Most of the leading CRM's now have contacts and leads separate. The first question is what is the difference between a lead and a contact? A lead is basically an unqualified prospect. You don't know if the lead has a need for your product or service and in some cases if the lead is still in business or even breathing. Most leads come from lists such as bought lists or tradeshows. However, now days, leads may come in from your website or other online lead generating sources.

Leads will go through a process to become qualified or disqualified. Once a lead is qualified, it will become a contact and a company and will therefore become a prospect. When you qualify a lead, it is imperative that you make sure that every prospect has an opportunity. Your opportunities (aka pipeline) is the list that you focus on as a salesperson.

This does require that a salesperson work both their pipeline and the leads. The benefit is that it is very clear when working within leads that you are trying to qualify the lead.  My opinion is that you can't just sell to a lead. First you need to qualify the lead and then sell. I am constantly amazed at how many salespeople try to sell to leads before any true qualification has been done. 

Just because your CRM separates the two does not mean that you have to. For smaller CRM's such as ACT! and Goldmine, leads and prospects live in the same world and work fine if you are not importing large lists of leads. The same would hold true, that a salesperson needs to work both their pipeline (opportunities) and their leads.

There are many people and websites trying to do CRM reviews to compare different CRM applications. The problem with relying on CRM reviews from other sources is that reviews are about CRM systems in general. The fact is, 80% of CRM's have the same feature set. What I mean is that all of the major players, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SugarCRM, Sage SalesLogix, Sage CRM and even ACT!, do most of the same things. The real question is, how do they accomplish the same thing? For instance, if you are going to review the top CRM's in regards to activity tracking, a CRM review of activity tracking will only tell you if the feature is included in the product.  

However, a CRM Review will not typically tell you that creating a call for a contact will take you x steps in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, x steps in SugarCRM and x steps in Sage SalesLogix. Why do you care how many steps that it takes to schedule a call in a CRM system? If you are not the person that has to schedule calls all day long, then you probably don't care. If you are the person that schedules calls all day long, there is a huge difference in the number of clicks. However, it's not just about the number of clicks, it's also about the time that it takes to wait for screen pops, particularly if you are on a web-based version.  So, how do you learn from CRM reviews? CRM reviews are just a glance at the different CRM packages. Comparing CRM solutions must come down to how you will, and  how you should, use a CRM system to meet your needs. There is a big difference between someone needing to schedule 10 calls a day and someone scheduling 50 calls a day. The best thing you can do to compare CRM packages is to first determine who your users are, and what types of features they need. The process of doing this is called a requirements gathering. If you have not determined what your requirements are, then the chance of your CRM implementation failing is huge! Are you willing to bet your job on a huge chance that you will fail? If not, I highly suggest that you (or someone else) determine exactly what your company needs.
 
Once you know exactly what your company and users need, take those requirements to each CRM application and do your own review. Would you ever buy a car without doing all your homework and then insisting on driving it yourself? Of course you wouldn't buy a car without driving it. A car is a huge investment, as is buying a CRM solution. Do your own CRM comparison and the chances of your CRM implementation succeeding will double.

Does entering data in CRM take time? Yes, it does. So here's how you deal with it.

• Make the data entry easy
• Make the sales process easy and automate whatever you can
• Do not keep any data outside of CRM (except in an accounting system that should be integrated)
• Make sure that the salesperson understands how data entry today can help them make sales in the future

The reality is that salespeople are typically talking to somewhere between 30-100 people, doing between 50-200 calls and sending 100-300 emails, per week. It is impossible for anyone to keep all of the details straight.

So, how can accurately tracking the activity/history in CRM help a salesperson sell more? 

• Save Time and Impress Prospects
  
  The first full prospect phone call averages 30 minutes. By capturing all the details for a new prospect, the salesperson can achieve 2 things.
  
  
  •  The next conversation that happens some weeks, or months, later, will be short thereby saving the salesperson another 30 minutes. If the salesperson does 10 prospect follow-up calls a week, that translates to saving 300 minutes or 5 hours a week. This follow-up call then becomes more productive.
    
    
  • The 'devil is in the details' - by quickly recounting the details, the salesperson is projecting several things:  the client is important enough to know all of the details, the salesperson wants to respect each other's time, the salesperson is very organized.
    
