Stop Guessing: The Sales Leader’s Practical Guide to CRM Selection
Choosing the wrong CRM can sabotage your sales team’s productivity for years. Too often, this critical decision is made by IT or executives who never spend a day on the front lines.
In Selecting Your CRM to Guarantee Success, author and industry veteran Nikolaus Kimla cuts through the technical jargon to deliver a down-to-earth guide written specifically for sales professionals and managers. This isn’t a theory book; it’s a practical framework to ensure the CRM you select is actually used, loved, and adopted by your sales team, guaranteeing higher data quality and faster ROI.
Download this guide to shift the decision-making power from the IT department back to the people who need the right tools to sell.
What You’ll Master in This Guide
This ebook breaks down the five core pillars of successful CRM adoption, making sure you ask the right questions before you sign a contract.
Chapter 1: Stop Rebuilding: Choose Future-Proof Technology
The core of your CRM success lies in its underlying architecture. Learn why technical foundation is more important than initial features, and discover the non-negotiable questions to ask vendors about scalability, security, and long-term sustainability. Don’t get stuck with a system that demands a complete rebuild in two years.
Chapter 2: Functionality That Matches Your Reality
Most CRMs are feature-rich but process-poor. This chapter teaches you how to map a CRM’s features directly against your company’s unique processes and workflows. You’ll learn to look past the buzzwords and find a system that supports multiple visual pipelines, integrates seamlessly with other apps, and is manageable by anyone—not just an expensive, dedicated administrator.
Chapter 3: The Usability Test: Will Your Team Actually Use It?
The number one reason CRMs fail is low user adoption. Usability is everything. Discover the principles of simplification (cybernetics) that make a system intuitive. You’ll learn why easy-to-learn, highly visual applications are the key to reliable data input and why a CRM your salespeople love is the only one worth buying.
Chapter 4: Connect Service, Cost, and Value
A low price often means poor service down the road. Uncover how a vendor’s service culture—not just their support ticket system—is tied directly to your overall Total Cost of Ownership. This chapter outlines how to assess a vendor’s transparency and ensure the cost correlates directly with the functionality and support you need to succeed.
Chapter 5: Vet Your Partner: Evaluating the Vendor
Signing a CRM contract is choosing a long-term partner. Learn how the Software as a Service (SaaS) model affects risk and why a vendor’s longevity and vision are crucial factors. Use this chapter’s criteria to confidently evaluate the stability and future direction of any potential CRM provider.
For any company, selecting a CRM solution for a company is a major undertaking. Gartner has just provided an in-depth guide for doing so entitled “Select the Best-Suited CRM Solution with Gartner’s Evaluation Model”.
Comments (18)
One of the most important points to remember regarding Pipeliner Sales CRM is that it delivers instantly on your investment for the entire company. When the sales team quickly identifies the ability to be productive with the mobile app in between appointments, instantly recall information for the customer during meeting, and have a one location to track all customers communication, it engages more participation. Data integrity is improved and that accuracy improves all information up the management structure. Create custom reports are a breeze by each individual using the solution, at your fingertips, on demand. TCO is lower and ROI is higher.
Great One!
Salespeople should definitely be part of their companies’ CRM selection. If anything, they are the ones who will use it so it should be something that they find convenient in using.
Gartner est le guide idéale pour les entreprises, qui souhaiteraient trouver une solution CRM adapter à leur conteste d’évolution en terme de chiffre d’affaire CA et aussi pratique pour les vents.
It is great a suggestion that need to be adopted by every organisation that is profit oriented.
i feel its imperative for a person to understand what a product does before you purchase it, this article explains the important of crm in a business, its great
Great article
Good read. I believe key to note when deciding which CRM solution to go for is cost, especially interms of adoption rate and usability. A good fit would be a CRM that is easy to get up and running with minimal disruption to the day to day business operations.
WOW a very productive one
It is great a suggestion that need to be adopted by every organisation that is profit oriented
One of the most important points to remember regarding Pipeliner Sales CRM is that it delivers instantly on your investment for the entire company.
Interesting!!! Yes, the right CRM can change the world of Sales process and Management…..Pipeliner CRM is the way to go.
CRM is such an important tool and selecting them requires the collection of the management and the salespeople so that what they select is suitable for both.
Pipeliner CRM is the better option for the salespeople.
Great book from Nikolaus Kimla.
For the past 15 years, I follow the trend of sales and salespeople, notice that salespeople are never involved in the decision making the process. They are treated as sideliners who work on guidelines and plan design by Executive and Manager! As for the CRM software, it is no doubt that salespeople have become the driver of the business vehicle as they must be treated as entrepreneurs who can bring greater outcomes to the business revenue growth and improve customer relationship by being in the front line of the decision involvement…
CRM has opened an easy to work with the process for salespeople, managers, and executives all together!! LOVE IT
So true, if a company wants result there is a buy-in process, great to have the sales team involved in know the CRM system chosen.
It is an incredible suggestion that requires to be adopted by every profit-oriented organization.