Keeping our Personal CRM helps us know what we're doing, without sharing everything with the boss.  we"re in control. Our information is portable - we can take it with us when we move on. Our data is an asset, making us more attractive than the next guy when the new company is hiring.

Three reasons why every sales rep should keep a Personal CRM.

Countless sales reps tell me they're forced to use some inappropriate CRM system. It's a pain in the ass, but the boss is the boss, after all. They have to accept the admin load even when there's no value add. Perversely I'll suggest they take on even more admin load - having their own Personal CRM, as well as the business system.

Here are three reasons even the busiest rep should duplicate the admin effort.

Somewhere to hide the full picture

No sales rep worth the name tells the boss everything. There are always those little nuggets we want to keep in the back pocket, just in case. This isn't stuff we want the CFO and IT guys misunderstanding. But we do need to keep it where we can find it. The Personal CRM is a much better solution than spreadsheets or the notebook.

Owning our own information

One question we all know and never discuss is who owns the information. The boss will think it belongs to her, since she's paying the salary. Companies, people, addresses, phones, interests. All that stuff we pick up as we go along. Maybe the sales rep should be thinking of owning it too. The best way to do that is keep our own system. Our companies, people, addresses etc. That way we can take it with us when we move on. Even more these days, selling is about relationships, and they're our relationships.

Building our Own Brand

When starting out as rookies all we have this energy to keep picking up the phone. In time we'll build expertise - learning how to do the job efficiently. Even as sales veterans we're not much more than cannon fodder. But if we garner and organize all the information we pick up along the way we become so much more. We'll have a database like nobody else, and its ours. It comes with us. Ready made industry intelligence like nobody else has. Whenever we're interviewing its not just the expertise we're offering. It's the database as well. We're less cannon fodder and more valuable asset.

 

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February 12th, 2010 - Posted in CRM  |  Add a Comment CRM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. -->