This year’s survey data on sales technology makes one thing abundantly clear: It’s time for sales and marketing tech vendors to have an integration conversation. “Lack of integration” tied for respondents’ #1 CRM challenge with “manual data entry,” the #1 challenge in 2015.
What is your biggest challenge in using your existing CRM?
What is your biggest challenge in using your existing CRM?
However, the top challenge differed by role. While C-level executives were primarily concerned with integration issues, managers complained of low team usage, and reps cited manual data entry.
Select the aspects of your company’s CRM software that you feel confidence in or consider to be high quality?
Dissatisfaction with integration also surfaced when talking about specific CRM features. Only 21% of salespeople said they considered their CRM software’s integration capabilities -- with marketing software or other tools -- to be high quality.
What tool or system does your organization use to store its lead and customer date?
And that’s if you have a CRM in the first place. Less than half of salespeople in our survey reported that they stored lead and customer data in a CRM. An astounding 40% use informal means such as Microsoft Excel, and 21% use physical files and folders.
What tool or system does your organization use to store its lead and customer data?
When we compare year over year data, there has been good progress in CRM adoption. But informal storage of lead and customer data grew in lockstep with CRM. A silver lining is that many stopped used physical files or folders or google docs to store customer data.
You said your organization doesn’t have a CRM. What are the factors that are limiting you from using one?
What’s stopping salespeople from implementing dedicated technology such as a CRM to store critical customer information? The majority of non-adopters are hamstrung by a lack of budget. Perhaps even more concerning, however, is the 22% of respondents who indicated they weren’t sure what a CRM was.
On average, how much time per day does your sales team spend performing data entry or other manual tasks?
The scariest statistic of all? Twenty-nine percent of salespeople are spending an hour or more on data entry each and every day. And the more time sellers spend on data entry, the less time they have to sell.
How much will your company invest in the following?
According to our survey, the majority of our respondents are working with $5,000 or less to spend on technology and training, respectively. Unsurprisingly, as company size increases, so does budget.
Planned spend on sales technologies by Number of employees.
Planned spend on sales training by Number of employees.
