Sponsored content by Reed McCord, Founder & CEO at First Bite
Here are some statistics that should make every leader pause.
Seventy percent of companies fail to integrate their sales plays into associated tech, like CRMs. Even among organizations that do use CRMs successfully, the tools remain inefficient, with nearly half of all sales reps reporting that
more than 20% of their time is spent on operational tasks like manual data entry.
Why do many teams find their CRMs a hindrance rather than a help? Two pervasive issues plague the platforms:
- Big-name CRM tools are built to support any industry. From construction firms to tech companies to preschools to CPG brands, they’re all using the same CRM. When a tool can serve anyone, it won’t serve your team’s unique needs without costly customization. Even once you’re done modifying, blank-slate tools require constant data entry and upkeep.
- Most legacy platforms are stuck in the past. If your CRM’s interface dates back to the Windows 98 era, it’s lacking native AI features that automate tasks and eliminate the need for time-consuming data management.
Add onto that the complexities of the foodservice space, which stymie traditional CRMs:
- Scattered menu data. To sell directly to operators, you need to know what’s on their menus. Unfortunately, there’s no centralized location to find this information.
- Chain door architecture. How do you define “Subway” in your CRM? Is it the 20,000 individual franchise doors? Corporate HQ? A single franchise location? It’s all of the above, which is difficult to capture.
- High churn. Doors close, chains shutter, and decision-makers leave their posts. The outreach information your team painstakingly collected last month could already be stale.
- Disparate data sources. You’re gathering data from GPOs, brokers, individual operators, and more — it comes in many formats, and it’s near-impossible to codify and unify.
Put a generic product into a highly complex and specific market, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. That’s why many foodservice sales teams are so turned off by their CRMs that they revert to tracking pipeline in a spreadsheet. But an alternative is emerging, and forward-thinking foodservice sales teams are awakening to the power of industry-specific CRMs.
How a CRM built for foodservice could transform your sales process
What stands between you and your real work — that is, building relationships with operators and closing deals?
Whether it’s finding a workaround to make your generic CRM function or aimlessly searching the internet for operator contacts, chances are, whatever your biggest sticking point is, a foodservice-specific CRM could solve it.
A CRM that comes pre-loaded with the customer data you need
Any salesperson will tell you that data entry eats up way too much time. While it’s not efficient for industry-agnostic CRMs to provide data for every business on earth, CRMs serving only foodservice professionals have an incentive to include industry-specific data. Offering a tool that comes pre-populated with rich operator data is a differentiator. Think of the potential time saved!
Customers using First Bite’s default-full CRM, which provides door-level menu data and contact details for decision-makers, regularly reclaim six-plus hours per rep, per week. That’s hundreds of hours per year a team can redirect from data entry to relationship building.
Native workflows built for foodservice
Industry-agnostic CRMs are generic by design. They can theoretically do anything, but that means investing serious time in customization or bolting on additional solutions to meet your needs. And the old-school tools haven’t embraced the full potential of AI-powered automation yet.
A modern CRM built for manufacturers can do things differently, incorporating essential foodservice workflows right in the product. Think:
- Rebate management. Imagine the ability to build custom offers to drive new orders or reward long-term customers within your CRM, all within minutes.
- Contact research. A pre-filled CRM offers validated email addresses for industry contacts. No more tedious Google searching and copy-pasting.
- Email integration and sequencing. Personalized, automated campaigns with follow-ups that feel like one-to-one communication are a click or two away.
We see foodservice-specific workflows like these paying dividends for our clients. First Bite customers identify three times more qualified decision-makers and enjoy six times higher email response rates on their personalized outreach versus typical campaigns.
Built-in account forecasting that understands complex relationships
The relationship complexity inherent in foodservice sales makes it difficult to retrofit a generic CRM to manage forecasting properly. The relational layers muddy the waters and make the “account” label difficult to define.
With a foodservice CRM, that complexity is accounted for. It understands how to slice and dice data to serve foodservice teams, with features like:
- Door-level opportunity sizing. View the potential volume and revenue for each location, including hidden gems that might be flying under the radar.
- Pipeline reporting segmentation. Analyze pipeline performance by sub-channel, sales rep, and product to understand where your revenue is really coming from.
- Uniform methodology for forecasting. Aggregate all accounts and create reliable, consistent company-wide projections.
Pipeline visibility matters. Sales leaders can spot problems early, and reps prioritize the right deals based on real opportunity sizing.
It’s time to put your CRM to work for you
For many years, foodservice sales professionals had no choice but to rely on generic, outmoded technology to manage their pipeline. These CRMs demanded untold hours of work from sales teams, but no one had a better option.
Now, a new era of foodservice-specific CRMs are flipping the script, allowing sales teams to put the tools to work for them. These CRMs will finally allow salespeople to reemerge from the gloom of their tech stack and get back to what they do best. The future of foodservice sales is personal, intuitive, scalable, and brighter than ever.
Reed McCord is the founder and CEO of First Bite, the ultimate foodservice sales tool that unifies prospecting, CRM, rebates, and operator data all in one place. As the second business hire at Impossible Foods, where he spent nearly a decade helping grow that business, his vision in building First Bite was to provide other foodservice professionals with the product he wished he’d had during those years. Learn more or schedule a demo at https://www.firstbite.io/.