Click Here to Learn More About SFA/CRM ▶
How to Increase Your Order Win Rate
by 1.5x Using Salesforce
For companies engaged in B2B business, improving sales productivity is a critical challenge.
Implementing the customer management system Salesforce is one effective way to drive these productivity improvements.
In B2B businesses with high unit prices and complex purchasing cycles, sales activities often become overly dependent on individual personnel.
By implementing Salesforce, you can leverage data to streamline your company's sales activities while driving performance improvements.
However, despite the effort of implementation, many organizations report that it fails to gain traction among staff, leading to a lack of expected results.
If Salesforce is not fully adopted, it becomes impossible to achieve revenue growth or sales efficiency, which may ultimately lower the morale of the sales team.
So, why does Salesforce often fail to gain traction? This article provides a detailed explanation of the three primary reasons why Salesforce adoption fails and the issues that must be addressed to ensure successful integration.
What Is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system developed by Salesforce, Inc. in the United States.
It allows for the centralized management of all customer-related operations, including sales, marketing, and customer service, on a single platform.
It is designed to optimize corporate business processes and is characterized by its high level of flexible customizability.
By implementing Salesforce, you can streamline sales activities and enhance customer support through advanced analytical functions.
It has been adopted by companies across various industries and sectors worldwide and is highly regarded as a tool that accelerates business growth.
Salesforce offers a rich product lineup, allowing you to select the necessary functions to suit your operations, such as Sales Cloud, which specializes in sales support, and Account Engagement, which automates marketing activities.
[Reference Article] What Are the Benefits of Sales Cloud? Introducing Implementation Effects and Characteristics of Companies That Should Utilize It ▶︎
Disadvantages Caused by Failure to Adopt Salesforce
Even if you invest in implementing Salesforce, you will not achieve the expected results if it is not adopted by the actual teams using it.
In fact, it may lead to the following disadvantages.
- Inability to Achieve Revenue Growth and Sales Efficiency
- Failure to generate results that justify the implementation costs
- Decline in sales team motivation
We will explain each of these individually.
Inability to achieve revenue growth and sales efficiency
In B2B sales processes, there are multiple decision-makers, and it is essential to understand the needs and challenges of each; therefore, the accumulation and analysis of data in an SFA like Salesforce is indispensable.
To ensure sales representatives appropriately engage in the B2B decision-making process and provide effective proposals, it is necessary to meticulously manage communication with each stakeholder and the progress of business negotiations.
However, if data is not accumulated in Salesforce, it is impossible to visualize and analyze such complex sales processes.
As a result, it becomes difficult to identify the right prospects, and oversights in follow-ups are more likely to occur.
You will be unable to implement repeatable sales activities that lead to orders, making it impossible to achieve revenue growth or improvements in sales efficiency.
[Reference Article] [Understand in 3 Minutes] What Is B2B Sales? Explaining the Only Two Essential Elements for Success and the Differences from B2C Sales! ▶︎
Inability to generate results that justify the implementation costs
Implementing Salesforce requires significant investment, including license fees, operational costs, and training expenses.
However, if adoption fails and the platform is not fully utilized, you will not achieve a return on these investments.
A low return on investment (ROI) makes it difficult to gain support from management. There is a risk that your valuable investment will go to waste.
Decreased Motivation Within the Sales Team
If data entry into Salesforce is not strictly enforced and utilization remains low, the motivation of the sales team will decline.
When the effort required to input data into Salesforce increases, sales representatives feel burdened by additional tasks without seeing a clear link to revenue. This leads to the perception that Salesforce is an ineffective tool, creating a vicious cycle that makes successful adoption even more difficult.
If the morale of the sales team drops, it can negatively impact overall sales performance.
Three Reasons Why Salesforce Fails to Gain Traction in B2B Sales Organizations
There are three primary reasons why Salesforce adoption often fails within B2B sales organizations.
- Reason 1: High Burden of Data Entry
- Reason 2: Inconsistent Data Formatting
- Reason 3: Lack of a Data-Driven Sales Culture
Let us examine each point individually in the following sections.
Reason 1: Data Entry Creates an Operational Burden
To effectively utilize Salesforce, data entry by sales representatives is essential.
However, data entry is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task, placing a significant burden on sales representatives.
In particular, when there are numerous input fields, this sense of burden increases further.
In busy sales environments, data entry is often postponed, which ultimately becomes a cause for the lack of system adoption.
Reason 2: Inconsistent Data Entry Formats
If data entry methods and granularity vary by sales representative, the data entered becomes difficult to utilize.
For example, if the terminology used to describe the progress of a sales negotiation is not standardized, it becomes impossible to accurately grasp the sales pipeline.
