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If your CRM dashboard is showing less data than expected and what is there does not look right, the software probably is not your real problem. The real problem is almost always your sales and software design processes. Fixing those, using design thinking, is how you unlock ROI for your reps, your customers, and your business.
Is Your Sales Software Really the Problem?
Picture this: your organization invested serious money in a new CRM. You met with the sales team, trained them on the process and the tool, and sent them off to the races. A few weeks later you pull up the fancy dashboard, excited to finally have visibility into their progress.
But something is off. There is not as much data as you expected, and the data that is there does not seem right.
What is the deal?
Most likely, it is not the product you purchased. It is your sales and software design processes.
What Goes Wrong with Sales Processes and Tools?
Executives design their company's sales process with the business in mind, focusing primarily on metrics. Their off-the-shelf sales tools are designed the same way, built to surface key data points for leadership.
The problem is that sales processes and tools rarely align with what the sales rep actually needs, or with how customers move through their journey. When reps feel like a process, tool, or policy is just creating busy work instead of providing value, they go rogue.
Then, when leaders realise they are not getting the data or results they need, they assume it is a software issue and ask IT to fix it. IT usually has bigger fish to fry, so they look for a quick fix: a cool plugin, a new feature, or an upgrade to existing software. Those might cure some symptoms, but they will not solve the root problem. They may even create new ones.
The irony is that both stakeholders actually share the same end goal: make more sales. The only way to get there is to start with the customer's needs and draw backwards, which is the opposite of how sales software and processes are usually designed and implemented.
How Does Design Thinking Fix Sales Software and Process Problems?
Design thinking can save the day. It does not just lead to better software, but also better processes and better experiences for everyone.
It starts with two steps that are typically skipped in the rush to build a functional product: Research and Empathize.
What Does the Research Phase Actually Cover?
Research helps you understand:
- Who your stakeholders are: sales reps and users, end customers, and business leaders
- The process or journey each group goes through
- The constraints that will shape any new solution
- Where your current solution is working, where the friction points are, and how it could be improved
Why Does the Empathize Stage Matter?
The Empathize stage helps you see the process and product through your stakeholders' and end users' eyes. The goal is to create a solution that truly meets their needs on every level: functional, emotional, and aspirational.
Journey mapping is an invaluable exercise to run during this phase.
Enterprise firms typically have a "process" map that details the steps of a workflow, along with technical specifications and operating policies. These maps give you a functional understanding of the process, but they do not account for the emotional side of the experience.
Journey mapping fills that gap by helping you answer:
- Where does the process go smoothly?
- Where does it fall short?
- Where are the high points for sales reps and customers?
- Where are the low points?
By layering a journey map on top of a process map, you can evaluate how well each step is going, and figure out how to get to the next level.
What Happens in the Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test Stages?
The journey mapping insights come in handy during the Define step, where you combine your research and empathy findings to write a vision statement and user stories that address the problem you are actually solving. This is the perfect moment to pause and make sure everyone is aligned before moving forward.
With a clear vision of the stakeholders' primary pain points, you can Ideate on how to resolve them. It is tempting to jump straight to this step (and plenty of people who prioritise technical execution over ease of use do exactly that), but researching, empathising, and defining first leads to more ideas, better ideas, and a sharper focus on user happiness throughout.
Once you have brainstormed solutions and identified where to reduce friction, it is time to Prototype and Test a preliminary model:
- For software improvements, build a prototype that tests your hypothesis without spending the time and money to build the full product
- For process improvements, gather a small test group to role-play or try the new process and see whether it would produce better outcomes
The design thinking process lets you solve the software and process pain points your users and company are feeling today, and also uncover other ideas for improvement you can pursue down the road.
What Does the ROI of Fixing Sales Processes Look Like?
These internal changes have massive ROI. Software and sales process improvements make it easier for sales reps to do their jobs, leading to:
- Significant time and cost savings
- Higher employee satisfaction
- Better customer service
In turn, customers are happier, resulting in higher sales, satisfaction, retention, and referrals.
Our team at Drawbackwards initially partnered with a client to redesign their sales tool. After getting under the hood, we saw that the software was just one piece of the puzzle. It had several flaws that made it difficult or impossible to use. Even worse, it did not align with their sales process or methodology. Reps were abandoning the tool, and sales were suffering.
To improve the experience, we evaluated the entire sales ecosystem, streamlined their sales process, and designed a new software experience that aligns with that process. The result was exponentially more value delivered for the business, the sales reps, and the customers.
Do Not Just Mask the Symptoms. Find a Cure.
Like our client, your company might be realising that your sales software is falling short. Sometimes it is slow or does not work at all. It asks for the wrong data at the wrong time. It does not give you the flexibility to enter and track information the way you need to for your customers.
You could solve some of those symptoms and feel temporary relief with new out-of-the-box software or a few cosmetic design and development fixes. But finding a long-term cure requires looking at the big picture through user-centric design thinking, and changing the way you design your sales process and software from the ground up.
FAQ
Why do sales reps abandon CRM tools? Usually because the tool and the process around it feel like busy work. When software does not align with how reps actually sell or how customers move through their journey, reps stop using it.
How do I know if my sales problem is software or process? If fixing or replacing the software has not improved results, the process is almost certainly the issue. Start by mapping the actual experience your reps and customers have, not just the steps on a flowchart.
What is design thinking in the context of sales software? Design thinking is a structured approach that starts with understanding your users through research and empathy before jumping to solutions. For sales software, it means designing tools and processes around how reps and customers actually work, not just around what metrics leadership wants to track.
What is journey mapping and why does it matter for sales? Journey mapping is an exercise that visualises the full experience a user goes through, including the emotional highs and lows, not just the procedural steps. Layered over a standard process map, it reveals where friction is killing adoption and where improvements would have the most impact.
Can design thinking improve an existing off-the-shelf CRM, or do we need custom software? Both. Design thinking can help you reconfigure and optimise an existing tool, and it can also make the case for custom software when off-the-shelf solutions genuinely cannot support your process. The research phase will tell you which situation you are in.
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