Sales Management and CRM - Setting up the Central Memory

With the arrival of CRM, the sales process has changed.

CRM became a new trends a few years ago. And with this concept of CRM (Client Relationship Management), also the CRM system was invented. A system that provided a standard in managing relations.

The first aspect of such a system is that all relevant information about clients is to reside in a central database (or is to be centrally accesible); the central memory of the system and the collective memory for the sales force. This is a difficult step to achieve.

Memory is essential in sales, but should you memorize everything? think that you have had contact with a client and he talked about his dog that was ill. Suddenly, a year later this client comes back. You did remember this about his pet and asked about his dog. Unfortunately the dog was no longer with him... Experienced sales representatives know how to handle these kind of situations.

Memory is important, but not only to dump all you do know about everybody. You do need the relevant data. So memory is important, but rather on a different level. Before the CRM-hype, the sales process was organized around the selling of products and services.

Not only for the larger companies this selling of products gave rise to serious problems when the business became more complex. Different products were developed and the organization was split into different units with autonomous responsibilities. Smaller companies, especially those in services will often make a differentiation in the solution they offer for the various clients. Or different sales employees having their own "client-product-line."

An important step in organizing CRM based sales management was to build up or gather this memory so everybody could use it. Everybody, because with the introduction of CRM the organization changed form a product centered form to a client(team) centered operation. the sales reps specialized in certain products where spread in different client teams.

The (collective) memory started to be an issue.

2006 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days.

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