One question I keep hearing is, "What limitations will the mobile service have?" Everything I have seen, heard, and read points to a fully functional Microsoft Dynamics CRM instance on every mobile device, yielding no limitations. I believe they have been able to do this by not using a web browser to access CRM, but by creating an actual web application that gives you access to your entire CRM system. Here's an iPad view:

Other questions I've heard pertain to security. For example, I have sales guys with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM application on their laptop, mobile phone and iPad. What happens if one of them leaves the company? They may turn their laptop (if it is company owned) in but they may own their own mobile phone and/or iPad. What happens to all our company data? Fear not! Because Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile is centrally managed, your administrator has the ability to remotely wipe devices of CRM data. This is also highly convenient when a phone is lost, or stolen. You can give your team the information they require wherever they are, and you can take it away from them, as you see fit.

• Better import capabilities, including direct LinkedIn sync, allowing you to better reach your customers
• With support for DB2, Sugar reaches more IBM customers
• Section 508 compliance road map: extending the reach of SugarCRM to visually-impaired customers
• New Calendar Module allows Sugar users to more easily reach out to co-workers and customers
• Sugar Private Cloud is a new deployment option

What else would help you extend your organization's reach?

Sage SalesLogix, ACT! and Microsoft Dynamics CRM have pop-up windows. SugarCRM has an additional tab and requires the extra click.

Remember, we assumed that your CRM was setup. Ok, let's backtrack for a minute. The only setup required is for management to determine some reasons and to get them into the list. All of the CRM systems come with reasons. Some reasons are generic and everyone can use them. You will need to determine if there is anything specific about your business that you will need to add. Don't kill yourself creating the list. Spend an hour and go from there.  

Here is a great starting list:

• Poor Follow-up
• Indecision
• Wrong Decision Maker(s)
• Lack of References
• Lack of Expertise
• Lack of Resources
• Unknown
• Column Fodder (Not a true competition, you were just brought in as an extra bid)
• Other
• Out-sold
• Wrong Target

(For the following, I would be inclined to have an ROI check box at the opportunity level but that would require some customization)

• No/Lost Budget - ROI Discussed
• No/Lost Budget - ROI Not Discussed
• Insufficient Budget - ROI Discussed
• Insufficient Budget - ROI Not Discussed

Seven to twelve reasons is a good start. Be careful not to use something as general as 'bad fit.' Bad fit could mean a whole host of different things such as, not a cultural fit, a company that isn't in your sweet spot, either too large or too small. Also be careful not to get to granular and have too many values.  If a reason is not on the list, then we use the 'other' value and then require some keywords in the description. You may find that 6 months down the road, you are noticing other reasons for losing sales, so just go add them then.

Normally, I would say that once you start gathering data (I'd give it a few months), then create your dashboards and reports on why sales are lost. However, if you are starting a new process, it's actually better to at least understand if your sales reps are inputting the data.

Create the following dashboards, views/groups or reports (depending on the CRM system you are on:

Lost Sales missing Reasons - I would view this as a list

• Opportunity or Actual Close Date = This Year
• Opportunity Status = Lost
• Opportunity Reason = Does Not contain Data

Reason for Lost Sales - I would view this as a pie chart or graph
• Opportunity or Actual Close Date = This Year
• Opportunity Status = Lost

In my research I came across this very interesting, differing point of view. 
There are only 2 reasons why you lose a sale.

Tracking lost sales can actually help you generate more revenue. How you say? Only by understanding why deals are lost, can you continue to improve your sales processes, products and sales team’s performance. I am personally addicted to data and as a former salesperson, I always tracked my sales, both won and lost. By having data, you can see trends and analyze your wins and losses. Only through improvement can you generate sustained revenue growth.

As a consultant however, I rarely found companies that would take the steps necessary to track the data and I needed to understand why. I recently started a discussion in two LinkedIn groups to try to gain some insight into why a company wouldn't track the reasons for lost sales. The title of the discussion was "Do you track the reason for lost sales? Why?"

I got some great responses as to why you would track the reasons for lost sales, but no one would actually admit to not tracking their lost sales. What a disconnect! In most of my 10 years of consulting, it was rare that a company actually took the steps necessary to track a lost sale.

What I have heard over the years is simply that it takes too long. Really? Let me share the steps to tracking lost sales. Let's assume that your CRM is setup for now. When a sales person is closing an opportunity, on most of the top CRM applications, there is a pull-down list of reasons in the same box. Select the reason and that's it. So, to track the reason for lost sales in a CRM it requires adding two, possibly three, clicks. I don't believe that three extra clicks are over-burdensome. Click here to see more on Best Business Practices for Tracking Lost Sales in CRM.

What you will find is that sales people that really want to excel will want to track both their won and lost sales. Here are some great quotes from the LinkedIn discussion:

 "I've learned over the years that I've never ‘Won’ a deal, I just ‘Lose’ very few of them because all deals are ours to lose."  What a novel concept!

 "... Great insight can be gained from understanding losses, competitive insight, process deficiencies/inefficiencies, relationship issues, pricing and general funnel management. But it is also important is to understand why and how you won as well. It’s the full 360 view of your customer engagement that provides healthy balanced corrective actions. "

 "Sales people should always learn and adapt to improve their skills; feedback from their prospects or existing clients is one of the best ways to do that, as these are the targets of our sales actions and the sources, indicators of the success or failure of our actions."

 "The ability to learn from a past failure can help a salesperson improve his/her skills and compensate with future closed deals - but this if and only if the salesperson in question adapts and really learns and implements the knowledge from the mistake."

