Everyone knows CRMs are valuable. The stats are clear: businesses using CRM are 86% more likely to exceed sales goal, with 57% reporting increased sales revenue. (CRM.org)

But here's what most ad sales organizations miss: Your CRM is only as good as its connection to the rest of your business.

The Hard Truth About CRM in Ad Sales

While your sales team lives in your CRM, critical information they need lives elsewhere:

• Inventory availability data
• Rate cards and pricing models
• Campaign performance metrics
• Billing and reconciliation information

This disconnect creates invisible costs:

• Proposals that take days instead of minutes
• Manual data entry between systems
• Lost revenue from pricing and availability errors
• Forecasting that never matches reality

Our most successful partners - including Walgreens, Home Depot, United, and Wayfair - discovered that CRM only drives real results when it's seamlessly integrated throughout the entire ad sales lifecycle.

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Two Paths to Meaningful Integration

Option 1: An Ad Sales Platform with Native CRM Capabilities

A highly efficient approach is having CRM functionality built directly into your broader Ad Sales platform. This means:

• One source of truth for accounts, contacts, and deals
• Proposal creatiin with real-tine inventory and pricing data
• Performance monitoring with live delivery metrics
• Advanced forecasting that combines pipeline, booked, and delivered revenue

The benefits? Fewer systems, lower costs, and sales teams that close deals faster.

Option 2: Maximizing Your Existing CRM through Deep Integration

Already have a significant investment in Salesforce, MS Dynamics, or Zoho? The key is creating true bidirectional integration with your Ad Sales platform through:

• Native connectors (not bolt-on "integrations")
• Flexible data mapping that fits your unique workflow
• Real-time, two-way data synchronization
• Automated workflow handoffs between systems

The Results: Beyond Traditional CRM

When your CRM is truely integrated with your ad operations:

• Proposals that took days now take minutes
• Deal velocity increases dramatically
• Performance visibility becomes automatic
• Revenue leaders & Finance teams finally get accurate forecasting

Companies that optimize their order-to-cash process, including CRM, improve productivity by over 40% and can reduce revenue impacting errors by 80% (Placements.io, Invoicera.com)

At Placements.io, we've built the industry's leading Ad Sales platform. We've built native CRM functionality and have seamless integrations with your existing CRM vendors. The result? Businesses get to choose their best path to less friction, more deals, and faster revenue.

Ready to stop treating your CRM like an island? Let's talk.