The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform is the core of any sales team. The CRM is used by both sales reps to manage and track their progress with prospects, as well as by managers to measure deal flow and relevant sales metrics. Depending on the organizations needs will determine the CRM deployed. While there are approximately one hundred and fifty CRMs available today, according to a 2017 Gartner report, there are eighteen widely adopted CRMs available. A relevant article on CRM adoption and usage can be found here. .https://getcrm.com/blog/state-of-crm-2018/
While CRMs are great at collecting data, a fair bit of training is required to make use of the information logged in the CRM. The issue lies in that reps will log data in a qualitative format which makes reporting at scale a non-trivial task. In order to turn the qualitative data into quantitative data requires a standardized logging system.
A very simple activity logging system that has been adopted by numerous organizations is as follows. In this system, reps start each activity log with one of four prefix options; call, gvm, lvm, or email. After the prefix, reps can add any qualitative description afterwards.
Call is used when the rep reaches the intended person. They have spoken to them, even briefly. This allows for reporting of when someone picks up the phone.
GVM stands for “got voice mail” indicating the rep heard a voicemail and did not leave a voice mail. In some circumstances, the rep may have spoken to a gatekeeper. If the gatekeeper was not lead on to who was calling, and it could be considered a ghost call, then the prefix GVM would be used.
LVM stands for “left voice mail”, indicating the rep heard a voice mail recording then left a voicemail. If a rep had spoken to a gatekeeper and instructed the gatekeeper to pass on a message, they would log the activity as a LVM. The value of using LVM over GVM, is that a rep may do several ghost calls in a day, then leave a voicemail.
Email is the prefix left for when an email is sent to a prospect. Most email softwares have options to automatically log emails to CRM and will tag them as “email” in the activity field.
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