4 Reasons to Go Beyond Your CRM for Sales Insights

The data needed to generate unique sales insights has become so large and complex, it’s a challenge today to find the most relevant and accurate information to make strategic sales decisions. In order to create the most personalized and impactful customer interactions, it’s becoming even more important to create a truly panoramic picture of the sales process as a whole, as well as to have a comprehensive profile of individual customers.

CRM platforms are an important part of the process and often the core data asset used in sales decision making, but they’re not the only systems collecting crucial data on customers and sales. The use of CRM systems alone to support sales strategies could lead to missed opportunities and revenue. Leading sales organizations are going beyond their CRM systems, and leveraging an analytics solution to get sales insights for these four reasons:

1. CRM Platforms were not designed to explore or analyze data

Standardized reports in CRM systems provide information; business analytics provide context-specific information to support each individual’s need that informs the decision process and drives a change in behavior. True sales analytics occurs when end users are empowered to explore the myriad of internal and external data in an analytical environment that gives users an interactive, 360° degree view of customers and sales. CRM systems don’t have the analytical capabilities to explore and analyze data. They’re great for operational capabilities and for storing data on customers, prospects, opportunities and performance, but they’re not an analytics solution. The problem with CRM reports is that they’re static because the data cannot connect and associate relationships to data stored outside the CRM platform. CRM reports are also a part of an operational system that will usually require the work of a system administrator to make changes, and require business users to submit requests and wait for answers. This limits the amount of real-time data insights that are needed to make quick, strategic decisions.

2. More Effective Targeting, Increased Customer Engagement and Greater Market Share

Analytics makes it possible to blend all relevant data – HCP profile, prescribing behavior, market share, competitive intelligence, patient demographics, survey data, call center, website traffic, social media traffic, expenses and historical sales data and more – making it possible for sales reps to do in-depth analysis of prospects to identify and effectively target their most viable audiences. This comprehensive profile of a customer helps sales deliver the right message based on information about their target and their behavior, interests or activities.

3. Better Management of Activity, Forecasts and Expenses

Managing customer interaction, sales activity, forecasts and expenses require ongoing analysis and collaboration of data from Commercial Sales, Marketing, Medical Affairs and Finance to make predictions and achieve objectives. CRM reports are commonly used to do this analysis, but because they cannot blend data with outside data sources, reporting results in countless meetings with various stakeholders who result to making decisions based on human judgment instead of data. CRM systems are for CRM users. Analytics makes it easy for multiple stakeholders across different departments to combine their data and use it to make collaborative sales prediction to set goals.

4. Improved Sales Performance

CRM systems were designed to manage accounts and relationships, but they lack the analytical capabilities to answer crucial questions like:

• How does my call volume impact HCP behavior and our sales?
• Which HCPs are more likely to respond to a multi-product message based on their specialty and patient base?
• Is my sales rep compensation aligned with their relative performance?
• How many samples have we left for a physician? Are we at risk of compliance issues related to sampling or expenses?
• What’s the time and cost of acquiring and retaining customers?
• Are marketing strategies resonating with HCPs
• What is our market share by physician, by product and region?

When questions like the above cannot be answered, sales reps are left guessing where they should focus their efforts, or how their efforts translate to sales. Analytics enables reps to access data across their accounts, pipeline, quota, competition and campaigns, making it possible for them to reveal crucial insights that boost performance and optimize their strategy.

Conclusion:
Data is growing at a rapid rate, and it’s becoming more important for sales teams to have a holistic view of their end-to-end sales process as well as a comprehensive profile of their customers. Getting this intelligence is a major challenge when CRM is used alone, and leading sales teams leverage analytics to harness all of their data, and use it to improve their ability to achieve their objectives. Now it’s your turn to go beyond your CRM for sales insights. Go to the demo or sign up for the free trial of Eagle Pharma CRM® to transform your team with sales analytics.