CRM

The 6 Benefits of CRM - Customer Relationship Management

· 4 min read

6 Benefits of CRM Sales Persons Can’t Afford to Ignore

The sales world is naturally competitive and is bound to remain so. Any sales team or person who wants to be successful has to find ways to square up with the competition. Many sales personnel are not ignorant of this fact and have sought different ways to remain competitive. In their confidence in technology, they have trusted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to be able to help them. Indeed, it really can.
However, many organizations who have adopted CRM software have done so just to follow a seemingly popular trend not because they are exactly sure how helpful the tool can be to them. Similarly, many organizations have not adopted CRM tools at all either because they don’t know what benefits lie in the use of CRM tools or because they think that they don’t need it.
Here, the core benefits of using CRM software have been highlighted for organizations and salespersons to be aware of what they stand to gain by using one and vice-versa.

CRM Makes Lead Management and Conversion Faster

Sales are much about leads. The sales process typically involves lead generation, management, and conversion; but without information, lead generation itself will be a hard move. As a tool that contains customers’ data, CRM software helps sales persons with faster lead generation by giving
them access to different information about customers or potential ones. This information thus accessed can be categorized into preferences, age, sex, taste, and buying behavior. Armed with customers’ information that a CRM tool can provide, salespersons are better placed to manage leads
and device better and faster conversion strategies. In the same vein, a CRM tool allows a sales team to constantly update the stage and status of every lead, thereby making it possible for a sales manager or a colleague to review and suggest further actions for closure.

It Comes Handy in Activity Management

A typical sales team has many activities including meetings and tasks to manage. Proper management of these meetings and tasks helps them to plan their day. CRM software comes handy in this regard. It contains a management feature that enables a sales team to manage all the necessary activities, already-performed as well as yet-to-be-performed ones. This feature enables a sales team to keep track of tasks, appointments, meetings, calls, and more. This way, a sales team attends to all the scheduled activities in their order of priority.

It’s Useful in Sales Forecasting

The ability to make correct predictions could be one thing that will differentiate between a sales team that is performing excellently and another one that is not performing so excellently. With CRM’s predictive technology, a sales team can make an accurate forecast of what the future will look like on the basis of today’s market variables like buying trends and customer behavior. This way, a sales team is better positioned to decide the best sales strategy to adopt.
The forecasting feature of CRM also helps a sales team in reducing the number of risks they get into. In addition, since this feature makes it possible for salespersons to know the likely future target audience beforehand, it enables them to know the content that will resonate with that audience, which is their lead/prospect. With this knowledge, a sales team or person will ultimately be able to pitch better.

Encourages Collaboration between Sales and Marketing

Customers want nothing but satisfaction. A satisfied customer is likely to be a loyal one and a business organization that wants to make customer satisfaction a priority – who doesn’t? – has to make sure that its sales and marketing teams collaborate in their activities. As two sides of the same coin, the two teams will produce better results in terms of exceptional customer relationship when
they work together.
The best way to ensure this collaboration is to adopt a CRM tool. With a CRM tool, a sales and a marketing team can work together to move leads in the lead pipeline. A typical CRM has its marketing feature which makes it possible for a marketing team to automatically transmit leads to the sales team. The sales team will then manage the leads and work towards converting them into sales.

Improves Growth and Productivity

Every business establishment wants to scale up in both growth and productivity because that is one of the ways to ensure their continued existence. In many ways, a CRM tool can help an organization to achieve that dream. For one thing, CRM software eliminates repetitive manual tasks and replaces them with automated ones that make for an easy and seamless workflow. Secondly, with a CRM tool, staff jumping between systems is avoided as workflows including contracts, events, projects, services, and more are managed within one interface. CRM also ensures improved productivity through better time management.
Also, worthy of note is the fact that CRM creates a platform for a salesperson to update lead revenue thereby making him or her focus and close it. It also enables a sales team to keep a record of strategies that work, which can be put to future use with little or no modification.

Helps Sales Persons to Track Sales Interaction

With a CRM tool, salespersons are able to keep track of conversations with customers as well as other customer interactions. Ideally, CRMs can be used to record response time, analyze purchase patterns, monitor the rate of retentions, and update a conversation note which helps salespersons in further conversations. Customer interactions, as well as salespersons’ conversation, are critical to maintaining good customer relationship. Therefore, anything that enhances them should not be
ignored for any reason.
The sales landscape is a constantly changing one. The internet, social media, and modern technology
generally are the major factors detecting changes in this landscape. Therefore, it would be unwise for any salesperson or team to refuse to turn to technology for some help. CRM tools are ultimately that technology built to help salespersons and teams scale up and remain competitive. Explored above are different ways CRMs are beneficial to organizations so you’ll know why you should be using one.