RainmakerForce Pipeline DNA Report Shows Sales Teams Actually Working for CRM, the Most Expensive Non-Performer in Sales

RainmakerForce, a San Francisco-based sales technology company, features the “Pipeline DNA Report,” the ultimate report for the C-Suite that analyzes a company’s sales pipeline and provides unfiltered information (without sugar coating) of its “goodness”, rank against industry peers, capacity and capability issues and whether it can deliver expected revenues. The need and urgency for such a report has increased from companies nowadays because their CRM software has become a trash-can of sales data instead of being an organized database that produces results. Since CRM stores anything and everything, whether right or wrong, and regardless of who keys it in or what it is for, it does more damage than good to sales teams. Instead of working on revenue generation, salespeople waste selling time in cleaning, interpreting and presenting information from this untrustworthy data source for progress reporting and forecasting. In a world of increasing complexity, leaders are demanding better visibility to sales truths beyond what their CRM shows and without needing to question the veracity of its data.

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The fact that CRM fails to increase sales is the worst-kept secret in the industry. Everyone knows it, but very few find the time to do anything about it. Those who make it work find themselves spending sales time on a never-ending and tedious process of mundane cleaning and updating. Adding pressure to this is the constant demand from management for up-to-date deal information and accurate (no-surprise) forecasts. All of this creates severe revenue bottlenecks and high opportunity costs. So, companies either hire more people to manage CRM or spend more on bolt-on applications to CRM that repackage the same untrustworthy data with fancy graphics. Mack Sundaram, CEO of RainmakerForce summarizes, “It is eminently obvious that sales teams work for CRM rather than have CRM work for them. This is where the Pipeline DNA report shines and reflects the core value of RainmakerForce – changing the world for the better by questioning conventions that don’t make sense. Sales is our passion and we strive to show that value by going beyond the obvious. This report will show the C-Suite not only how to make CRM work for Sales and increase customer value but also where it causes revenue leakages and forecasting blind spots.”

While Sales is a team effort, CRM has not lived up to be a trustworthy team member. CRM forces sales teams to categorize deal progress arbitrarily with vague definitions instead of showing the customer’s buying journey. For example, the CRM stages such as ‘Qualification’ or ‘Proposal Evaluation’ literally show sales getting done based on the tasks salespeople are doing. Ironically, it doesn’t show what customers are thinking or how salespeople are helping them reach a buying vision. It also fails to reveal true performance gaps or revenue pitfalls. When quarter-end comes along with high revenue pressure, CRM problems get exacerbated. Companies get into a mad rush to hit their numbers and ask reps to push customers to timelines they expect (and not the customers’). As Ken Krogue’s noteworthy HBR article demonstrates, companies find themselves in revenue traps and end up making even more mistakes.

The RainmakerForce Pipeline DNA Report takes a pragmatic customer-oriented approach to Sales by helping the C-Suite get an “outside-in” view (from the eyes of the customer) as opposed to “inside-out” (from the eyes of CRM stages). The report health-checks sales pipelines (sans the deadwood), covers up revenue blind spots and also helps companies build revenue assurance from forecasts. The power of this report is drawn from the RainmakerForce technology that uses machine-learning, proven sales techniques, and predictive algorithms derived from millions of customer behavioral data points in real B2B sales. It rigorously assesses every deal based on customers’ buying stages while also ensuring veracity and robustness with direct customer inputs and the company’s historical data. Sales leaders then get true customer-verifiable sales intelligence built from the ground up as well as handy insights to liberate selling time from unproductive tasks and prioritizing attention on winnable deals, avoiding revenue traps and creating customer value. “The outside-in methodology embodied in the Pipeline DNA report manifests our core value to do Sales right without the need for additional investments,” adds Sundaram.

It is imperative that Sales be done right from the customer’s viewpoint and not CRM’s. Brian Burns, the renowned podcaster of The Brutal Truth of Sales & Selling podcast and author of The Maverick Selling Method, recently interviewed Mack Sundaram on How to win in the Perfect Storm of B2B Sales and highlighted the magnifying problem of ignoring the customer buying journey and running Sales “from the locker room instead of the field.” Reworking our approach to Sales will not only limit selling costs and rep turnover but also improve cash flow and value addition for customers. The answer is not to buy more technology on CRM and manage the wrong metrics; nor is it working to solve CRM problems. Let’s save ourselves the suspense and embrace the fact that Sales teams need to stop working for CRM. It is possible to smartly turn it into a performer and revenue producer.

About RainmakerForce

RainmakerForce provides Smart Sales technology built on customer purchase intentions to help sales teams get 100% revenue and forecast attainment with no blind spots in pipeline management. It synthesizes ever-changing deal information into meaningful actions with a systematic selling discipline, reveals areas of revenue loss and removes the guesswork from forecasting and bad data. Small, medium and large teams in hunting, renewals and channel sales use RainmakerForce to generate consistent sales performance, plug revenue holes and reliably predict sales numbers.

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