Why your Sales Reps hate your CRM

Like many MedTech Commercial leaders, you are probably pulling your hair out to get your field based team to fully adopt your CRM. You spent months implementing and training on it, not to mention the big check of your budget that gets allocated to it. Get your sales reps excited to use your CRM with this one super simple technique: consider their needs by putting yourself in their shoes.

To understand why this simple change in orientation works, let's dive into the root cause of the problem of lackluster support for your CRM workflows. 

​It's hard to hear and painful to digest... but most issues teams face can be traced back to the top levels of management. ​

Consider the decision making process for adopting CRM technology in the first place. ​

Not surprisingly, the decision comes from the upper levels of management who have the budget and decision making authority to create the impetus and process for implementing a CRM. Often times management aligns the selection and implementation of the tool around their needs which likely stem from seeking better insights into sales funnels and pipelines to aid in forecasting, monitoring sales performance and ultimately closing more deals.

Next most managers who have decided to invest in a CRM are going to view it through the lens of a technology tool rather than workflow tool. This is a very important distinction, leading the manager to assign largely technical team members from Commercial Operations or IT in the set-up and roll-out. This decision has huge implications as too often the underlying users of the technology (i.e. sales reps and marketing leads) whose workflow is being impacted aren't fully engaged and empowered.

While these dynamics are well-intentioned and totally understandable, what results from these decisions? Unfortunately, the most likely outcome is going to be lots of money spent and not a ton of benefit.

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​Sales Reps repeatedly tell us they feel like the CRM system is forced upon them so the management can generate reports on their performance and better control their prospects an relationships. This creates an environment where Sales Reps feel their commissions and earnings potential in under attack.

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What's in it for your Sales Reps?

To overcome the challenges that Sales Reps often cite about their CRMs, change your orientation and think about the workflow and the end user. Design your CRM, train on the features and model the workflows with your sales reps in mind, otherwise you will wind up with passive (and unhappy) record keeper rather than a tool to help your team sell more deals.

First don't make them do unnecessary data entry. 
For MedTech companies, there is no longer a valid excuse for having your Sales Reps enter data bout their prospects, leads and current accounts.

Modern web-based CRMs have various accelerators and tools to automate the capture of activities ... from sending emails directly from the CRM, to supporting outbound calls and SMS messages, to booking meetings without the back and forth.

But even before considering how to leverage these fancy bells and whistles, make sure you have the core data taken care of. Carevoyance has a comprehensive, constantly updated provider directory that can feed into your CRM system. If you have an existing (undoubtedly messy, complex and out-of-date) directory, then we provide matching and cleaning services to get it back on track.

With a strong foundation and helpful accelerators integrated in, your Sales Reps can focus on activities that get them closer to closing deals,  rather than updating contact information, relationship insights and other data that can be automatically fed into your systems.

Second, give your reps a compelling reason to rely on the CRM.
Give your reps context and collateral for more efficient selling. Your sales teams  have to be equipped with the most relevant insights about their prospects and customers  to provide the right help and value to your customers.

But Sales won’t find value in a process if they cannot see the process moving them closer to a commission. Sales reps who give their prospects and customers a value-added experience become more important to those customers over time.

Carevoyance can feed customized collateral, personalized for your product portfolio or targeted therapeutic areas, directly into each account and contact. This means that the Sales Reps can easily access fresh content that they can use in their next meeting. And not just the same old corporate slides but interesting, insightful information about the healthcare provider's business and competition. This presents a fantastic way for marketing teams to coordinate with sales teams as they use these customized reports to drive consistent messaging, execute on better targeting and enable closer collaboration with field-based team members. 

Only 23% of all survey respondents believe their CRM improves productivity of their sales people.

However that figure increases to a whooping 78% when looking at respondents from "world class" sales organizations.

The potential exists for CRM to create shared visibility into the customer.

MHI Research Institute 
Sales Performance and Productivity Study

​Carevoyance recommended integration with Salesforce enhances every contact with customized reports to be used in meetings, relevant procedure volume as well as recommendations for similar healthcare providers.

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Keep the focus on the needs of your sales reps and give them a seat at the table in the upfront process design and roll-out.
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​You'll find yourself your previously poorly utilized CRM transformed into a platform for sharing customer strategies.