How to choose your CRM for B2B Sales Effectiveness

Choosing a CRM is a major decision that will impact every aspect of your sales performance. Choose the right CRM, and your team will be enabled to perform more efficiently and more effectively. Choose the wrong CRM, and not only will you sink a lot of investment into an inappropriate tool, you may actually make it harder for your team to do their jobs.

B2B teams must be especially careful in their choice of CRM because very few software tools were designed with B2B in mind. This means that in most cases, you will need to consider not only the CRM itself but also which plug-ins and customizations are necessary to make it work the way you envision.

If you’re considering a CRM purchase, here’s what you need to know to choose your CRM for a B2B sales environment.

Top mistakes when choosing a CRM for B2B

Before we dive into how to choose your CRM, let’s talk about how NOT to choose your CRM. Here are the 5 most common mistakes I see sales organizations make.

1. Choosing what’s popular
   The most popular software is not necessarily the best tool for your company. Large CRM vendors, like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, invest enormous amounts of money in convincing people to buy their platforms. Their marketing is outstanding and speaks to why they are among the most popular CRMs. However, neither tool was built with complex B2B sales in mind, and both can end up causing you problems in the long term.
2. Choosing what’s cheapest
   Many CRMs provide attractive initial pricing that makes them appear to compare favorably with other CRMs, but when you start adding the plug-ins and customization you need, the price can escalate rapidly. Worse, an inexpensive CRM may not be able to give you the tools and flexibility your team needs to perform their best, and may, therefore, be a poor economic choice.
3. Choosing “one tool to rule them all.”
   It’s an enticing concept: One central database that manages data from marketing to sales to customer success to inventory. That provides all the functionality your sales team needs and everything the rest of your organization needs too. A "single source of truth." As appealing as the idea is, there is not yet a tool that does this elegantly, and those who attempt to achieve it often end up sinking massive investments into the system only to have it break and fail. Consider the case of Lidl who lost $500 million on such a project. 
4. Choosing based on features alone
   Most CRMs share similar features in a “checkbox comparison.” The features themselves are not what make the tool effective. It’s how they’re organized, how easy they are to use, how beautiful and intuitive the interface, how they interoperate, and how much customization you’ll need to have done to get them to work the way you need them to. It’s also about smooth implementation, executive alignment, and the customer service from the vendor you choose.
5. Ignoring HOW you sell
   In the world of complex B2B sales, how you sell is often the differentiating factor in whether you win the business. When choosing your CRM, how you sell should also be at the center of which CRM you choose. 

How to choose your CRM for B2B

There are more systems and tools in the market now than ever in the history of sales, and choosing the right one has never been more important. Here’s how to ensure that the heart of your sales technology, your CRM, is the right one for your B2B sales environment.

1. Rethink the purpose of CRM

Traditionally, CRM was designed as a fancy, technology-driven Rolodex. This is still the thinking behind the majority of the CRMs on the market now: Build a database, stack standard tools on top, add dropdown boxes to say where each opportunity is in the pipeline. Tack on plug-ins and add customizations to make it do other things.

In complex B2B sales, how you sell is the differentiating factor. Choose a CRM that helps you stand out. 

But what if your CRM could be so much more than that? What if it could enable you to sell more effectively by driving the right sales behaviors, by providing salespeople with everything they need exactly when they need it, by supporting effective coaching, and by making it easy to iterate and optimize?

How do you think about the purpose of a CRM? Are you still thinking of it as a database to be managed, or have you begun to realize that it can be so much more? That it can serve as the backbone of a truly effective strategic approach to sales and customer success? You may be surprised to learn that having a tool that makes it easy to execute on your sales strategy doesn’t have to be more expensive or difficult to implement.

2. Understand HOW you sell

If you’re operating in a B2C environment, your needs will be very different from those operating in a B2B environment. But even within the realm of complex B2B sales, there is a lot of variation in how you sell.

In fact, in the B2B world, how you sell is often your biggest differentiating factor for whether you win the business.

