Are you always searching for new tools or resources to help your sales team excel? 

Sales can be a brutal, challenging environment, as your reps are always striving to hit their goals and quotas and often compete against peer numbers. Yet, what steps can you take to make certain that your sales team stays engaged, motivated, and confident even as buying trends evolve, sales cycles become, and competition becomes fiercer? 

To begin with, you need to evaluate whether your sales team has access to the right tools to succeed. Additionally, it's crucial you understand the sales process of the industry at large to see how your team stacks up — are they tailoring solutions to meet the prospect’s specific needs, are they aligned with your marketing department, are they managing their time effectively? 

Many organizations look to a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to tackle these ongoing sales hurdles. However, before you make the investment, it's wise to take a moment and evaluate the preparedness of your sales team, identifying the particular areas where they could benefit from the most support.  

These are some of the signs that can indicate whether your sales team is in need of a CRM system: 

1. Lack of Organized Data 

Knowing how your data fits into the bigger picture can lead to surefire success. Moreover, sales data can help your reps steer clear of bad-fit customers, while informing them of new opportunities that they wouldn’t detect otherwise.  

With a centralized database that a CRM provides, your sales team can keep track of all historical interactions a customer has had with your company. Whether a prospect goes cold or is effectively converted into a customer, every interaction can give your sales team valuable data and insight into what’s working. 

2. Manual Follow-Ups 

The follow-up is the glue that holds the puzzle pieces of all sales interactions together; so, ask yourself: is your sales team spending hours and hours of their precious time manually drafting and sending follow-up emails to individual leads or prospects? 

With a CRM system, you can set up sequences to nurture your leads over time, so when a contact is enrolled into a sequence, they will receive a series of timed personalized one-to-one emails. Your sales team can also automatically create follow-up tasks as part of the cadence, making sure they never miss an opportunity to connect with a lead.  

3. Friction Between Sales & Marketing 

Tension between sales and marketing is not uncommon, and though a lot of the friction comes down to distinct team goals and motivations — those that a piece of technology cannot necessarily address — a CRM platform does wonders in building collaboration between the two departments.  

For example, a shared dashboard would enable both teams to actively track how their work impacts key growth processes while saving them from the manual work of compiling their own reports. Additionally, both teams can create and share targeted, brand-adherent resources for every stage of the buyer journey far more seamlessly, keeping the customer experience unified, with consistent messaging.  

4. Inadequate Client Service 

The quality of your client service is the most critical factor driving customer retention.  

If those standards haven’t been hitting the mark as of late, it’s time to consider a CRM system that can facilitate a far superior customer experience. A customer-focused CRM system doesn’t only Identify opportunities to deliver service with authenticity, but it tracks customer details and interactions with your business in one source of truth that’s accessible to your whole team. Imagine connecting team email, live chat, Facebook Messenger, and more to one universal inbox — your whole team will have the visibility to manage and reply to conversations in one place, thereby dramatically improving customer insight and service.  

5. Time-Consuming Data Entry 

CRM software can automate far more than follow-up sequences; it uses workflows to rotate leads, create deals, segment contacts, and plenty more. As a result, your sales team will be able to manage their data in bulk by updating properties and copying values — no manual entry involved. Keep in mind that HubSpot’s automation tools work seamlessly with Gmail, Google Workspace, Outlook, and Office 365 for Windows, so you can enroll contacts in sequences right from Gmail or Outlook for desktop and don’t have to worry about losing touch.  

6. Sales Slump 

It all comes down to sales: if your sales team is unable to close deals effectively, it will have an immediate impact on your business operations and longevity. Are you noticing low morale, increased frustration and discontent, or a lack of clear direction within your sales division? If yes, you will need to switch gears and evaluate how to tackle the slump.  

CRM systems provide several tools and automations to turn around sales performance. For example, HubSpot’s lead management software enables your team to prioritize leads, track interactions, and ensure timely follow-up, increasing the chances of converting leads into customers. Even the CRM's sales forecasting features can help you allocate resources, adjust strategies, and set realistic targets to recover from the slump. 

7. No Insight into Sales Team Activities 

What is the sales team working on? It's a question that occurs to many business leaders on a daily basis. 

If their activities are hidden in a cluster of spreadsheets or scattered across a number of disconnected documents, it's natural to feel frustrated due to the lack of transparency. 

With CRM sales reporting software, insights are always at your fingertips. Your leadership team can quickly create customizable and visual reports with deep sales analytics for real-time updates on your pipeline, team performance, deal status changes, prospecting touches and conversions, and so much more. Whether you want to demystify your sales team’s efforts with real-time deal data or you want to pinpoint opportunity areas with waterfall reporting, CRM holds a key to much of your sales team’s progress.  

Are you ready for a CRM? 

When your sales team is facing these challenges, it's a sign that you might need to upgrade your sales technology to give them an advantage. Sales activities are influenced by an intricate interplay of motivations, incentives, and quotas. However, without providing the right resources or tools to enhance their performance and reduce their workload, your deals will suffer. 

If you’re considering trying out a CRM, look no further than HubSpot — it offers an all-in-one platform that includes comprehensive CRM, marketing, sales, and customer service features, allowing for seamless communication and data sharing across different departments. We’re a 4x accredited HubSpot Solutions Partner and have worked with companies from a diverse range of industries – both small and enterprise-level. 

With over 250 implementations successfully accomplished in recent years, we'd be happy to offer you a complimentary consultation. Let's dive into your needs and work on a roadmap together. Don't hesitate to contact us!