"Customer Relationship Management" (CRM) is a type of software that helps sales teams manage their pipeline and close deals.
CRM on the market
TODO
Implementation
Implement for facilitating Sales' daily work vs from an executive perspective for reporting purposes.
In my Individual Contributor (IC) roles, I have mostly failed - like most - at keeping the CRM up to date... because it does not provided me any proper value.
I was better off managing my pipeline with my own set up (eg Grist Grist | The Evolution of Spreadsheets , Airtable, but could be just a simple spreadsheet), where stages are better aligned to my needs and my expected commission is updated in real time, providing a stronger driver to close than top line number.
This applies even more when the commission structure is somewhat complex.
When a CRM is implemented only from the executive perspective, thinking only about data needed by the company, and not from the perspective of the reps feeding it, this leads to subpar data quality.
To implement a CRM properly, the person driving the project should ideally have had some frontline experience (ie selling/closing deals over a period of time) so as to optimise the UX/value for the reps who will use it on a daily basis.
Better than nothing though would be to take inputs from the sales team members - asking the right questions and/or analysing each rep's own spreadsheet/system.
Improvements
Display expected commission values in rep's views/dashboard.
This is a big driver for reps to manage their opportunities better in the CRM.