Background

This 30-year old multi-product manufacturing firm follows multiple ways for lead generation. These included referral systems, cold calling, digital marketing, new requirements from existing customers, etc. After initial contact is made, the sales team looks for any possible enquiries. In case there is an enquiry, it is conveyed to the technical team. The technical team along with the sales team close the order. This journey of converting prospects into customers involves multiple steps from creation to invoicing, payment receipt and customer feedback.

Challenges

Follow Ups:

The current system was largely manual and the client was concerned that they were missing some orders simply because they were not followed up. Not all enquiries were logged in the existing system hence the metrics such as conversion rates were not clear. The customer had no way of knowing how many orders were lost and for what reason.

Hierarchy and dependency on fellow team mates:

The entire sales team is organised in groups. Each group has a group lead, managing the complete sales activity of subordinates, while also managing own leads. There are different persons with expertise in different product segments as well. The company needed a method to allow each sales person to manage his/her own sales effectively while also allowing the team lead to intervene as required. Transfer of tickets from person to person was also something that was key. The management above the team leads also needed to take stock of the sales division directly without needing to talk to each sales person or the team leads. The whole system was required to be available online, as many of the customer negotiations and sales were carried out on the move.

Solution

RALLP proposed implementation of RBM-CRM, with customizations to fit the needs of the customer. Complete hierarchical control was set up, allowing the most efficient management of the whole team. Detailed metrics such as conversion percentage, outstanding payments, etc were also made available to each salesperson as well as the management. More than 30 custom reports were configured allowing the management to clearly understand where to focus the efforts of the sales/marketing team. Each lost order was also assigned a reason, allowing to study the trends of various causes of order loss.

The system integrated with the performance bonus and incentive calculation of the sales team. The sale targets for each sales person are configurable by the administrator. This allows the salesperson to gauge their own performance continuously, and maximise the same as it was directly linked to the incentive.

Success

The system was implemented, and multiple onsite and online training were carried out for the sales team. The sales team while using the system themselves came up with suggestions for improving their day-to-day usage, such as specific metrics and reports which helps them track journeys of each customer.

• No customer is lost due to delay or lack of follow up
• Reasons for loss of orders are known and can be worked upon
• Incentive is automatically calculated and is displayed to the individuals for constant motivation
• The sales team can focus on core activity of relationship building and nurturing of leads, while reporting and reminders are taken care of by the system
• Separate dashboards for each team member and administrators
• Low dependency on fellow sales team members for alerts and constant updates 
• Exhaustive spreadsheets available to the top management to take executive business decisions
• A ready-made client database which can be used for future sales and marketing activities