10 Ways Your Prospect Database is Hindering Growth

Most systems can record basic prospect details and schedule a follow up call. A good follow-up system is helpful, but it can become less effective as your team grows. When you hire new staff, they might have different ways of working and saving data in the prospecting system. They may also update this data at different times of the day and use different methods to generate prospects.

Soon enough, you’ll realise that your prospecting system is hindering your business growth.

10 things which slow your business down

You’re missing follow ups

Either the system isn’t being used consistently by everyone, or follow ups are falling between the cracks. Either way you’re losing prospects and money.

Your system isn’t available anywhere and on any device

You need to connect into a server to access your system, or it requires a special PC to log in. All you and you team want is to have fast and easy access to check your prospects on any device.

You create Excel spreadsheets to report from

Your system can’t tell you which stage each prospect is at in your process, or who is prospecting the best. You’ve now got two separate systems that need maintaining with data duplication between them.

“What’s the next stage?”

It’s not clear for users what actions they need to do next after they have entered data into the system. They can feel lost, especially if they are infrequent users.

No centralised view of prospects:

There’s no easy way to view the complete communication history with a prospect. This includes emails, phone calls or appointments. You need to ask people, check mailboxes, sent items and calendars to understand the full picture.

No custom data views or lists:

You have to rely on the standard system generated views of data, when it would be better to create your own views. This includes

the fields/columns you need
the data sorted in a useful order for you
and the ability to add your own filters to these data views

If you use Excel, then you end up copying and pasting data between worksheets creating a data duplication problem.

Complex user interface:

Your team spends too much time inputting data when they should be prospecting. The data entry forms are unintuitive and don’t guide users on which fields to complete and how to do it.

Custom fields:

You can’t create additional fields that are unique to your company to store data about your prospecting process.

Calculated fields:

You’re unable to automatically calculate a prospect or lead score based on key data.

Pre-populated fields:

You’re unable to save your team time whilst also improving data quality by pre-populating certain form fields.

Is there a solution?

Moving away from using specialist databases or Excel spreadsheets, to a flexible solution like Microsoft Dynamics 365 can overcome these issues:-

Firstly, it’s developed by Microsoft and provides a user interface which is comfortable for anyone who is familiar with Microsoft products – the majority of the business community.
Secondly, the amount of research and development time and money Microsoft spend on the product ensures that it integrates with Outlook, Word, Excel and other Microsoft applications seamlessly.

How Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales streamlines the 10 points

Issue	Dynamics 365 solution
Missing follow ups	Integration with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook provides reminders for tasks and appointments in Outlook or on your mobile device, leaving no room for missing follow ups.
Not available anywhere on any device	The system is available from any internet connected PC, laptop, tablet or mobile and the layout is consistently familiar throughout.
Creating Excel spreadsheets for reporting	Powerful built in reporting makes it easy to create targets to check your prospecting activity against, for example the number of quality phone calls, or the number of appointments.
Not knowing what the next stage is	Create tailored process stages aligned to your business for team members to follow. These can be high level or a more detailed level depending on your requirements – either way, users can see what the next stage is, removing confusion and increasing system confidence.
No centralised view of prospects	Emails, phone calls and appointments are stored and tracked centrally and can be viewed by your team, ensuring your whole business can understand the unique relationship with each prospect.
Lists of records with columns you don’t need and filters that are not tailored	Easily create your own personalised views of data from any available field in the system, and use filter criteria to return just the data you want to see, from simple “this field equals this value” filters, to complex filters containing AND and OR statements.
Complex user interface	You can change form layouts, move any field within a form, create new form sections where you want them on screen. You can also expand frequently used areas of forms and collapse less frequently used areas. Users can see different forms per role that work off the same set of data but are tailored to that role’s daily needs. For example, quick data entry for field based staff versus detailed data entry for office based staff.
Inability to create custom fields	As your business changes or you need to store new information about your prospects, create new text fields, date fields, number fields, lookup fields and many more field types, to ensure you store all your prospecting data in a single system.
Users running manual calculations	Simple calculations to complex calculations including prospect scoring, fields that “rollup” data from other related records such as calculating the number of phone calls or appointments, and the ability to run workflows to automatically process calculations across the system and calculate fields in bulk.
Users having to repeat data	Populate field contents based on the values of other fields in the system, for example, fill in a probability rating based on the stage a prospect is up to. Save time for users and improve data quality for your reports by pre-populating prospect fields.

A solution like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales transforms your prospecting database into one to help you grow. If you have a specialist supplier system, another CRM system or are managing your prospecting process using spreadsheets. If you’re experiencing some of the above issues, it’s worth reviewing whether your current systems are hindering your business growth.