Competitive Intelligence, Win-Loss Analysis Rarely Being Addressed by CRM Systems – Cerado, Inc., a provider of sales force information services, today announced the results of a study which indicates that, despite recent investments in CRM and other technologies, sales and marketing professionals are still looking for ways to significantly improve their effectiveness.
HALF MOON BAY, CA (PRWEB) July 21, 2003 – Cerado, Inc., a provider of sales force information services, today announced the results of a study which indicates that, despite recent investments in CRM and other technologies, sales and marketing professionals are still looking for ways to significantly improve their effectiveness.
The survey indicated that sales teams are being forced to compete in complex, dynamic environments with many competitors, and often do not have current information about their competitive situation. It also has identified an important gap in current sales processes and systems around the management of win-loss information.
While the respondents felt that having better competitive and win-loss information would enable them to sell more effectively, a large number did not have these capabilities today. Additionally, for the organizations that were performing some type of win-loss analysis, the processes and systems for both the gathering of the information and the dissemination of it were primarily ad-hoc.
Key findings of the survey include:
- 49% of the respondents have more than five primary competitors in their market.
- Only 27% of respondents have tailored competitive points by competitor.
- Only 4% of respondents have a dedicated competitive analysis team analyze win-loss information in their organizations.
- 46% of the respondents said that win-loss information is rarely captured in their organizations each quarter.
- The primary tool for capturing win-loss information was Microsoft Excel, used by 19% of the respondents. Email and ACT! tied for second place, each with 14%. Microsoft Word was in fourth place, at 10%. CRM / SFA systems were rarely used for capturing win-loss information. No CRM / SFA system (e.g. Siebel, Salesforce.com, etc.) was mentioned more than 3% of the time as the system that was used to capture win-loss information.
- 51% of the respondents stated they analyzed win-loss information in an ad-hoc” manner.
- Email was the most common way of sharing win-loss information, at 47%.
- 79% of the respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement having improved access to win-loss information would allow them to sell against the competition more effectively.”
The full survey results and accompanying whitepaper, Sales Effectiveness: Trends in Competitive Analysis, 2003 Survey Report, may be downloaded from http://www.cerado.com.
About the survey
Over 80 executive, sales and marketing professionals took part in the survey. 39% of the respondents identified themselves as executives, 21% identified themselves as being from sales, and 20% were from marketing. The remainder of the participants were from product development, customer support, or other parts of the organization. Organization size was well-distributed, as measured by number of sales reps in the company.
There were many small and medium-sized organizations in the survey, with 57% of the respondents having 10 or fewer sales reps in the company. 17% had between 11 and 50 sales reps, 14% had 51-100 sales reps, 9% had 101-500 reps, and 3% had more than 500 sales reps.
About Cerado, Inc.
The vision of Cerado, Inc. is very simple: to be the leading provider of services that enable a sales force to be more successful. Cerado accomplishes this by using advanced technology to provide useful, non-intrusive services to executives and sales professionals that enable them to communicate more effectively, compete more effectively, and close business more effectively.
Cerado works with organizations across a number of highly competitive industries such as high tech, finance, and professional services. Cerado is privately held, and is based just south of San Francisco, California.
On the web at: http://www.cerado.com.
KEYWORDS: SALES FORCE EFFECTIVENESS, WIN-LOSS ANALYSIS, COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS, COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE, CRM, SFA, SALES FORCE AUTOMATION
Cerado is a trademark of Cerado, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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