Six Ways to Use CRM to Motivate Your Sales Team

Looking for some new ways to leverage your CRM investment? Why not use it as a motivation tool? Here’s how:

Method #1: Fold CRM training into your annual training event. Since it’s often de-motivating to pull sales reps out of the field for training, consider folding your CRM training into your annual sales training event. That way, the training takes place when everybody is in a receptive mood and ready to learn something new. However, make certain that the CRM application training doesn’t suck time that would be better spent learning skills that can help them sell. Think about investing at least twice as much time in developing better selling skills as teaching how to use your CRM application – even in the first year of implementation.

Method #2: Customize your system to match your methodology. Ideally, CRM functionality should go hand-in-hand with sales skill training and motivation training. For example, if you adopt a new sales pipeline management process, make certain that the process is reflected in the CRM system. The CRM solution reinforces the sales skill and the motivational training, providing the tools needed to optimize the process. That’s motivating because the sales rep sees that your firm is fully committed to the new sales methodology.

Method #3: Add compensation reporting to your CRM system. Sales reps, like most people, find the prospect of immediate gratification to be highly motivating. Unfortunately, most companies use quarterly or monthly commission statements sent the through mail, which separates day-to-day activities from the commissions that those activities generate. If you want your sales reps to be motivated each day, make sure that the first thing that reps see when they boot up their system is their "to do" list, their correspondence, and the commissions that they’ve earned, or are about to earn.

Method #4: Add a motivational dashboard. As noted above, your CRM system should have a dashboard element where sales reps can check compensation and commissions. To make it more motivational, make it interactive! Salespeople should be able to get key questions answered, such as: "How many sales calls will it take to make quota? How many orders do I need for that trip to Maui?" In addition, have the dashboard display a daily motivational thought, and links to sites that provide additional motivation to make quota. Example: include a video showing the hotel facilities for the Maui event!

Method #5: Give reps a "bonus" every time they use the system. CRM provides an excellent excuse to provide sales reps with cool ideas and information to help them sell. One way to make this happen is to implement what CRM guru Barton Goldenberg calls a "3x factor,"– provides at least three valuable pieces of information to the user each time the user enters a new piece of information. For example, sales reps that use the CRM system to enter pipeline data might be provided with access to a comprehensive profile of that customer, or have new leads sent to them electronically.

Method #6: Publicize some CRM heroes. Sales reps are competitive, so if you start using your CRM system to identify your sales stars, it will energize everyone. Use the CRM system to gather data on who’s selling the fastest (or the most) and then make a public announcement (via email or in a group meeting) about the person who’s been exceeding expectations. Don’t settle for the obvious like the largest earnings above quota. Go for the more interesting stuff that’s only visible in CRM, like the person who converts the most suspect leads into real, potential customers, or the person who has the shortest average sales cycle.

The above is based loosely on a conversation with Dale Hagemeyer, research director for CRM at Gartner, the world’s largest high tech analysis and market research firm. He can be reached through www.gartner.com.