Before you decide which CRM will be best for you, take the time to understand how your customers buy, and how you need to sell in order to meet their needs profitably. Out of this understanding, you can grow an effective strategy.

3. Make it easy to execute on your strategy

Your CRM should be so much more than a database, and your sales process representation needs so much more than a dropdown. The right B2B CRM will make it easy for you to execute on your strategy.

It will include process tools that enable you to put process steps and guidance directly into the hands of the people executing on them, and it will include checklists and other tools that make it easy to see how and when the strategy is being executed on, and when corrections are called for.

4. Drive successful behaviors

Your B2B CRM should help you drive successful behaviors on your sales team. Demand effective tools, checklists, and scorecards that guide each salesperson through a dynamic process and ensure that they don’t skip critical steps. Expect your CRM to allow you to embed on-demand training content to reinforce new behaviors. And ensure that it provides coaching tools that help your managers see where each salesperson most needs guidance and how to help them perform better on a daily basis.

5. Enable optimization

Most CRMs on the market today are difficult to update and customize. A small change in your process can take weeks or months to program into the CRM if it can be programmed in at all. Most also fail to capture the kind of information that enables your leadership to see where changes can be made to improve sales.

The right process tools and checklists can help you collect the data and delivery insights necessary to truly see what can be improved. Then, the right CRM will make it easy and intuitive to make changes without lengthy and expensive IT projects.

6. Choose a CRM tailored for your sales environment

Very often, sales teams start with a popular or well-known CRM package that they know won’t serve all their needs, and plan to add plug-ins and customizations to close the gap. Unfortunately, this approach very often leads to the Hydra problem.

Because most CRMs aren’t built for the complex B2B sale, it can be tough to find one that already includes everything you need straight out of the gate. But that doesn’t mean such a CRM doesn’t exist. Look for one that was built from the ground up to serve the needs specifically of complex B2B sales, and that includes everything from process tools and checklists, to content enablement, coaching tools, analytics, and optimization.

7. Consider CRM implementation

Implementation of any new technology can be headache-inducing. A CRM is a major component of your organization’s technology landscape, and changing to a new one can feel like a major undertaking. Additionally, implementation can become expensive quickly and costs can escalate.

Choose a CRM with an implementation guarantee and partners who can help make the transition painless and fast.

8. Choose a CRM with a favorable pricing structure

While we encourage you to look past the initial costs when considering what CRM to choose for B2B, we also understand that cost is a major factor. Most CRMs force you to pay the same per-seat price for every user. In many cases, this means you must pick and choose carefully who is allowed to have access.

Look for a pricing plan that provides modular pricing, so that you can give full access to salespeople, their managers, and others who need all of the functionality, while less expensively providing access to admins, customer service, and others who need the information but don’t need all the tools.

9. Look for post-sale support and executive alignment

Many CRM sales teams act as though their job is done once the sale is sealed. This can leave you adrift in a sea of complexity, without adequate guidance and assistance in getting the software to work the way it was promised.

Look for a CRM team that will provide you with support at every level of your organization, aligning with your executive team as well as your users and technical team to ensure that the software performs exactly the way you need it to.

10. Choose a partner who understands sales development (not just technology)

Your CRM team should be ready and willing to partner with you, but it’s also important to choose a sales consultant or training company to help you set up your software the way you want it and to connect the dots from strategy to process to training to technology.

Ideally, your consultant’s work and your technology should go hand in hand smoothly and seamlessly. Look for a sales consultant or training partner who understands how technology can serve your needs, and who has a relationship with the CRM of your choice so that they can help you effectively implement it.

Choosing a CRM for B2B doesn’t have to be a high-risk, high-cost endeavor. Take the time upfront to consider your needs and follow the steps in this guide, and you’ll be well on your way to a CRM that helps your sales teams achieve everything they can achieve. And have the guts to cut your losses if you feel stuck in a traditional CRM that never lived up to expectations.

For more, download our Choosing a CRM whitepaper, or book a time with us to explore if Membrain is right for you.