Should staffing salespeople use CRM software to manage clients? Most employers and business people think so. But of course there are trade-offs. It’s important that the software doesn’t slow the salesperson down; especially during their most productive peak selling times and it’s especially important that the software is adaptable to diverse selling styles because sales people will only utilize software that has value for them personally (i.e. more sales and less time with data entry.)
For small staffing agencies, the right staffing agency software can make a huge difference to the bottom line, because if the salesperson is using good software, you as a business manager will certainly reap the rewards of good business intelligence and solid sales and financial data.
As an example, while I was employed in the telecommunications industry as a salesperson I spent the majority of my time cold-calling businesses on the telephone. It was imperative that my number of dials be maximized to ensure that the number of contacts with live prospects was maximized because my average sale depended on me making 75 calls to get to that magic “yes”. I know this because I tracked the calls in special cold calling software that would then transfer the prospect into a CRM system once they became a customer or serious buyer. I wasn’t hindered by all of the typical CRM software data entry that most salespeople absolutely hate. As a result my sales increased over 25% within just a few months as did most of the other salespeople in the office who actively used the software.
Had the company required me to use CRM software instead of special software designed for cold-calling, I wouldn’t have been nearly as productive or happy. CRM is designed to maintain relationships; it’s not designed to be a cold calling software for your salespeople. It just takes too much time to enter the information for every prospect (or more likely suspect).
CRM is great at developing relationships. It helps keep track of everything from meetings and lunches to important deadlines and client’s children’s names. It enables sales people to be better relationship managers, but let’s not forget that software should be designed to work the way the salesperson works which means flexibility.
“In my opinion, software should either adapt to the company and salesperson’s best practices or the company should find new software.” – Staffing Executive, Fortune 1000 company
Some of the more popular CRM packages for business are ACT and Goldmine. And while these software products won’t run your staffing business, when implemented and used correctly they will provide a focused view into what is going on in your sales pipeline and more business intelligence than you’ve probably had access to previously.