The success of your business depends critically on a customer relationship management platform (CRM). You also need it for effective marketing campaigns and to provide exceptional customer service. When researching CRM, you might realize that it’s a bit of a complicated topic. There are three types of CRM you could consider.
This guide will help you decide whether to invest in the best CRM software. In this post, we’ll explain how CRM platforms can provide a great return on investment for small and medium businesses.
Sales growth
Using a CRM can increase your sales and grow your revenue, which is why your company should use one. From initial contact to deal closure, CRMs help you set up a repeatable sales funnel. By monitoring sales at each stage, you and your sales managers can intervene where it will be most effective. The purpose of this is to ensure that prospective new customers convert instead of abandoning the process. Moreover, some CRM platforms allow you to plan your next move in order to close deals. Using AI-powered recommendations, Freshsales recommends specific actions to help land a sale, such as sending follow-up emails to highly engaged leads.
Enhanced Productivity
In addition to enhancing your sales team’s productivity, CRMs offer several other benefits. In this way, sales reps can approach a greater number of leads each day and dedicate more time to ensuring that deals close on time. You can automate sales workflows on most CRM platforms, reducing the time that sales reps spend on repetitive tasks. In the event that a lead does not respond to a first outreach email, your CRM may automatically send a follow-up email. Using CRMs can also save your team time by automatically scraping customer data from the web. You can also prevent leads from slipping through the cracks by using your CRM. A workflow can notify managers automatically when a lead enters the negotiation phase, for example. It is also possible to set up automated alerts for sales reps who don’t respond within a certain time frame to customers.
Closed deals in less time
You don’t generate revenue while prospects are in your sales funnel. You can increase revenue and free up your sales team to pursue new prospects by reducing the time it takes to move leads from contact to closing.
To reduce time to close, a CRM can help in two key ways:
- Assuring your sales process isn’t interrupted by downtime is easy with this tool.
- Platforms such as HubSpot offer e-signatures, quotes, and negotiation tools. To ensure your sales process doesn’t drag on for months, these tools can streamline negotiation and closing.
Each deal closure timeframe is automatically measured by most top CRM platforms. As your sales process changes, you can calculate an average and monitor how it changes.
Improved Lead Generation
In addition to finding better leads that are more likely to convert, CRM software can also help you improve your sales processes. The top CRM platforms offer lead scoring based on factors like how similar a lead is to your existing customers and how engaged a lead is with your sales representative. Your sales reps can focus their efforts on high-probability leads who are likely to convert. By doing this, you increase your deal win rate and spend less time and money chasing prospects who are unlikely to buy from you.
Improved customer service
Your customer service can be transformed with CRM software, so you can deliver exceptional customer experiences. The majority of platforms offer startup tools for setting up multichannel support, so that your customers can contact you via phone, email, or live chat. As well as dividing requests into tickets, some systems allow your service team to follow up on persistent problems. Customer service departments benefit from collaborative CRMs. You can use these platforms to facilitate information sharing between your marketing, sales, and customer service departments. In this way, service agents can provide personalized support based on all the information your sales team has shared with customers during the sales process.
Improved marketing campaigns
In order to determine how effective your marketing campaigns are, you can use a CRM. Depending on which campaigns produced the highest scores, you might want to double down on those types of campaigns in the future. Using software like Mortgage Broker CRM can also help your company better understand its customers. In addition to tracking your clients’ locations, income, interests, and age, these platforms allow you to track their demographics. You can use this information to target new audiences or better target your marketing efforts at your existing customers.
Improved customer retention
Customer relationship management systems can also help you retain and encourage repeat business from customers. You can send highly targeted email campaigns to your customers with a CRM for email marketing. When customers have bought from your company multiple times in the past, but haven’t done so recently, you can offer them a discount. To see what customers are saying about your company on social media, some CRM platforms monitor social media sentiment. It’s a great way for your business to engage with customers on a one-on-one basis.