To maintain data quality, it is important to establish and enforce data entry rules.
However, many companies may be failing to achieve system adoption because the creation and implementation of these rules are insufficient.
Reason 3: Lack of a Data-Driven Sales Culture
To leverage Salesforce, it is essential that a culture prioritizing data is rooted within the organization.
On the other hand, in many companies, such a culture has not been fostered, resulting in data that has been entered not being fully utilized.
To instill data-driven decision-making, top-down commitment is required.
When management recognizes the importance of data and takes the lead in utilizing it, that culture will spread throughout the front lines.
What Are the Challenges to Overcome for Successful Salesforce Adoption?
So, what must be resolved to ensure Salesforce adoption? In conclusion, it is essential to address the issues of: (1) Data Quantity and (2) Data Quality.
(1) Data Quantity
Entering data into Salesforce is a time-consuming and laborious task for sales representatives.
Particularly when there are numerous input fields, the operational burden increases, leading to a shortage of data accumulated within Salesforce.
Generally, the following items are considered the minimum requirements for corporate data in B2B companies.
- Basic Corporate Information (Company Name, Address, Phone Number, Industry, Capital, etc.)
- Contact Information (Name, Job Title, Contact Details, etc.)
- Opportunity Information (Opportunity Stage, Opportunity Amount, Expected Order Date, etc.)
- Activity History (Visit Records, Email and Call Logs, etc.)
Such data is scattered throughout the company due to "separate tools managed by different departments" and "business card exchanges at exhibitions or sales meetings."
As a result, the volume of data in Salesforce remains insufficient, leading to a state where it cannot be fully utilized.
Another issue is that data managed by departments outside of sales or at other locations is not integrated into Salesforce.
For example, prospective customer information held by the marketing department or customer inquiry history maintained by the customer support department can be extremely valuable for sales activities.
If the volume of corporate data in Salesforce is insufficient, sales representatives cannot achieve a comprehensive understanding of their customers, preventing them from executing appropriate approaches.
Insufficient data sharing between departments and locations prevents Salesforce from reaching its full potential.
[Reference Article] What Corporate Information Should Be Acquired for ABM? Explaining Data Acquisition and Management Methods ▶︎
2: Data Quality
It is not uncommon for data registered in Salesforce to be outdated and not updated with the latest information.
For example, even if a customer company's address, phone number, or contact person's information has changed, it may remain unupdated and neglected within Salesforce.
Conducting sales activities using such outdated data leads to inefficiencies, such as being unable to reach contacts or failing to execute appropriate approaches.
There are also many cases where identical customer information is registered as separate records.
Specifically, this includes instances where the same company information is registered separately by different sales representatives, or the same individual's information is split across multiple records.
Such data duplication not only reduces the efficiency of data management but also hinders communication with customers.
It creates the possibility that different approaches may be made to the same customer.
Conducting sales activities using inaccurate data can damage trust with customers and negatively impact the accuracy of data analysis.
Therefore, it is essential to perform regular data cleansing to correct inaccurate data and improve overall data quality.
[Reference Article] [Understand in 5 Minutes] What Is Data Cleansing? Explaining the Purpose and Specific Examples Clearly! ▶︎
Integration with Corporate Databases Is the Key to Salesforce Adoption
Improving the quantity and quality of data is essential for successful Salesforce adoption. However, maintaining high data quality solely through sales teams is challenging.
In reality, sales representatives are often overwhelmed by daily tasks and lack the time to manage data maintenance.
This is where integration with corporate databases becomes a focal point.
By linking your internal sales activity data with external corporate databases, you can efficiently enhance both data coverage and accuracy.
For example, by utilizing a corporate database service like uSonar, which we provide, you can automatically import vast amounts of corporate information into Salesforce.
This allows you to increase data volume without relying on manual entry by sales representatives. Furthermore, regular data updates ensure that information remains current.
Additionally, data cleansing using corporate databases ensures data integrity.
By automatically identifying and merging duplicate records within Salesforce, you can significantly improve the quality of your data.
Conclusion
The most critical factor in Salesforce adoption is how to collect daily sales data without increasing the burden on the sales team.
Enhancing both the quantity and quality of data is essential to promote Salesforce utilization and maximize the return on your investment.
In particular, integration with corporate databases contributes significantly to improving data quality.
Whether you have already implemented Salesforce or are currently considering it, we encourage you to re-evaluate the importance of data management.
Moving forward, we recommend advancing your adoption initiatives while keeping the integration of corporate databases in mind.
uSonar offers a white paper detailing data utilization methods to achieve results with Salesforce.
If you are concerned that your Salesforce implementation is not yielding the expected results, please download the document from the link below.