    
• Improve Customer Retention
  
  Customers are no different; they want someone that cares, someone that is thorough and efficient. The main reasons customers leave are a lack of caring, follow-up and attention to details.
  
  
• Save Time By Not Having To Do Reports
  
  By tracking activity in CRM, a salesperson should never have to do a call report or any other report for that matter. Call reports typically take a salesperson between 30 - 90 minutes a week. If you are requiring sales reports outside of your CRM, then your system is broken!
  
  
• Take Vacations Without Fallout or Whiplash of Returning
  
  Vacations are good for morale and quality of life. However, business does not stop just because someone goes on vacation. If a salesperson is tracking their activity history, other people in the company can help when an issue arises by reading the history and acting appropriately.

What I have heard over the years is simply that it takes too long. Really? Let me share the steps to tracking lost sales. Let's assume that your CRM is setup for now. When a sales person is closing an opportunity, on most of the top CRM applications, there is a pull-down list of reasons in the same box. Select the reason and that's it. So, to track the reason for lost sales in a CRM it requires adding two, possibly three, clicks. I don't believe that three extra clicks are over-burdensome.

Sage SalesLogix, ACT! and Microsoft Dynamics CRM have pop-up windows. SugarCRM has an additional tab and requires the extra click.

Remember, we assumed that your CRM was setup. Ok, let's backtrack for a minute. The only setup required is for management to determine some reasons and to get them into the list. All of the CRM systems come with reasons. Some reasons are generic and everyone can use them. You will need to determine if there is anything specific about your business that you will need to add. Don't kill yourself creating the list. Spend an hour and go from there.  

Here is a great starting list:

• Poor Follow-up
• Indecision
• Wrong Decision Maker(s)
• Lack of References
• Lack of Expertise
• Lack of Resources
• Unknown
• Column Fodder (Not a true competition, you were just brought in as an extra bid)
• Other
• Out-sold
• Wrong Target

(For the following, I would be inclined to have an ROI check box at the opportunity level but that would require some customization)

• No/Lost Budget - ROI Discussed
• No/Lost Budget - ROI Not Discussed
• Insufficient Budget - ROI Discussed
• Insufficient Budget - ROI Not Discussed

Seven to twelve reasons is a good start. Be careful not to use something as general as 'bad fit.' Bad fit could mean a whole host of different things such as, not a cultural fit, a company that isn't in your sweet spot, either too large or too small. Also be careful not to get to granular and have too many values.  If a reason is not on the list, then we use the 'other' value and then require some keywords in the description. You may find that 6 months down the road, you are noticing other reasons for losing sales, so just go add them then.

Normally, I would say that once you start gathering data (I'd give it a few months), then create your dashboards and reports on why sales are lost. However, if you are starting a new process, it's actually better to at least understand if your sales reps are inputting the data.

Create the following dashboards, views/groups or reports (depending on the CRM system you are on:

Lost Sales missing Reasons - I would view this as a list

• Opportunity or Actual Close Date = This Year
• Opportunity Status = Lost
• Opportunity Reason = Does Not contain Data

Reason for Lost Sales - I would view this as a pie chart or graph
• Opportunity or Actual Close Date = This Year
• Opportunity Status = Lost

In my research I came across this very interesting, differing point of view. 
There are only 2 reasons why you lose a sale.

Tracking lost sales can actually help you generate more revenue. How you say? Only by understanding why deals are lost, can you continue to improve your sales processes, products and sales team’s performance. I am personally addicted to data and as a former salesperson, I always tracked my sales, both won and lost. By having data, you can see trends and analyze your wins and losses. Only through improvement can you generate sustained revenue growth.

As a consultant however, I rarely found companies that would take the steps necessary to track the data and I needed to understand why. I recently started a discussion in two LinkedIn groups to try to gain some insight into why a company wouldn't track the reasons for lost sales. The title of the discussion was "Do you track the reason for lost sales? Why?"

I got some great responses as to why you would track the reasons for lost sales, but no one would actually admit to not tracking their lost sales. What a disconnect! In most of my 10 years of consulting, it was rare that a company actually took the steps necessary to track a lost sale.

