What is a CRM and how will it benefit your business?
Fundamentally, Customer Relationship Management is the process of managing interactions with existing, past, and potential customers on a more intentional and meaningful basis. It’s a company-wide business strategy designed to improve revenues and profitability, reduce costs, and increase customer loyalty. Whether you are a B2B or B2C business, a CRM system helps companies stay connected to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability.
How can a CRM impact and improve your sales and business operations?
1. Centralized Customer Data Organization
Finding customers is not an easy task, especially with the cancellation of many in-person networking events. When you do find potential customers, there comes the challenge of establishing and maintaining strong relationships. CRM software will help you centralize, optimize, and streamline your communication. The more you know about your customers, the better relationship you can foster and grow. Better relationships = high customer satisfaction.
A report by Software Advice claims that 74% of all CRM adopters found that CRM “offered improved access to customer data”; meanwhile 61% of sales distributors claimed CRM allowed them easier access to key customer information and data. The CRM is like a cheat sheet providing easy access to pertinent information like email communications, projects, sales, orders, contracts, and all in one place!
2. Better Segmentation
Everyone wants to deal with a perfect audience and you can do this by segmenting your customers and prospects into target audiences. The CRM will allow you to break down your data by categories and specific criteria enabling you to create focused lists. Specific campaigns can be created and then analyzed so that you can offer specific services and improve your sales pitch to speak directly to that group of prospects about a specific need they have. Generally speaking, the CRM will help you know better who is really interested in what you have to offer, who is on the fence, and who is not a qualified lead.
3. Better Customer Retention
Aside from helping to organize prospective clients, the CRM system is just as important in nurturing the relationships you do have. A study performed by Capterra, revealed that 47% of CRM users claimed that customer retention and satisfaction were significantly impacted by the use of a CRM system.
You have the ability to set reminders for follow-up emails, appointments, birthdays, or any other task you want a reminder for. You set it, forget it and you’ll get a reminder! Keeping an existing customer is 6 or 7 times cheaper than getting a new one, claims the report by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company
4. Better Anticipation of Needs
Bottom line, it’s easier to cross-sell and up-sell when you’ve been tracking your clients’ activities. A key component of a CRM is to help your salespeople sell more and sell faster. Whether you’re a B2C company and you track orders, complaints, re-orders or you’re a B2B company and you need quick access to contracts or email communication about your last conversation, a CRM with centralized data will help plan and inform your next interactions.
5. Better and Faster Communication
When using a CRM system, there’s one place to search for customer details, see a particular deal’s status, and view sales data. One source of truth will improve communication and quality information knowledge transfer for a particular customer or account.
A CRM makes communication easier by tracking messages and attachments like contracts, specific order details, etc. from different people in real-time. If anyone needs to access the information, it has what they need when they need it, without having to track it down in various locations like email, Slack, your computer, etc. Having a central location for sales information will help provide seamless communication within your organization and promote better customer service.
6. Better Insight into Revenue Tracking
A great CRM system will have a sales pipeline that is customized to the company’s specific sales process. Each salesperson can be assigned to an account or contact and funnel their prospects through the sales process and correlate costs to each business opportunity. This cost data will provide a visual snapshot of where prospects are in the sales process. A sales pipeline will show how many deals salespeople are expected to close in a given week, month, or year and how close someone is to reaching their sales quota.
7. Better Reporting
A CRM provides a centralized location for all customer data with innumerable amounts of reports to analyze.
- How many sales were closed last month?
- How many potential customers engaged with the last campaign that was implemented?
- How many people opened your newsletter?
- Year over year sales, client retention, new customers?
All the data you put in, you will get out in reports. It’s magical!
What does this mean for your business?
Processes create efficiencies; efficiencies create profit. The ability to have a centralized tool that will automate and organize your business will give you back time to spend where it matters most – building relationships. Without relationships, you don’t have a business. Anticipating your customers’ needs is invaluable; providing clear and accurate data to make business decisions is invaluable.
SharpSpring, Our Recommended CRM
At this point, you might be thinking, ok, this sounds great, but how do I afford this? Does my business really need this? What platform is good for my business? I have great news! We’ve done the homework for you.
YES! Every business needs a CRM. Evolve Systems has been a silver-certified SharpSpring partner for a few years. Not only do we use it for our own business, we onboard many of our clients to the platform as well. SharpSpring melds the sales CRM with marketing automation to create a seamless communication engine between sales and marketing. We know the platform well and would be a partner to help you understand and utilize SharpSpring for your sales and marketing needs or if you prefer, we can manage your campaigns for you.
At Evolve Systems one of our most important assets is our relationships with each other and with our clients. Our relationship-first mentality enables us to provide our best recommendations by providing education and clarity to our partners.
Optimize your sales process and start elevating your business goals with a CRM. Get in touch to get started!
