Zoho CRM is one of the well-known CRMs that sales teams use to consolidate their entire customer and prospect repository, manage and optimize their sales pipeline, and improve rep productivity.

But, most sales teams struggle to fully adopt Zoho CRM.

Often, implementing Zoho CRM only adds to the rep’s workload. Reps spend hours feeding each outreach detail into Zoho CRM — be it uploading the list of leads or logging each engagement detail individually.

Also, setting up a sales sequence within Zoho CRM is impossible. Because CRMs like Zoho are built for sales managers. Reps need a system that empowers them with faster and more efficient execution of sales activities.

Factors Affecting Zoho CRM Adoption

Overwhelming Admin Work

Studies show that 66% of a rep’s time is spent on admin work. Reps spend approximately 15+ hours every week updating Zoho CRM — this includes tracking every interaction they have with leads and recording relevant details such as contact information, notes from meetings or calls, or the deal stage of each prospect.

Adding to that, manual work is prone to faulty or inaccurate data, which poses a much bigger threat to your business’s ability to make data-driven decisions.

Unstructured Sales Process

While Zoho CRM is an excellent platform to store and organize data, it doesn’t provide your sales team with the facilities to reach out to those leads.

Zoho CRM serves as a good system of record, but reps need a system with an action plan for all scenarios — when leads engage with the outreach, when they reply, or when they don’t interact at all.

Leads also respond via multiple modes of communication. One might be active on email while the other is active on LinkedIn.

It’s true that Zoho CRM supports emails and integrates with various telephony services. But, repeated feedback received from reps states that email deliverability is low and call scheduling is complicated. So, they resort to using multiple other tools to reach out to leads via calls, LinkedIn, and texts. Context switching hinders their focus and makes them unproductive.

Lack of Collaboration

If your sales team uses multiple tech solutions, your data is stored in separate places. For your reps to access these details easily, you need data to be flowing in from all these systems into your CRM. Lack of integrations hinders smooth data flow and adds extra work to your reps’ task list.

Going back and forth between platforms to fetch necessary data also adds friction to your reps’ daily work. Which puts a damper on productivity and holds them back from hitting their targets in time.

Inadequate Reporting for Reps

Zoho CRM offers flexible and easy-to-build reports for sales teams.

But, it’s not enough to know which segment of leads responded better, what email templates performed well, and which ones need improvement. Since Zoho CRM lacks the ability to set up sales sequences, reps need to keep track of this information individually — further adding to their workload.

How Sales Engagement Platforms Improve Zoho CRM Adoption

Integrate Data from Various Sources

A Sales Engagement Platform procures data like email, call, or LinkedIn outreach details, calendar, and spreadsheet data by integrating with these systems. It then stores this data in one central place — Zoho CRM.

Rather than switching tabs — either to execute outreach or manually enter data into the CRM — reps can rely on Sales Engagement Platforms to feed and organize data in Zoho CRM.

Free up Time to Focus on Selling Activities

CRMs are built for sales managers, whereas reps need a system that helps them execute their sales activities faster and in an efficient manner.

Sales Engagement Platforms let you set up sales sequences once and run them in the background. This means your reps never forget to follow up on time, execute all the tasks laid out by you and can focus more on researching leads and personalizing their outreach.

Besides, Sales Engagement Platforms automatically log all engagement information and tasks in Zoho CRM.

Optimize Your Outreach Using Accurate Data

Most Sales Engagement Platforms provide detailed and accurate reporting on your team’s outreach. Additionally, Sales Engagement Platforms provide in-depth metrics — like how each step within the cadence is performing, which message works and which doesn’t, or which segment of leads responded better. This helps reps know the exact performance of each step within a sequence. Without these metrics, reps struggle to understand which parts of the sales sequences are working well and which parts need improvement.

Keep Zoho CRM Clean

For outbound sales teams: you can keep your CRM filled with important deals and ignore all junk leads. The Sales Engagement Platform takes care of nurturing leads who are not ready right now in the background.

Turn a Stage of Data into a Stage of Intent

Sales Engagement Platforms also help reps to perform personalized and relevant activities for leads at every stage in your pipeline. For example, a deal in the “Negotiation/Review” stage would require much more personalized messaging than a deal in the “Value Proposition” stage.

