To everyone who thinks that CRM indicators are useless, our answer is that it is probably because there is not enough understanding of the topic. It is high time to put an end to this urban myth and give CRM indicators a new lease of life.
Find out how CRM indicators can become the best allies of your teams’ sales performance and support your business strategy.
CRM indicators and alerts: what are they?
A CRM indicator is an aggregate of mainly sales data that provides information on a situation at a specific point in time. There are different types of sales indicators: quantitative, qualitative, global, specific, business, generic and/or customised.
CRM alerts, on the other hand, are systems that detect an “error” or an abnormal situation in the data, and therefore in what is happening on the ground. They help ensure good data quality.
CRM indicators: a waste of time?
This is one of the main arguments often raised when the topic of sales indicators comes up: wasting time figuring out what to input to feed them, filling in too much information, or trying to read them easily… especially if you had the “bright idea” of creating a few hundred of them!
In short, as you can see, setting up sales indicators requires serious thinking about the individual and collective needs of your sales teams, as well as about the necessary quality and integrity of your data.
CRM indicators: just a pretty dashboard?
To be useful, an indicator must be easy to understand for everyone who is expected to read it. It is based on a “common definition” and must be clear at a glance. Above all, it must meet the user’s real needs, which are relevant to them:
- on measuring results at time T,
- team supervision,
- or the broader management of commercial activity and related services.
CRM indicators: are they reliable?
A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is based on data. So when data is missing or entered “in a hurry” by your sales team, your indicators will be distorted. In this situation, it is actually better to have no indicators than to make strategic decisions based on information that does not reflect reality.
So focus on quality rather than quantity!
CRM alerts: monitoring tools?
Yes, the very purpose of an alert is to flag non-compliant data, or even to report an issue to management. You could therefore see it as a policing tool and feel the glass is half empty. But the CRM alert is also there to make sure nothing is forgotten. We are not machines; we can forget to record information or actions, and this can distort indicators, as mentioned above. Because forgetfulness and mistakes are inevitable, alerts are essential.
You can probably see by now that setting up high-performance CRM indicators is not so straightforward and requires serious work. But which serious sales manager could do without them? As Niels Bohr (quantum physicist, Nobel Prize winner in 1922) said: “What cannot be measured does not exist”.
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