To be successful and profitable, a business needs satisfied customers and growing sales. Sounds simple, but how do you achieve it? The answer is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Case studies confirm that the implementation of CRM increases sales, improves customer service, and reduces the number of errors and losses.

What is CRM? CRM system is software that allows you to automate and simplify business processes. It helps you store, collect, and analyze customer data to create more effective marketing campaigns and build customer relationships.

For managers, this system is useful because it gives control and visibility of what is happening in sales. For employees, it is a convenient tool that automates sales and greatly simplifies accounting, order processing, and interaction with customers. Using CRM can be beneficial for businesses of any size. Keep reading to explore the main areas where you can use CRM solutions.

Reason #1. Work on a single system with unique customer records

  • Use a single system database. By creating a centralized database of information, you get a tool that helps you find, organize, and analyze customer information as you collect it and identify trends, patterns, and insights. With this single system, you can integrate multiple and fragmented functions ranging across sales, customer service, marketing, business units, etc.
  • Integrate Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). CRM empowers your employees to provide fast, informed and more personalized customer service. You can reduce manual data entry, inconsistencies between sales and inventory, increase the accuracy of quotes and the information available about each customer. The implementation of CRM provides more opportunities than keeping records in Google spreadsheets and Excel. By reducing duplicate records and deals, CRM systems solve reporting fraud and performance problems.

Reason #2. Optimize the sales process

  • Save time and cost. CRM allows you to keep track of new leads, schedule a date and time to contact new prospects, book appointments, send follow-ups, manage quotes and orders, set reminders, and identify stalled opportunities. In addition, it gives more time to focus on work only humans can handle. Opportunity management, scheduling and contact tools help your employees to make the most of their work time.
  • Simplify communication not only between your business and customers but also between employees. CRM makes it easy to see how other employees are speaking with a potential customer, gives your team a tool to maintain a unified brand voice.
  • Increase sales and productivity. A CRM tool can help you streamline your sales process, build a sales pipeline, automate key tasks, and analyze all your sales data in one centralized place. Sales process automation allows you to minimize manual labor on routine operations, control processes and management of sales staff.

Reason #3. Reduce customer acquisition costs

  • Link sales activities with marketing campaigns. It is easy to profile important target lists so you can create personalized campaigns, target specific markets based on changes in competitive behavior, launch new products for the right audience, and get sales representatives to the right deals faster.
  • Deliver high customer satisfaction levels. Customer satisfaction information, including surveys and ratings, can help you determine how to improve or change the products and services.
  • Increase your referrals and word-of-mouth advocacy sales with an integrated CRM. The detailed database allows you to know your customers’ preferences.

It is important not only to have CRM in the company but to set it up and work with it, to make the most of its functionality.

Reason #4. Provide better customer service and enable a self-service customer portal

  • Provide your potential or current customers with excellent service, you need to respond quickly to their queries and grievances. The implementation of the system allows you to reduce the response time to the clients’ requests and the number of missed and unanswered messages to 0%.
  • Work with the escalations quicker. The sales representatives can escalate the issue to the CRM software. They can easily identify a senior representative who may be free to answer the call and access the information stored in CRM within minutes.
  • Build a self-service portal. It will ensure a quick turnaround time for creating and resolving cases without adding pressure to your contact centers. As a result, it increases the efficiency of employees. They can serve more customers. This saves the company the cost of hiring a larger team to work with clients.

Reason #5. Track, plan, and forecast better

  • Collect and organize data about prospective and current customers using the CRM’s dashboard and reporting features. It allows employees to automate and manage their pipelines and processes. CRM can also help your team members evaluate their performance, track their quotas and goals, and check their progress on each project immediately.
  • Review your past performance and strategically plan. Using the automated sales reports in the CRM software, you can identify key trends and get an idea of what to expect from your future sales cycle performance, while adjusting your goals and metrics to suit those projections.
  • Focus on the best details. CRM gives a full picture of every deal. You have complete information about the client and their sales history. With proper management of this data, the number and speed of transactions increase.

The Bottom Line

CRM makes customers happier and saves your time and money. If you don’t want to compromise on providing the best services to your clients, then it’s a good idea to invest in the CRM software. Quickness, speed of reaction, and modern advertising tools give a powerful breakthrough even to the most perfect “manual” sales system. With CRM, it is easier to keep putting efforts to develop and improve customer relationships to retain them.