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Fanatical Prospecting — Chapter-11: Own Your Database: Why the CRM Is Your Most Important Sales Tool
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11 Own Your Database Why the CRM Is Your Most Important Sales Tool The most expensive thing you can do in sales is spend your time with the wrong prospect. —Jeb Blount I hate writing about or talking about CRMs. It’s boring and tiresome. It is also a turnoff because I know salespeople have no love for the CRM. Honestly, it pained me to include this important but tedious subject. But, this is the brutal, and often ignored, reality: There is no weapon or tool in your sales arsenal that is more important or impactful to your long-term income stream than your prospect database. Nothing. Your database of prospects is what helps you make a living now and in the future. It does not make a difference what you sell; a well-managed, living, breathing prospect database is a golden goose that keeps on giving. 92
Your CRM is the most important tool in your sales arsenal because it: ■ Allows you to manage the details and tasks related to many different contacts without having to remember everything. ■ Keeps you organized, manages your pipeline, and saves your deals and relationships from getting derailed. It makes life easier by doing work for you. ■ Allows you to segment and sort your prospect database and build prospecting lists based on any field or group of fields in the database. This makes you exponentially more effective and efficient in your prospecting activities. ■ Helps you systematically qualify prospects so that you move them up the prospecting pyramid. When you peel all of the technology away, a CRM is just a software-basedfilingsystem thatmakesiteasierforyoutomanageand access information because it does a very simple task: It remembers important things for you and reminds you when those things are important. Face it, you are moving fast and forget things. In sales the little things are bigthings and a well-managed CRM will prevent slip- ups that could cost you deals. Own It Like a CEO Here’s the truth about the CRM: If you don’t own it, you will never reach your true earning potential. Owning it means applying the CEO mindset we discussed earlier. It means: ■ Being accountable for maintaining the integrity of your pros- pect database. ■ Not waiting until your manager is screaming at you because you haven’t updated a record in a month. ■ Taking time to make copious notes following sales calls and logging those calls. Own Your Database 93
■ Putting new leads in the system rather than carting around a pocket full of business cards you’ve collected from prospects. ■ Rather than sitting around whining about how you don’t understand the CRM, taking the time to learn it through trial and error and online learning tools. Fanatical prospectors own their database. They own it because they get it. Their database is where targeted lists come from. Their database makes them more efficient and effective. It should be so important to you that you eat, sleep, and drink it. I had a rep who worked for my company for nine months. This guy was talented and he could sell. But he could never keep his pipeline full and never even got close to his quota. When we finally started to dig into what was going on, we discovered that he had only logged into the CRM once the entire time he worked for us. Sad but true, and by then it was too late. We fired him. Some salespeople don’t see how the system benefits them personally. They’ve got a sales manager on their case about updating the CRM, but in their mind they’re doing it for the company, not themselves. It’s a mindset issue. These salespeople see themselves “working for the man,” whereas fanatical prospectors believe that they are the CEO of their territory. They are working for themselves. I can get on my soapbox and preach. I can warn you of the consequences. I can explain the benefits. But the only person who can motivate you to fully exploit your CRM and invest diligently in building a quality prospect database is you. If you choose not to invest in your database, as the saying goes, you can’t fix stupid. A Trash Can or a Gold Mine More often than not, salespeople treat their database like a trash can rather than a gold mine. Call notes aren’t inputted. Records aren’t kept up to date. Calls are not logged. This inattention to detail causes 94 Fanatical Prospecting
the value and integrity of the database to be undermined, leaving salespeople struggling to set appointments and engage the right prospects, at the right time, with the right message because they don’t know who to call. Gathering information and qualifying is where managing and building your database really pays off. Over time, through relentless prospecting and research, you’ll gain a clear picture that helps you fully qualify the opportunity. You’ll know the key decision makers and influencers, what your prospects buy and how much, who your competitors are, potential trigger events, and most importantly, when the buying window opens. Building a database is like filling in a jigsaw puzzle. It takes time, lots of work, and sometimes there is not much evidence that it is paying off. The key is recognizing the cumulative value of small wins. I’ll often hear a sales rep bemoaning a call that he felt didn’t go very well rather than celebrating the small nugget of information that they uncovered about a decision maker that added another piece to the qualification puzzle. When it comes to building a powerful prospect database, my philosophy is simple: Put every detail about every account and every interaction with every account and contact in your CRM. Make good, clear notes. Never procrastinate. Do not take shortcuts. Develop the discipline to do it right the first time and it will pay off for you over time. Own Your Database 95