A large part of your sales team’s day will be spent nurturing leads and overseeing the customers journey through the buying process. To help with this, they are probably going to use an operational sales process.
Something else your sales team might be using is a CRM or Customer Relationship Management process. But are they using it to its full advantage? A CRM is so much more than a collection of customer information.
It is possible to integrate your CRM into every step of the sales process. Use it efficiently and you will speed up the journey from lead to customer. Your CRM can help to:
– Build deeper relationships with your customers
– Build relationships quicker than before
– Help your sales team close more deals
– Encourage your customers to return time and time again
What is a CRM?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a process of managing any interactions that take place between your company and its current or potential customers.
There are several steps involved in the process, each of which has a specific purpose. It might be to engage customers who already buy products from you. CRM can also be used to increase new prospects, or to help discover ways to increase sales.
The ultimate aim of a CRM process is to improve relationships with customers, simplify the sales process, and ultimately increase profits.
8 Ways the CRM Process Can Help Your Sales Team
The CRM process has all the tools you need to build relationships with prospective customers, guide them through the sales channel, and then turn them into paying customers.
It also helps improve communication and engagement, strengthen relationships with them and increase customer loyalty.
1) Formalise Your Target Customer
If you can understand the goals of your customers, it will be much easier to provide them with the necessary stepping stones. The CRM process can help you to define your target customer and determine their needs.
When your sales team understands their pain points, they can identify ways to address them and better serve their needs. If your product or service solves a customer problem, it is more likely to lead to a successful sale.
The information contained within the CRM helps you find the best way to approach your customers.
2) Qualifying Your Leads
Your sales team is going to be most effective when converting prospects into customers. To ensure they don’t waste time trying to convert a prospect that is unlikely to become a customer, the lead has to be qualified.
You can use a CRM tool to check that none of the sales team are wasting time trying to convert a lead that is already being worked on by another member of the team.
3) Keep Track of Any Sales Opportunities
If your CRM process is efficient, it allows you to monitor each stage of the sales cycle and any activities required to move prospects from one stage to another, until the deal is complete. If your sales team is a large one it can be difficult to track sales.
The CRM process provides the right kind of data to make tracking possible and more effective. Quantitative data is a way of tracking the numbers, as in how much time the team are spending on a lead, how many deals were closed and where the leads originate from.
The CRM process also provides qualitative data which is more subjective. Information includes why people might want to purchase your products or services, how well your sales team are performing and why customers might be choosing not to buy from you.
4) Creating and Organising Customer Records
You can use your CRM tool for the creation and organising of customer records. In it you can store a wide range of information relating to your leads.
5) Issuing and Tracking Proposals
To issue and track proposals, you will need proposal software, but you can easily connect it to the CRM system.
Once connected it makes creating and sharing proposals very easy as it can be done directly from the CRM.
Because you’re sharing proposals from the CRM, you’re able to see when a prospect has opened a proposal and whether they took any action.
6) To Log Any Deals
When a customer accepts a proposal and the deal is closed, you log it into the database of the CRM. It is important to log all closed deals because it helps when it comes to forecasting. Logged data helps you make accurate predictions with regards to sales.
You will be better able to make informed decisions and make predictions about long and short-term performance. With this information you can allocate resources more efficiently and make predictions about sales revenue.
It is just as important to log lost deals as this can help determine why the deal failed.
7) Record Customer Objections
Your CRM should document any customer complaints. The same applies to red flags. With such information logged in the CRM, the sales team can develop strategies to overcome obstacles.
If your sales team is on the large side, documenting objections and complaints is even more important. It is possible for a lead to be passed from one rep to another and if each rep knows about any objections the customer might have before communicating with them, it makes for a better customer experience.
8) Coordination and Evaluation of Team Performance
For any system to be effective there has to be a way of coordinating, monitoring and evaluating how well the team is performing.
This can be done very effectively with a project management tool. If you use your CRM effectively, it makes the sales process more efficient for both your sales team and you.
Final Thoughts
It is essential that sales teams learn to take full advantage of their CRM tools. They can be used to optimize daily schedules and prioritize tasks to ensure prospects are guided through the sales funnel effectively to close more deals and develop a stronger customer base.
You May Like To Read:
- Top 9 Benefits of CRM Software in the Moving Industry
- How to Effectively Manage Your Customer Data
- Improve The Shopping Experience & Boost Your Sales with Catalogs
Author Bio: This article was written by Seamus Dunne of Conversation Piece. Seamus has over two decades experience working in sales and has utilised CRM tools to build Conversation Piece into the leading supplier of B2B VoIP Phone Systems in the Irish market.
