According to a 2020 survey, 92% of companies agree that having a clean CRM is critical for achieving their revenue goals, yet 45% admit that their data isn’t very accurate or well-maintained.
One of the biggest contributors to this disconnect around CRM data management is that most companies make salespeople responsible for keeping the system up-to-date.
Not only does that place a considerable burden on sales teams, but it also doesn’t make sense from a revenue perspective. Successful salespeople are highly focused on building relationships with prospects and closing as many deals as possible.
Having to pause throughout the day to update CRM fields pulls their attention away from the opportunities they’re nurturing.
To yield the benefits of clean data while empowering their teams to close more deals, many sales leaders are outsourcing CRM management.
Here’s how this approach can boost productivity throughout your sales cycle.
1) Stop Wasting Time on Prospect Research
Successful CRM management starts with finding the right data. The challenge for most sales teams is that creating lists of highly targeting prospects is incredibly time-consuming.
Hubspot research shows that reps spend an average of 17% of their day on prospecting. This is nearly as much time as they devote to managing responses and scheduling meetings.
If you want to increase your team’s conversions, you need to drastically reduce the amount of time they spend researching so they can focus on building relationships with prospects.
With a virtual assistant for sales, your team no longer has to do prospect research. All they have to do is provide their target criteria, and their assistant will keep your CRM loaded with new contacts and assign them to the appropriate person.
Here’s an example of this approach in action:
Whenever one of our clients comes up with a new campaign idea, they’ll block off time to create the email templates. Before they dive into messaging, they’ll give their assistant their audience criteria.
By the time they finish their templates, their assistant has already imported their prospects into their marketing automation platform. This system reduces the time it takes to launch, allowing them to reach more prospects.
2) Focus on Warm Opportunities
Outbound campaigns are an essential part of any business development strategy. However, even if your team has a suite of templates that sales reps can use for their campaigns, managing them is time-consuming and pulls your team’s attention away from warm prospects.
Virtual sales assistants can help your team focus on the bottom of the funnel by tackling many pieces of your campaign management process, including:
- Setting up campaigns in your marketing or sales automation platform
- Unsubscribing uninterested prospects
- Scheduling calls with interested leads
That last part alone can save your team about an hour a day. Surveys show that sales reps spend 12% of their time scheduling meetings with prospects. This step is so time-consuming because even when someone says they’re interested in learning more about your offering, it can still take several follow-ups to get a meeting on the calendar.
Having an assistant manage top-of-funnel communication frees up your team’s time to focus on nurturing opportunities that are at the bottom of the funnel.
3) Save 1.5 Hours a Day on Data Entry
According to research, the average sales rep spends 17% of their day on data entry. That’s upwards of an hour and half a day spent transferring information. Even with all of this time spent on data entry, many activities still don’t make it into CRMs.
If you want your team to close more deals, your team needs to:
- Spend less time managing your CRM and more time on the phone with prospects
- Have access to accurate reports so that they know what stages of their pipeline need the most attention
Offloading CRM management to a virtual sales assistant lets your team do that without sacrificing data quality or completeness.
As long as you give your assistant access to your team’s calendar, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and other systems, they’ll ensure that every prospect interaction gets logged. If reports indicate that some information may be missing, they’ll reach out to the account owner to fill in any gaps.
Not only does this save your team a ton of time, but it also ensures that all stakeholders have access to the CRM data they need.
4) Prevent Your Data From Decaying
Even if your team enters all of your data correctly, it eventually decays. If this goes unchecked, as it often does, it can hurt your company’s performance.
95% of companies have data quality issues with their CRMs, including:
- Missing/incomplete information
- Inaccurate details
- Expired information
- Duplication data
75% of companies say that their insufficient data hinders multiple departments, including sales, marketing, and customer success.
When data is not maintained, it’s nearly impossible to run accurate reports on past performance and create campaigns to reengage with old contacts.
A virtual sales assistant can maintain your CRM by auditing and updating records that your team hasn’t touched for a specific period. This maintenance process allows your team to leverage accurate historical data.
Related: What You Should Be Getting Out of Your CRM
Want to learn more about how a VA can amplify your sales productivity? Schedule a discovery call.
About the author: Emily formerly led Prialto's content production and distribution team with a special passion for helping people realize success. Her work and collaborations have appeared in Entrepreneur, Inc. and the Observer among others.