Member Article

Why Do Salespeople Dislike Enterprise Customer Relationship Tools?

If you’ve ever talked to a salesperson about customer relationship management software, you may have observed a strange reaction. Perhaps a slight furrowing of the brow or a barely observable twitching at the temples. More likely, knowing salespeople as I do, a twenty minute rant about how customer relationship management software isn’t fit for purpose and is more of a hindrance than a help.

Enterprise customer relationship management software is hugely beneficial to many organizations. It allows them to generate useful metrics about sales and optimize sales processes. It — in theory — furnishes salespeople with a repository of data they can use to increase the likelihood of converting a lead into a buyer. But many salespeople and marketers — unless they long ago moved into a management position — don’t love CRM software.

What’s Productivity?

As a respondent on Quora puts it, leading enterprise CRM solutions are a thin layer of UI on top of a complex database. They are extraordinarily powerful, but if you have to carefully enter comprehensive data about every interaction you have with a customer, while maintaining or exceeding your sales quota for the month, you might wish for something designed with efficient workflows in mind.

Who Bought This?

It’s a truism of enterprise software that the people responsible for buying applications for their company aren’t the people who have to use those applications. The incentives guiding the decisions of enterprise IT departments and management software buyers are are not the same incentives that motivate a front-line salesperson. The result: software that ticks a lot of boxes for management, but that doesn’t offer the best possible user experience.

Duplication Of Effort

Because working with enterprise customer relationship management software can be a pain, many salespeople and marketers of my acquaintance fall back on what they know: they keep the data that is important to them in a spreadsheet.

There’s an unfortunate duplication of effort, but if the customer relationship management solution chosen by the company doesn’t allow salespeople to track the metrics they need in a way that suits their workflow, duplication is a necessary evil.

Does It Have To Be Like This?

Over the last few years, there has been a revolution in enterprise software. That revolution was instigated by the bottom-up adoption of cloud applications with thoughtfully designed modern interfaces that map workflows to the domain of operation. Traditional enterprise software procurement patterns were disrupted because people wanted the best tools to do their jobs.

If you want to experience the difference a modern relationship management solution for eCommerce can make, take a look at our OroCRM hosting plans. OroCRM is developed by a team with a deep knowledge of the needs of eCommerce merchants, and it will work with your sales and marketing teams to maximize sales while minimizing pointless form-filling.

About Graeme Caldwell—Graeme works as an inbound marketer for Nexcess, a leading provider of Magento and WordPress hosting. Follow Nexcess on Twitter at @nexcess, Like them on Facebook and check out their tech/hosting blog, https://blog.nexcess.net/.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Graeme Caldwell .