What I have heard over the years is simply that it takes too long. Really? Let me share the steps to tracking lost sales. Let's assume that your CRM is setup for now. When a sales person is closing an opportunity, on most of the top CRM applications, there is a pull-down list of reasons in the same box. Select the reason and that's it. So, to track the reason for lost sales in a CRM it requires adding two, possibly three, clicks. I don't believe that three extra clicks are over-burdensome. Click here to see more on Best Business Practices for Tracking Lost Sales in CRM.

What you will find is that sales people that really want to excel will want to track both their won and lost sales. Here are some great quotes from the LinkedIn discussion:

 "I've learned over the years that I've never ‘Won’ a deal, I just ‘Lose’ very few of them because all deals are ours to lose."  What a novel concept!

 "... Great insight can be gained from understanding losses, competitive insight, process deficiencies/inefficiencies, relationship issues, pricing and general funnel management. But it is also important is to understand why and how you won as well. It’s the full 360 view of your customer engagement that provides healthy balanced corrective actions. "

 "Sales people should always learn and adapt to improve their skills; feedback from their prospects or existing clients is one of the best ways to do that, as these are the targets of our sales actions and the sources, indicators of the success or failure of our actions."

 "The ability to learn from a past failure can help a salesperson improve his/her skills and compensate with future closed deals - but this if and only if the salesperson in question adapts and really learns and implements the knowledge from the mistake."

So now that I've made you feel guilty, go set-up your list and start the process. 

For your research, here is a great white paper that goes into win/loss analysis in-depth.
Why Companies Should Implement a Win/Loss Program

Join the LinkedIn Discussions

Do you track the reason for lost sales? Why? - LinkedIn Sales Management Association Group

Do you track the reason for lost sales? Why? - LinkedIn Sales/Marketing VP's Group

Does it drive you crazy that Microsoft CRM doesn't give you more information about where opportunities came from? Our marketing team, as most are, is tasked with a quota of how many leads we need to generate in a given time period, and we are always trying to tie our sales back to our marketing efforts.   

Humans are visual by nature and most people can really sink their teeth into charts. Unfortunately, out-of-the-box, Microsoft CRM gives you one chart that has opportunities by revenue and by source campaign called ' Won Opps by Source Campaign'. This is valid data when tying marketing dollars spent to effort. The biggest issue is that marketing can't be responsible for the revenue generated by a lead.
 
What marketing is responsible for is getting X leads generated. So, I wanted to see how our closed opportunities were broken down by source campaign. How many opportunities was each campaign bringing in?
 
So, here is how to create a chart to see visual evidence of our efforts:

Step 1 - Go into your Opportunities

Step 2 - Select the list that you want data on (I am interested in Closed Opportunities.)

Step 3 - Open the charts by clicking on the < (on the very right hand side of MSCRM)

Step 4 - This just happened to be the last chart that I looked at. This is the chart that shows revenue by source campaign - not very helpful to me to see if we are hitting our lead quota.

Step 5 - Click on Charts at the top of MSCRM
Step 6 - Click New Chart

Step 7  - Select the Pie chart

Step 8 - Name the Chart and select the data fields that you are interested in - in this case it is Source Campaign. (If you can’t see the image, both fields have the Source Campaign field.)

Step 9 - Save and Close

Step 10 - Viola - of course I had to protect the names of our innocent campaigns, but you get the drift!

With the arrival of 2012, our Marketing goals have been set and now it is time to get down to business. One of our major goals for 2012 is to have 12 webinars, which will be a major feat considering we only had 2 in 2011! Why 12 webinars? We figure one a month will be plenty to swallow. One of our biggest struggles to having webinars was just having a formula in place.

As I have been reading and planning, I ran across this great article: Webinar Promotion that Delivers: Use Email, Social, Viral Referrals and Video to Boost Attendance, Drive Lead Gen.

This article was great because it showed...

• The ability to measure traffic
• Advertising webinars using banner ads on your own site
• The creation of a "Webinar Alert" mailing list which had an average open rate of 42.6% and accounted for 39% of registrations
• The "Refer a Friend" promotion in registration confirmations
    The page includes 4 fields:
  
  •      Registrant's name
  •      Registrant's email address
  •      Friend's email address
  •      Text box to write a personal note about the event
• The importance of removing registered users from the promotions for the same event - this may be evident but many companies mess this up and just keep promoting and banging people in the head
• Automated event reminders - both one day and one hour before
• Webinar exit polls - Love these!
• The posting of newsletters to your website to continue to drive traffic