Data collection, coordination, analysis, forecasting are the pillars of your customer management strategy. To maintain their integrity, you need to rely on a high-quality data management system.
A wide variety of tools is rarely enough to gain a holistic view of each customer. Without a well-designed system, your company could be wasting time, money, and effort, losing customers in the process.
Even a highly efficient CRM data management strategy could lose its hold as the company changes, grows, and scales. You may not notice how it starts to slow you down, forcing sales and marketing reps to stray from their core tasks to make up for the loopholes.
Let’s take a closer look at the signs that it’s time to rethink the strategy.
1. You Can’t Always Rely on Data
“You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.” — Daniel Keys Moran
The key to successful customer management is proper data collection and analysis. High-quality data management systems help your employees gain valuable insights from the collected data and streamline their sales and marketing tasks.
If your staff is spending more and more time rechecking the data or fixing mistakes made due to improper analysis, it’s time to reconsider the system.
According to Salesforce’s States of Sales report, sales rep spend only 34% of their time selling. The main reason is the lack of proper data management systems. When your staff has to focus on manual data-entering tasks, the CRM strategy needs your review.
The CRM data management system may have worked for you in the past when your company was young. Today, when your business is much bigger, the old practices may not handle the sheer volume of data.
Bad data costs U.S. companies $3 trillion annually. The moment you can’t rely on data anymore, you lose the competitive edge.
2. You Need New System Possibilities
As time goes by and new technologies flourish, you need to stay up to date to keep up with the competition. Customers change, and so does their data. Your old data management system may not cater to your new needs simply because it’s outdated.
If you rely on outdated data management tools to build your customer management strategy, you could be in trouble.
For example, your old tools may not:
- Sufficiently handle duplicate or dirty data
- Provide proper visibility to the right people
- Keep data fresh and up-to-date
- Maintain consistency of field usage and reduce superfluous ones
- Properly synchronize across multiple systems and integrations
If your system isn’t keeping up with your needs, it’s time to consider a change. Today, 87% of companies use cloud-based CRM solutions to accommodate remote work. If your tools aren’t on the cloud, you could be losing market share.
3. Your Employee Satisfaction Rates are Going Down
Sales and marketing teams rely heavily on the CRM data management system. When it starts failing, they have to steer away from their primary tasks and deal with large volumes of manual and repetitive work.
With time, you may notice that your sales and marketing staff are growing unhappy with the company operations. Some may even decide to leave. Losing a sales rep can cost the company thousands of dollars.
According to Harvard Business Review, one of the ways to keep your top sales rep is to implement a high-quality CRM data management system. The system captures the necessary data and makes sure the sales representatives get it in time to drive sales.
The same is valid for marketing staff. Marketers have a staggering 17% turnover rate. One of the main reasons they leave is burnout.
High marketing expert and sales rep turnover doesn’t just lead to extra hiring, onboarding, and training expenses. It results in lost sales opportunities and affects your company’s profitability.
At the root of the problem is an inadequate CRM system that fails to collect accurate data on your staff. Incomplete performance evaluations and the inability to attribute credit for good work will discourage employees by denying them the mission-critical information and hard-earned recognition they need and deserve.
4. You Don’t Get Sufficient Analytics & Forecasting Functionality
Gaining insights into your sales and marketing strategies is one of the main benefits of a reliable data management system. A poorly implemented or outdated system may not provide you the analytics you need to stay ahead of the competition.
With customer behavior changing by the day due to various reasons, continuous analysis is the key to driving sales, retention, and satisfaction. If all you are getting from your data management tools is half-baked information, you could be in trouble.
The CRM system should allow you to forecast future sales. Your sales reps shouldn’t be making any educated guesses about the upcoming situation on the market and within the company. Your system should also help guide your marketing spend by measuring ROI to make sure you’re spending in the right places. Spending money on targeting the wrong segment or developing ineffective messaging is not only expensive, but it can also be disastrous for your company.
If your CRM data management system doesn’t provide proper analytics, reporting, and forecast features, you don’t have an opportunity to make informed decisions.
5. You Keep Investing in New Data Management Tools
When the existing CRM data management system lacks the necessary functionality, companies tend to look for tools that can close the loopholes, resulting in additional investments, interoperability problems, high learning curves, and much more.
Trying to fix the problem with one tool by purchasing two more is a vicious cycle. This quick-fix solution is bound to have costly consequences. Meanwhile, it affects employee satisfaction rates, operation speed, and workflow efficiency.
If you continue paying for new tools, it may be time to rethink your data management strategy. Perhaps, you need to invest in one comprehensive CRM system or delegate some data management work to qualified specialists.
Improving Your Data Management System with Delegate
The majority of your data management efforts rely on the system you use. As the world changes and your business grows, your system could lose its efficiency and eventually affect your company’s bottom line.
While your sales and marketing teams struggle to get the job done with the wrong tools, under-qualified resources, and the lack of a comprehensive strategy and oversight, your business is losing profit.
At Delegate, we continuously evaluate your tools and resources to ensure you have what you need for efficient operation. We help you develop the proper strategy and processes needed to support an agile sales team. Our experts are with you through evaluation, enablement, and adoption, providing the speed, scale, and quality your fast-growing business requires to stay on top of its game.
If you’d like to learn more about our solutions, please contact us at any time.