Handling Multiple Sales Channels
We have two distinctly different sales channels:
- Direct Sales - we manage the entire relationship with the customer. Managed by our Direct Sales Representatives.
- Channel Sales - channel partners manage the relationship with the customer. Both the relationship with the channel partners and, frequently, participation with those end-users are managed by our Channel Sales Managers.
The data we want to collect, track and manage is different for each channel. Optimizing with custom fields for both types of channels gives a ton of irrelevant data for both. I've investigated Zoho CRM and they have an elegant way of covering this with layout templates based on account type. Pipedrive does not offer this - nor does it allow to "hide" fields (custom of system) based on role. One size does not fit all the way the system works today.
So how do I cover this in Pipedrive?
- Should I conclude Pipedrive is not the solution for mixed direct and channel sales and look at alternatives?
- Should I consider setting up two companies under one account and optimize each for purpose
- In that case, how do I then handle the inevitable accounts that need "shared" viewing? is there a license model that allows main licenses for users in their own company - and no-cost "view" licenses for the other?
- How do others manage mixed channel environments?
Comments
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I definitely would try to avoid the separate company setup -- it gets tricky to manage.
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@Jan Visser besides the set of custom fields per login, what are some of the other things you'd like to be able to do but can't do right now and why would you need those? Happy to learn from you so I can share it with the team and see if some things are in the plans already.
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@Mike van der Valk - honestly, I would like to be able to create role specific layout templates to more clearly organize.
- Custom fields supported in all objects (leads, persons, organizations, activities, products)
- Custom fields required, hidden or locked. This should really apply for all fields, not just custom.
- On object basis be able to create layouts you can assign to users/roles (so layouts for leads, layouts for organization etc)
- Layouts include a set of fields (custom and standard - required, hidden or locked)
This allows for each role a optimized experience
- Potential roles with need for unique experience I could think of
- Direct Sales (+management)
- Channel Sales (+management)
- Product Management / Marketing
- Technical Support / Project Managers
- Finance
Plus create custom menus you can link to roles and/or layouts so you can customize the items on the menu and its order.
I have a parallel install of a different CRM running at the moment. I much prefer PD's UI - but the ability to customize the system for my organization with tool B is at this point superior.
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Jan Visser said:
@Mike van der Valk - honestly, I would like to be able to create role specific layout templates to more clearly organize.
- Custom fields supported in all objects (leads, persons, organizations, activities, products)
- Custom fields required, hidden or locked. This should really apply for all fields, not just custom.
- On object basis be able to create layouts you can assign to users/roles (so layouts for leads, layouts for organization etc)
- Layouts include a set of fields (custom and standard - required, hidden or locked)
This allows for each role a optimized experience
- Potential roles with need for unique experience I could think of
- Direct Sales (+management)
- Channel Sales (+management)
- Product Management / Marketing
- Technical Support / Project Managers
- Finance
Plus create custom menus you can link to roles and/or layouts so you can customize the items on the menu and its order.
I have a parallel install of a different CRM running at the moment. I much prefer PD's UI - but the ability to customize the system for my organization with tool B is at this point superior.
Hi @Jan Visser
I truly love your detailed answers and explanation. Feel free to mention the name of tool B, we can always use some inspiration as we're trying to make Pipedrive better every single day. What you're saying makes a lot of sense to me and I'll be sure it reaches the right people here internally.
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Hi we are experiencing the same problem; larger companies need lots of specific details to various pipelines. I just posted about this. As we offer more and more services, we will need to collect more and more data for various pipelines. It might come to the stage where we need to switch CRMs as it comes to complicated for users to find the relevant fields. CRMs were created to save time, but if we end up aimlessly scrolling through to find only applicable fields, then something has gone wrong.
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Hi we are experiencing the same problem; larger companies need lots of specific details to various pipelines. I just posted about this. As we offer more and more services, we will need to collect more and more data for various pipelines. It might come to the stage where we need to switch CRMs as it comes to complicated for users to find the relevant fields. CRMs were created to save time, but if we end up aimlessly scrolling through to find only applicable fields, then something has gone wrong.
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I have the same challenge. I'm a FinTech and want to use PipeDrive to manage sales leads and investor leads in two completely different channels.
Should I conclude from Mark vdV's responses to Jan's questions that this is not possible?
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Is silence the answer?
We have the same challenges. Going to investigate Zoho as we are a channel-first model.
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Laura Pickering said:
Is silence the answer?
We have the same challenges. Going to investigate Zoho as we are a channel-first model.
We have done the same.
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