So now that I've made you feel guilty, go set-up your list and start the process. 

For your research, here is a great white paper that goes into win/loss analysis in-depth.
Why Companies Should Implement a Win/Loss Program

Join the LinkedIn Discussions

Do you track the reason for lost sales? Why? - LinkedIn Sales Management Association Group

Do you track the reason for lost sales? Why? - LinkedIn Sales/Marketing VP's Group

It's no fun when you lose a deal. But when it happens, do you know why and at what stage in the process things went south? There are lessons to be learned from lost deals if you have the right tools and perspective. That's where a CRM system plays a huge role.

Read more...

I’m a Marketing user and I have a plethora of dashboards I view on a daily basis, but my top choices are:

• Leads by Lead Source

• Opportunities by Lead Source 

• Actual Revenue by Lead Source

For me, it’s important to see that:

A) My department is generating leads

B) The leads we’re generating are warm enough to become opportunities

C) And that we’re closing leads and can calculate a positive ROI

For Sales, dashboards are very important from both a sales management reporting perspective, as well as a sales user perspective. Here are some examples of useful dashboards for sales:

• Pipeline Charts

o Opportunities closing this month, next month, this year 

• Opportunities by Product

o Opportunities closing this month, won opportunities, lost opportunities 

• Sales Leaderboards (to see how your entire team is doing)

• Top Customers

• Actual Revenue (by month, by quarter, by fiscal period)

• My Open Leads or My Open Opportunities

For those in the customer service area, dashboards provide a compact view of your tickets/cases and allow you to prioritize your efforts. Some customer service centric dashboards include:

• Tickets by Priority

• Tickets by Customer

• Tickets open more than 30 days

All users have the ability to go in and create any dashboards they want and then share them with whomever they’d like. For example, a CEO could share their high level dashboards with the rest of their management team, or the VP of Sales could share some with their sales team, or individual users. The bottom line is, all users can have many dashboards and create, delete, share and hide whichever dashboards they see fit, making dashboards very effective for each individual user.

If you have specific dashboards you think others would benefit from, please share them with everyone!

Sage SalesLogix Mobile is quick and easy to use, as it is built on next generation web application technology. Because Sage uses its Sdata web service to communicate directly with your main database, there is no syncing of data necessary. I'm definitely not the most technical person in the world, or anywhere close, but I do know that not having to sync definitely speeds things up. Plus, with a single URL to access your data, end-user installation is not required.

I recently watched a demo of the new Sage SalesLogix Mobile v1.2 and here are my favorite/most useful take-aways:

• Enhanced productivity
  • Improved visibility
    • Single-press pick lists and lookups
      • No more multiple clicks to validate actions
      • More of a "click" and "go" approach
    • "Clear" button on text fields = No more backspacing
  • Faster data entry/lookups
    • Custom keyboard for URLs, Email and Phone data entry
      • Example - A ".com" button exists when you're typing URLs
    • Faster search with hash tags (Sdata handles hash tag queries)
      • Example - Opportunity: "#closed ab" --> Closed opportunities where name starts with "ab"
  • Localized for multiple languages (French, German, Italian, Russian)
    • Multi-lingual support through single portal
• Calendar Improvements
  • New week view
  • Month view shows activity count and selected day details

What else would you like to see in SalesLogix mobile?

Five best practices for optimizing the sales pipeline

1. Tapping the best leads first
2. Exploiting email
3. Tracking the sales process
4. Spreading best practices
5. Getting cost-effective results

Sales success depends on effective sales processes. Companies that automate sales often end up automating ineffective processes. Every organization has some built-in inefficiency, which is usually caused by a failure to exploit the best tools and methods for maximizing results. When chosen wisely and used appropriately, technology can have a positive impact on both the management of the sales process and the results of managing the sales effort more efficiently.

Please fill out the brief form below to download the complete white paper.

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Why is Implementation Methodology Important?

Studies have shown that organizations using a defined methodology appropriate to their culture and to the complexity of the CRM implementation have a much higher success rate. Success, in this case is defined by the CRM system meeting agreed to business objectives. Also, that the CRM solution is accepted by the users as beneficial to their workflow, fostering user adoption of the new solution.

There Are So Many Methodologies; Won't It Be Hard To Choose The Right One?

While there are many described methodologies, three classes have proven to work best when implementing CRM solutions. Each class has a couple of variations to fit specific situations. Narrowing the list of methodologies presented in this white paper will make selection easier while providing enough flexibility to ensure success.

What Are The Decision Points I Need To Consider When Selecting A Methodology?

A variety of factors play a role in methodology selection. This white paper presents the most important factors based on experience. Some researchers have concluded that the main criterion for success is selecting a methodology that you will use -- other selection criteria being a distant second.

Please fill out the brief form below to download the complete white paper.

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CRM is more than just software or a set of processes--it's a business culture solidly focused on winning and keeping the right customers. A good CRM builds value for your business by opening up vital communication channels and creating a common client-focused knowledge base to better serve your clients.

CRM is about understanding the buying habits and preferences of your customers and prospects so you can:

• Build and strengthen customer relationships to keep them coming back
• Provide value-added services that are difficult for competitors to duplicate
• Improve your product development and service delivery processes
• Increase your staff's awareness of customer needs
• Reduce customer frustration by not asking the same questions over and over

By effectively integrating your marketing, sales and customer service functions, a good CRM system makes it easier for everyone inside your company to work together and share critical information.

Please fill out the brief form below to download the complete white paper.

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