Investing in customer relationship management (CRM) software is absolutely essential for small- and medium-sized businesses that want to up their sales performance. It helps sales departments understand their clients, tailor their marketing efforts, and more. If your business isn’t using CRM yet, here are five reasons why you should.
Grows with your business
The ol’ Rolodex may have been useful for managing a few clients, but you’ll need a much better solution if you plan to maintain relationships with hundreds, possibly thousands, more. CRM scales with your business, meaning it can handle larger data sets and more clients as you expand your sales operation.
Organizes your data
CRM software acts as a central database for all your sales records and transactions. This means important customer information can be retrieved in just a few clicks rather than by rifling through thousands of documents, sticky notes, and disorganized cabinets. And since CRM is hosted in the cloud, sales data, customer interactions, and other actionable information are available for the entire company.
Improves customer service
Your sales team could be the most persuasive individuals in the world, but this means nothing if they can’t recall anything about their clients and their preferences. When your sales staff follows up on leads or existing customers, CRM will automatically retrieve contact history, past purchases, and customer preferences from your client database and display them on a single page during the call.
Armed with detailed customer information, sales representatives will be able to recommend products and services that meet the client’s needs. So instead of struggling through a sales call, marketing employees can focus on delivering a professional sales pitch.
Streamlines your sales funnel
CRM comes equipped with workflow management functions, supporting your sales pipeline in a number of ways. For example, you can configure your CRM to send instant follow-up emails when a lead visits a particular product page. You can even use automation to track where certain leads are in the sales pipeline and delegate the task to one of your sales closers.
Analyzes sales data
With real-time sales information, business managers can track marketing campaigns and adjust their strategy accordingly. For instance, you might notice that click-through-rates for promotional emails and company newsletters are higher during Tuesday afternoon than Friday night. Having this information can help you focus your marketing efforts and message to generate more leads.
In addition, you can use CRM to analyze customer calling activity, market demographics, lead conversion rates, and key performance indicators to influence future business decisions.
Understanding your customers can put you several steps ahead of the competition. If you need to manage contacts, eliminate time-consuming procedures, and improve your sales performance, CRM is the perfect business solution.
Contact us today to find out whether CRM is the right fit for your business.