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Diary of a sales rep: 5 complaints about CRM systems (and how you can solve them)

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What is the main goal of a sales rep? To close as many deals as possible, obviously. However, when asked, sales representatives often state that CRM systems are more of an obstacle, instead of making their lives easier and their goals faster to accomplish.
So without further ado, have you ever heard a sales rep mention some of the following?

1. “CRM is difficult to use in the field”

Nobody aims to build a software that makes people’s job actually harder. Although, the very first CRM systems were in fact designed and developed more for the managers in the office, rather than the sales reps (or any other professionals working on the go). So, if you just finished a meeting with a prospective client and want to log in all the latest developments on the opportunity while it’s still fresh, how do you go about doing so?
The answer is in a mobile-friendly solution that runs on mobile devices just as smoothly as a desktop CRM runs on a full-blown PC. Or even smoother. That’s why Resco Mobile CRM was developed with mobile professionals in mind first – to offer efficient and intuitive CRM experiences on smartphones and tablets, complete with full offline functionality.

2. “Working with CRM eats up too much time”

Spending lengthy hours putting in information just to keep the management updated won’t help any rep to increase the volume of sales he/she makes. Believe it or not, many companies even today still do the so-called “admin Fridays”, with sales reps spending pretty much a whole day in the office updating the CRM system.
Yet, it’s still possible to maintain a high-level of business overview, while cutting down on CRM administration times. Deploying Mobile CRM, you increase the efficiency of your team – producing value at the time which would otherwise remain unused, such as traveling or waiting for appointments. In the while it takes to fire up a laptop, your sales reps can already have a meeting scheduled, update the related records with the meeting details, and a lot more. So goodbye, admin Fridays.

3. “It doesn’t work with my other apps”

This might ring a bell: Switch from CRM to your document storage to look up the file you need, then open up the e-mail client, attach said file to the message you’re about to send and repeat. It takes a while just to write down the sentence above, not to mention actually going through all those cited actions. Which makes it clear why integration of CRM with other daily-used software is another key requirement.
Fortunately, Resco Mobile CRM lets you easily integrate the Exchange or G-mail, track your e-mails and access documents directly from the app, whether stored on your CRM server, SharePoint, or Dropbox. And that’s just a start – you can also import your phone contacts straight into CRM without creating duplicates and add your private calendar from the device to your Mobile CRM calendar, so that your personal life doesn’t interfere with your business and vice versa, but harmoniously work together.

4. “Reports are impossible to generate”

Need a clear break-down of that last quote or the customer’s entire order history with your business? With many desktop solutions you still have to ask your IT administrator to re-program the system to be able to generate a custom report. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that many still resort to manually creating Excel spreadsheets from scratch.
Mobile CRM enables you to create reports from your mobile device – whether you want to quickly share them with your back-office or customers. Additionally, with the arrival of Resco’s spring release 2016, users can now generate clear-cut reports even when working without internet connection.

5. “And after all, it’s just a glorified address book”

Some still approach CRM basically as a bloated address book. While you could use it to merely store the information, you would miss out on the opportunity to streamline your work by clearly defined business processes. Since the true benefit of CRM systems lies in grouping of the information and the ability to see how it relates to each other. Sketching out a workflow with the steps required to complete a task (be it closing a new deal or completing a service inspection) will help you take advantage of the functionality CRM systems have to offer.

Can you think of other common issues that sales reps (and other users) encounter when working with CRM systems? Let us know in the comments below. You can also find out more about Resco Mobile CRM visiting www.resco.net or ask us your CRM-related questions at mobilecrm@resco.net.

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