3 signs your Salesforce CRM is underutilised

Businesses that use their CRM to full effect can expect a 22% increase in win rate.

That’s why your business has adopted Salesforce: CRM is one of the most powerful tools your revenue team can access – and Salesforce Customer 360 is the world’s number one.

It is also the reason why CRM is not an insignificant investment. Still, many businesses will never achieve these kinds of results. 

Is your business one of them? Here are three symptoms that indicate your Salesforce CRM is underutilised:

• Poor business insights

Your CRM data is better than you think. So why isn’t it being used to influence your revenue decisions more meaningfully? Does insight from your CRM make it to the boardroom?  Is your marketing team using the engagement data to improve their campaigns? 

Perhaps they would tell you the sales team isn’t capturing the information they need. If you dipped into your Leads object, would the records be up to date?  On the surface, this can be an issue, as creating a complete 360° prospect and customer view is one of the fundamental business benefits associated with Salesforce. 

However, the data already within your CRM often has an additional layer of useful, hidden information that CRM systems aren’t sophisticated enough to pick up on. 

This is where AI can help to extract highly accurate revenue intelligence from CRM data. And one of the greatest benefits of deep-learning AI used by Cloudapps is that it doesn’t need huge volumes of data to achieve meaningful results.

• High sales team turnover 

If there’s one thing sales reps do not need, it’s the constant pressure to log more and more data into a CRM that is of no direct benefit to them.

Sales reps are burning out. With many businesses tightening budgets and delaying projects, it’s a pressurised environment to sell in. This is taking its toll, with those in sales roles three and a half times more likely to take time off to address their mental health than the national average. 

Making a sale right now is difficult for other reasons too. In addition to economic contributors, sales professionals are still adapting to new buying behaviours and remote or semi-remote working models, which greatly emphasise digital selling techniques. 

More sophisticated technologies are required that can help alleviate the onus on sales reps. 

For example, by automatically collecting valuable activity data from across the business, and by unlocking deeper insight and learning from the data already available within the CRM. This is deeper insight and learning that can help them identify the best opportunities and actions to take in order to close more deals. 

• Pipeline stagnation

A good pipeline will have high sales velocity, a short sales cycle length, and a high conversion rate. But does your business have a good grip on these metrics within Salesforce? The likely answer is no if dirty data and a demotivated sales team are familiar challenges. 

That might lead your business to rely on a pipeline and therefore a forecast built on gut feeling from your sales team. 

However, when unpredictable events hit, all that previous experience disappears. What’s more, it could lead reps to overinflate their opportunities.

Clarity into the quality and quantity of each rep’s pipelines will enable you to work out their bandwidth, provide coaching on what is and isn’t working, increase forecast accuracy and boost revenue performance.

Maximising your CRM investment

Too many companies are failing to utilise their Salesforce CRM to its full potential, which is leading to lost revenue and lost ROI. This has been acknowledged for years, but more recent shifts in buyer and sales team behaviour have highlighted the increasing bottom line impact.

Cloudapps can help businesses improve revenue performance in multiple ways. Find out how. Read our eBook next for five strategies to maximise your Salesforce investment.