How Klenty Can Improve Zoho CRM Adoption

Start Outreach for Leads as Soon as They Enter Zoho CRM

Klenty has the ability to set pre-defined steps (called cadences) that your reps can follow to carry out outreach. Klenty’s direct integration with Zoho CRM enables reps to import leads into a list in Klenty. Klenty then kickstarts the appropriate cadence for these leads automatically. Once your cadences are up and running, you can push leads from Zoho CRM into Klenty’s cadences using “Native Widget.”

Klenty also does hourly routine checks to see if there are any additions or updates in Zoho CRM. If yes, it automatically reflects the same.

Synchronized Dataflow Between Klenty and Zoho CRM

Klenty’s bi-directional integration with Zoho CRM keeps information across both platforms automatically updated at all times — freeing up time for reps to focus on actual selling activities. All engagement details like emails sent, opens, clicks, replies, calls completed, outcomes, and other tasks are recorded in Zoho CRM.

Execute The Right Activities for All Stages of Intent

Klenty detects and records the interest level of every lead in your list.

Say a lead has opened your email with no response, while another has opened your email twice and clicked on the links twice. Lead 2 has higher buying intent than Lead 1.

Klenty identifies buying intent. Then, it triggers a new set of relevant activities for each of these leads based on intent.

Automate Sequences for Every Sales Stage

As and when your leads move through the stages in the pipeline, Klenty detects and triggers new cadences for them.

Furthermore, in any event a deal is not created or updated in Zoho CRM, Klenty automatically creates a deal and then updates it.

Get Detailed Reports

Klenty provides detailed and granular reports. You can get reports on the performance of your lists, teams, tasks, and cadences, as well as individual emails, templates, LinkedIn steps, and calls.

You can drill into your data in 3 ways:

1. By channel - Get a graphical overview of how many emails were sent, how many calls were made, and how many tasks were completed.
2. By timeframe - Access data from any time frame, ranging from yesterday to last month.
3. By owner - Get a clear picture of each individual team member's activity history.

Reps also get the in-depth performance of each step within a cadence. As soon as your rep opens their cadence, they’ll immediately get the full picture of:

1. Email open, click and reply rates.
2. Number of calls answered/unanswered or sent to voicemail.
3. Number of tasks completed.

Klenty also enables reps to test what messaging works and what doesn’t with the help of A/B Testing.

Unify All Responses in a Single View

Klenty accumulates all responses across multiple channels — emails, calls, LinkedIn, WhatsApp messages, and texts — in a single place. It offers a collective view as well as a channel-wise view, so reps can prioritize and respond to leads efficiently. To make things even simpler, reps can even filter responses by owners and timeframe.

Access Klenty Within Zoho CRM

Perhaps the best part about Klenty is that you can access it without leaving the Zoho ecosystem.

Klenty’s Plugin lets reps send emails, create tasks, and make calls without leaving Zoho CRM. Reps can also create leads in Klenty using the plugin.

Klenty detects all the leads on your screen and stores them in the plugin. Reps can then push them into Klenty or into Klenty cadences directly. They can select multiple leads within the plugin and

1. Execute outreach at scale.
2. Create tasks for all leads simultaneously.
3. Make calls to individual leads.

Now reps can easily work within the CRM, boosting the chances of complete CRM usage and success.

Prioritize and Execute Tasks

Additionally, Klenty offers layers of prioritization, making it simpler and easy for reps to execute their day-to-day tasks.

1. Prioritization based on Intent - Klenty automatically detects your leads’ interest level and categorizes them by their purchase intent. Reps can focus their attention on hot leads and nurture the rest until they are ready to book a meeting.
2. Prioritization based on Time - Reps can further prioritize their tasks based on their leads’ time zone. They can first finish off tasks for leads who are active and then move on to the rest.
3. Prioritization based on Tasks - Klenty facilitates the prioritization of tasks by grouping each type of task into bundles. For example, if a rep has 4 LinkedIn tasks to finish, Klenty lines them up in a single view so that your rep can tick them off one by one. Klenty also groups tasks based on their status (pending, overdue and upcoming tasks).

Conclusion

You’ve invested heavily in Zoho CRM. Not to mention the resources you’ve spent on reps, building outbound lists, or marketing budget in bringing inbound leads into your CRM.

Why not maximize the value of every component of your sales arsenal with a Sales Engagement Platform (and save about 15 hours of rep time every week along the way)?

Here’s a quick resource on how Klenty works with Zoho CRM to turn every lead into a qualified deal.