You’ve heard a lot about CRM systems and how useful they are, but you haven’t gotten around to implementing one for your own company. You already have enough to train your staff on and you don’t need any more.
Well, you might be wrong. According to Hubspot, 75% of sales managers say that using a CRM system helps to increase their sales. And Salesforce claims that CRM system adoption increases sales by up to 29%.
A recent survey revealed that for companies that use a CRM, the average return on their technology investment is $8.71 for each dollar spent.
Nucleus Research
Why wouldn’t you want to avail of these increases?
But what is CRM?
In basic terms, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is software that holds all of your customer information. This includes contact information, purchase history, location, as well as keeping track of all of their interactions with your company. This ensures that you know exactly who contacted them, when and through what platform. It’s an invaluable source of information for everyone, not only in your sales team, but for marketing, management, and more.
And yes, it is something that your teams have to be trained to use, and this can be time consuming. But the benefits absolutely outweigh the time issues.
Here’s what you’re missing out on by not using a CRM system:
1. Speed
How often do your reps have to manually search their inbox to find the last email sent to a customer? Have they had to pour through customer information files just to find a telephone number to contact a customer? How about wasting precious selling time trying to find out from other reps who was the last to contact a customer?
This is all time that your reps could be spending doing what they’re supposed to be doing: selling. With a CRM system in place, these things aren’t an issue any more. All of your customer information, including any interaction or contact they have had with any rep, is available for all of your team to access at any time. Most CRM tools have a mobile option as well, so not being at your desk isn’t even an excuse to waste time.
2. Consistency
Your sales team need to be consistent when contacting customers. If one rep is taking over a territory from another rep, or dealing with a customer that someone else has spoken to a year or two before, they need to make sure that they know what kind of content was sent to each customer, how it was left the last time someone contacted them, how far into the sales funnel they are, and more.
Your CRM is the place that will hold all of this information. Your reps will be able to find out exactly what kinds of material the customer has received. This ensures there is no risk of repeat content being sent to them. They will know if a meeting was mentioned or set up so as to cut the risk of missing or double-booking an appointment.
Research by the Bridge Group into the top-performing B2B companies reveal how they organise their sales teams and process.
That is a lot of information and contacts to keep track of. Impossible without a CRM.
This is not only helpful for your reps, but for your management teams as well. Without a CRM, reps may have different ways of keeping track of their own activity and data. With one standard way of recording everything, it will be simple to keep track of all of the reps sales and activity without having to decipher different methods.
3. Personalization
Personalization is one of the most important aspects of your marketing and sales strategies. With all of your customer information in one place (read: in your CRM system) it’s simple to personalize your content to suit each customer.
You will know exactly what content has excited your customer previously, as well as what pages of your website they have visited and how many times, so you can tailor your message to suit this. You will know their location and industry, so sending them information relevant to where they are is easy.
What’s more, many CRM tools can help you in finding out what platform your customer prefers, so you know whether they’re more likely to click on a Twitter link, like a Facebook post, or open an email. All of this information will make it easier to build a relationship with your customer and make them feel special, so they are more likely to buy from you.
4. A better customer experience
Sales is all about the customer. If they’re not getting the best experience possible, then they’re less likely to buy, so you need to make sure that you’re doing everything you can to give them a great customer experience.
One way CRM makes this possible is if a customer gets in touch with you with a problem regarding you or your product. Customer issues need to be dealt with quickly so as not to anger the customer any more and risk losing them. With CRM, as soon as that customer contacts you, you will be able to find all of their information, their purchase history, their preferences, etc., at the click of a button, and hopefully with all of this information to hand, a satisfying resolution will be reached quickly enough to make the customer happy.
The faster you can deal with a customer, the better their experience is going to be. The more consistent and professional your customer sees you and your company, the better their experience is going to be. The more personalized their sales journey is, the more special and cared for they will feel, and the better their experience is going to be.
Happy customers are what your company wants. They recommend you to others, they gush about you on social media, and most importantly, they buy from you. Using a CRM system makes your customers happy, so why wouldn’t you use one?
