By : Jennifer Jones | June 17, 2022 | 7 min read

4 Steps to Make SugarCRM Work Better for Your Sales Team

SugarCRM can be a powerful tool, especially for your sales team. However, to get the most out of SugarCRM, you need to set it up correctly and continually optimize it to fit your growing business needs, changing processes, and specific use cases.

This blog will outline four key steps you should take if you want to get the most out of SugarCRM for your sales team and if you want to take full advantage of the Sugar platform.

Step 1: Define your sales processes

Defining your sales processes is easier said than done. It may seem like your sales processes are simple, and in fact that is how it should feel to your reps. However, a lot needs to be mapped out behind the scenes so that Sugar can automate processes for you.

In order to define (or refine) your sales processes, you should work with a small team of internal stakeholders like your sales manager, a seasoned sales rep, a marketing representative, and an IT admin or operations team member. Key items this group should discuss include:

Your marketing to sales handoff

What does your current marketing to sales handoff look like? If it’s a manual, lengthy, or confusing process—you need to address it immediately. Having a quick handoff from marketing to sales is critical for sales success.

Your sales territories and automatic lead assignment

Does your sales organization have clearly defined sales territories? If so, are they clearly detailed within SugarCRM and are leads being assigned automatically based on those territories? Plus, how do you make sure that changes in territory assignment get updated in SugarCRM?

Your sales cycle

Do you have a clearly defined sales cycle that all of your reps understand? This would include how long it typically takes to close a deal, the different deal stages you pay attention to (and report on), and what happens when an opportunity is ready to move to the next stage.

Sales quotas and Sales KPIs

Do your reps know exactly what is expected of them and how they will be rewarded/compensated based on their performance? Do they understand what KPIs they’re responsible for, aside from their quotas? How do you use Sugar to track, and even predict, these data points?

These items just scratch the surface of the infinite number of sales-related processes your organization should understand and document if you want your sales team to be efficient, quick, and successful.

Step 2: Align your sales processes with your SugarCRM instance

Once you have outlined your most critical sales processes, the next step is to make sure all of those processes are reflected within Sugar. Doing so can save reps time through automation, provide reps with resources that help them win more deals, and enable sales management to understand high-level KPIs at a glance.

Below, we outline three very basic things you should do within SugarCRM to make sure your processes are aligned with your software.

Create custom fields and layouts in SugarCRM

Sugar comes with certain out-of-the-box fields ready for you to use. But each organization has different field needs because of their industry use cases, target market, products lines, internal processes, and more. It’s easy to create new, custom fields to meet your organization’s needs.

For example, you may want to add in a field for “Logo Permission” so your team can quickly identify which client logos can be used in slide decks, on marketing collateral, or on the website.

There will likely be some default fields that your organization does not use. However, we do not suggest deleting any default fields because some of your other fields may be unknowingly dependent on them. You can always remove fields from a layout if the information is unnecessary for your reps to know.

Update your Sales Stage fields in SugarCRM

Just like fields, Sugar Sell offers suggestions on what stages you should use to track your sales cycle. But for various reasons, you may need to remove some of those pre-baked stages, or add new ones in. It is important that you gain a clear understaning of your sales process and how your sales reps/leadership want to track and view sales stage progress. From there, it is simple to update the Sales Stage field values available for use in your Sugar instance.

Setting up automation in SugarCRM

The powerful automation capabilities within the Sugar platform enable sales teams to execute sales plays, sales methodologies, guided selling, lead nurturing, and more with just a click.

For example, you could automatically trigger an email to be sent to a prospect when they are moved from one Sales Stage to another. Automation is a great tool you can use to reduce busy work, minimize user error, and make your sales processes more efficient.

These three things are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to setting up and customizing your SugarCRM instance to compliment your sales and business processes.

Step 3: Integrate third-party systems into SugarCRM

We know that SugarCRM is not the only tool your sales team uses. You likely have a long list of third-party apps and integrations that you use in congruence with SugarCRM to drive efficiency and collaboration.

Faye alone has a list of 30+ SugarCRM integrations and add-ons that you can take advantage of on Sugar Outfitters. There are an endless number of integrations and it’s important that you sit down and understand which of your third-party apps (and associated data) you need to sync with your Sugar system to drive sales success.

Below, we highlight a few of our most popular listings on Sugar Outfitters for apps that you should integrate into your system for improved processes organization-wide.

HubSpot SugarCRM Integration

Remember when we talked about the marketing to sales handoff? If your marketing team uses HubSpot as their marketing automation platform, this integration is a great example of how you can automate that process so that your sales reps get leads as soon as they become marketing qualified.

Learn more about this integration here >

Zoom SugarCRM Integration

If your sales team uses Zoom to conduct sales calls, this integration is a must-have. It allows your reps to make Zoom calls from within SugarCRM and even syncs critical data from calls right into SugarCRM for future use. Your reps will thank you for saving them the time and hassle of switching between applications just to make and log a call.

Learn more about this integration here >

QuickBooks SugarCRM Integration

One key to making reps and clients happier is to simplify your accounting processes. If you use QuickBooks, this integration is a no-brainer—it allows you to automatically synchronize your customers, inventory items, invoice history, and sales orders between QuickBooks and SugarCRM. This will reduce double work and minimize data inconsistencies.

Learn more about this integration here >

No matter which technologies you use to amplify the sales process, it is important to sync the data from those apps into SugarCRM so that your reps have a 360º view of their prospects and customers. When they spend less time switching between multiple applications and copying data between applications, they have more time to sell.

Step 4: Take advantage of our SugarCRM managed service

Does all of this sound a bit overwhelming? This is a lot to handle internally, especially if you don’t have a team of SugarCRM experts to rely on. That’s why we created Axia.

Axia is an annual SugarCRM managed service subscription that provides our clients with ongoing SugarCRM strategy, support, training, and optimization. Plus, Axia clients gain exclusive access to our full suite of SugarCRM integrations, enhancements, and software tools. In short, Axia is the easy way to make SugarCRM work better for your sales team.