requirements template to find and prioritize requirements for new CRM software

2. Easy-to-use organizational tools

Each member of the sales team will be able to organize and plan their daily schedules to include such things as sales appointment visits, calls to make, emails to send and reports to produce etc. With the right set of automated reminders, scheduling features and other organizational tools customers will always be contacted at the right time, leads will not be forgotten and careful planning will ensure more time spent with customers, hence more deals closed and a much stronger customer foundation.

3. Sales reports

Forget inaccurate spreadsheets and hours spent slaving over computers; your CRM will enable the preparation of sales reports with just a few clicks, fully automating the process and enabling management to receive sales reports illustrating number of conversions from leads, total number of sales to date etc., digitally on time, knowing that accuracy is assured.

4. Segmentation of sales data

Rather than waste time wading through reams of data, your CRM should enable members of the sales team to put together valuable sales target lists based upon their selected criteria. This can be whatever they want, such as list of customers in a certain geographical area, those who have purchased within the last three months, or customer phone calls to be made on a certain date.  Just imagine the time saved when they don’t have to pour through assorted documents or scroll through disjointed lists.

Of course there are many other functions that the CRM will take care of for your sales team but these are just some of the key functions that will boost performance and empower them to excel. Overall, the CRM will allow them to follow up leads more efficiently, increase their mobility by accessing the CRM from any location, and enable them to prioritize activities to close leads more quickly.

Once they realize that a new CRM will boost sales and cut down on time spent on admin, your sales team should jump on board.