Finding Huge Value in Part-Time Fractional CMO Services
It’s time for another story about how utilizing a Fractional CMO has helped a business operate more efficiently and increase sales.
Today’s story comes from a B2B professional services firm. In an effort to manage expenses, the tech stack used at the company lacked integration and automation.😨 They were worried the cost of upgrading systems wouldn’t provide value that could be achieved in other ways.
The problem was that the other method relied on….humans. 🧍🤸
Obviously, I love humans. But if we’re being honest, we are often the enemy of good data.
The more the sales team grew, the more things fell apart. 🧨
Rapidly several hours of a month were being spent by the sales team talking through how they did things in the CRM and why things were happening a certain way.
The CEO, who was heavily involved in the initial setup of the CRM, had taken a back seat in the use of the system and let her team operate in the ways they felt were most effective. She believed that sales was a personal process and everyone should have the power to manage leads in their own way.
While this logic isn’t wrong, you need to hold the entire team accountable to certain standards that directly impact the accuracy of your data.
Since I was already very familiar with her business and the setup of the CRM, tagging me in to help dissect the problem was easy.
I talked to the team members about their deal breakers in terms of data entry and management.
I revisited our KPIs and developed a series of SOPs that made sure data would always be reported upon accurately.
I restructured some elements of the CRM and limited integrations to be more intuitive, which was particularly helpful since new systems were developed after the initial launch several years before.
I conducted in-person training and recorded videos to help the team remember how their system was structured.
I developed quick reference sheets and cheat sheets to help the team remember the basics.
And most importantly, I stayed on to monitor performance. This wasn’t a situation where I made changes with a big presentation and left them to figure it out.
I stay engaged with all of my Fractional CMO clients and monitor performance across multiple datasets to drive better decisions and ultimately, greater business success.