At least half of your prospects are not your ideal customer. If you didn’t know this, you’re already complacent with your sales software. That’s not world-ending (if you’re ready to change your strategy).
One of the biggest risks in sales is finding a pattern and staying with it. As the customer journey changes, so must your business strategy.
Learn how to avoid the risks of complacency. Stop getting stuck with tired prospecting and lead nurturing techniques with this guide.
Introducing Business Automation Without Custom CRM Workflows
If sales leaders don’t have the right strategy in place, the business suffers. It’s not the company that suffers first, but the customers. Most often, when leaders introduce sales software, they’re not ready to adapt.
Without a customer strategy, the end of the sales funnel goes out. Current prospects and leads get left behind trying to attend to current customers. More salespeople are put on serving current customers instead of tending leads.
The risk of poor leadership means missing the benefits of a new CRM. Leaders should update workflows to match the new platform. Without clear systems, salespeople will chase less profitable clients.
A strong leader can implement a few different solutions alongside new sales software. These can boost overall productivity (beyond sales).
- Daily task lists: streamline time-consuming admin responsibilities
- Track team progress: public dashboards maintain accountability for individuals and teams
- Communication processes: automated response on inquiries and complaints save valuable time
- Shorter debriefs: CRMs allow teams to see task completion, reducing the need for long debriefs
- Integrate team processes: combine customer onboarding, lead information, and progress updates for seamless reporting
- Qualification tracking: measure lead quality across the funnel, preventing unattended prospects
You can’t automate a business without taking the time to introduce it. You’ll miss tons of lead opportunities if your sales team can’t adjust. Creating new workflows supports your business and customers.
Giving the Competition an Accidental Edge
Did you know you can boost your competition by misusing your sales software? That’s right; you can help other businesses out if you don’t learn how to use your CRM. It’s not just about workflows, but customer satisfaction, too.
The end of your sales funnel is important to generating leads. When leaders are too busy putting out fires from nonexistent workflows, many suffer.
Customers and salespeople suffer. Even if their needs are met, your clients will notice the lower quality of service. And underserved clients hurt business.
In lowering service quality, you can’t innovate on current client offerings. Disconnecting from the competition means you can’t see them coming. Paying excessive attention to preferred clients comes at a cost.
If your best salespeople are attending to top clients, other team members suffer. Higher commission for peak performers means cutting costs elsewhere. It also means cutting costs to keep your customers happy.
Lower Financial Benefits From Misused Sales Software
Lower prices and higher commissions are a decrease in financial benefits. Generating leads comes with a cost in the hopes of generating a profit. Misusing a CRM impacts more than lead conversion.
Nonexistent workflows create a financial toll, too. When sales leaders don’t direct team members, the cost of lead generation increases. When salespeople spend more time prospecting, less time is spent closing deals.
Higher sales costs create other inefficiencies in the company. This disorganization creates inconsistent workflows for sales and marketing teams. Top performers benefit, while mid and low-tier members suffer.
To keep top customers satisfied, salespeople slash prices. This drops the ability to meet financial KPIs. Budget cuts may result, or shareholders may suffer.
In turn, poor leadership might make reactive decisions. Acting out of desperation causes negative consequences throughout the company. Turnover might increase, and training new employees are expensive.
Slashed pricing for higher priority clients causes problems. With a strong leader, your sales software should help cut costs, not increase them. But your business will not get the most out of any CRM without the right leadership.
Reactive Leadership Decisions to Generating Leads
Reactive decisions never offer the best results. In leadership, reactivity hurts teams and individuals. For sales leaders, this means loss of profit and respect.
Reactive leadership pushes personnel aside, valuing results over relationships. Introducing new sales software reactively creates a long list of issues. Here are some examples of what you can expect to happen:
- Addressing issues only when they arise (i.e., customer satisfaction/retention)
- Objection to external review or observation
- Rejection and denial of training’s value (i.e., no new workflows)
- Nonexistent strategy plan or evaluation
- No improvement in the sales team performance
- Reliance on legacy members or top-performing salespeople
- Stagnation in business strategy and competitive response
The above issues also encompass the risks of complacency with CRM software. It’s often not the software that’s an issue but the leader who implements it. Finding a perfect marriage in company and software, like SharpSpring and Cultivize, is difficult.
The right leadership emphasizes preparation and proactivity. Evolving your company’s business automation depends on the whole organization. A good leader recognizes the value of change.
Implementing digital transformation means a willingness to adapt. Leaders nurture salespeople. They train them to stay ahead of the curve, so learning a new business strategy isn’t difficult.
It’s important to recognize the impact of a strong leader. Risks appear when a weak captain steers the ship. Financial costs, customer satisfaction, and internal workflows all suffer from bad leadership.
With the right hands on the helm, teams work together to manage these risks. Sales leaders build relationships that generate results. These are the kinds of results that grow your business.
Grow Your Business With Cultivize
You deserve the best experience with your CRM and sales software. Making sure you don’t settle for less means working with the best software and CRM experts. At Cultivize, we’ll ensure you don’t get complacent.
As a premier SharpSpring partner, we’ll ensure campaign consistency. You’ll be secure from lead to prospect to customer.
Align your sales and marketing campaigns for trackable, profitable ROI. Discover the benefits of working with us and contact us today.
