Why Is CRM Your Most Important Sales Tool?

All companies, irrespective of their size, have one common objective. And that is to sell their products or services. The companies which can afford to have, do have a dedicated sales force along with a marketing team to achieve this objective. But in today's fast-paced and highly competitive world, it is not enough. Companies need something more than that to be in contention in turbulent markets. Finding the right prospect and then converting it to a client in itself is a huge task. If salespeople keep on following the wrong prospect, they are going to waste both time and money.

As Jeff Blout has written in his book, Fanatical Prospecting, "The most expensive thing you can do is to spend your time with the wrong prospect". It is most expensive because you will be losing on multiple counts. You will be wasting your as well as your company's time and money. You will be losing out on the earnings that you could make if you had followed the right prospect. Finding, attracting, winning, and retaining customers is a never-ending challenge that all businesses face. This means that having a prospect database is the most crucial weapon you can have in your sales armory and you must have it.

Customer Relationship Management System

And it is where CRM comes into the picture. We always hear about the Client Relationship Management (CRM) system. In fact, it is a kind of buzzword in most modern organizations. But is CRM all about managing contact only? That's a wrong perception. You need CRM software that has tools for everyone in your sales team like Hubspot free CRM. For any business to succeed, relationships are its most important wheels because, without relationships, the business would remain stagnant. That is the reason managing your relationships with your customers assumes great significance. The CRM system plays a vital role in this. It helps you to keep track of your every interaction with your customer or leads. All the data pertaining to your customers is stored here and makes your life easier. But let's first understand what is CRM.

What Is CRM?

When people talk of CRM. they are referring to software that helps them in managing and improving their relationships with their customers. A customer relationship management system varies according to the department that is using it. For example, a marketing team may use this software for analyzing the response of people to their online campaigns. But when it comes to sales, a CRM system has more to do with streamlining the pipeline management and storing customer information database to drive more sales. But you need much more than that. Like, for example, a CRM like Hubspot will provide you with many additional tools like company insights, email tracking, live chats, deal tracking, meeting scheduler, reporting dashboard, etc. This will leave your team with enough time to focus on other important tasks.

A CRM is basically a cloud system that stores your complete client database including their names, contact information, and all the interactions you have with each one of them so that it becomes a single point of access for getting data. A good CRM can multiply the growth of your business by guiding your sales team in managing leads and closing deals.

A sales CRM manages all your interactions with your prospects and customers all through the sales process. It could be any type of interaction, direct or indirect. It keeps track of all the communications the sales team has with their prospects/customers and automatically organizes all the data. More importantly, a sales CRM makes the process of taking care of leads a lot easier. So, it becomes a centralized platform for the sales teams for prioritizing their activities so that they can pay equal attention to all their customers and none of their customers ever feels that they are being ignored.

What Are The Indications That You Need A CRM?

As discussed earlier, in this highly competitive age, sales teams need the best tools in their armory to boost sales and CRM is one tool that is immensely useful in achieving this objective. But if you are not using the CRM system, how will you know that you need a CRM? Here are some indications that will tell you that it's time you started using a Customer Relationship Management system:

Sales are dipping and your sales team is struggling to sell. You are unable to keep up with the business that your team is generating presently. You want to enter new markets but are unable to do so. You need a CRM so that it can sort out and prioritize sales leads and the sales team can concentrate on those opportunities which have the best chances of closing.

You are not able to retain customers. The customer retention rate is consistently going down. Your response time is increasing.

You are finding difficulty in building the customer profiles. You are unable to find all your customer information at one point and there is no visibility into the sales team's activities. That means more meetings to get more information and consumption of more time and effort which could be otherwise utilized in other important tasks.

Your best customers will expect some appreciation or gratitude from your end. But you have no clue who these best customers are. You have no system to identify them. A CRM will be able to locate these high-value accounts so that your sales team can nurture them and get recurring business from them.

Sales forecasting or planning is becoming difficult due to erroneous or inaccurate reports. A good CRM system will keep data accurate and in one place that is easily accessible so that your sales team will be doing what it should do i.e. selling instead of keeping generating reports.

These are clear indications that the time has come for you to start using a customer relationship management system and make life easier for yourself as well as your sales team and increase sales.

Uses Of CRM In Sales Management

The two biggest challenges that the salespeople and sales teams usually face are following up on the leads and converting them to customers and prioritizing their sales activities. CRM is the answer to these and many other critical issues. There is a lot of friction in the sales problem. Using Hubspot or similar CRM will help your team close more deals with less work.

CRM plays a very important role in sales management. Let's have a look at the uses of CRM in sales management:

• As soon as leads enter the database of your prospects, CRM tracks them and their progress throughout your sales process. In this, a CRM like Hubspot notifies your sales team immediately whenever a prospective client visits your website or opens an email. Then your salespeople can quickly follow up through live chat, email, or a phone call. You can see how important software like Hubspot can be for your sales process. This way you can ensure that your leads don't fall through the midway and are taken to their logical conclusion.
• A CRM provides you a safe storing space for your prospects' and customers' details like their names, contacts, activities with them, and your schedules with them in one place and these are accessible from multiple locations.
• When all information is available in one place, sales persons can set their priorities and schedule their activities accordingly. This enables them to contact key prospects on time and no customer feels ignored.
• Salespeople must understand the perspective of their prospects/customers. A CRM system tracks and gives them a clear view of all the touchpoints that have taken place between them and your company. Here, if you have a CRM like Hubspot, it will be more beneficial to you because it can scale up according to your needs irrespective of whether you are a single-person business or a big company.
• For better management, a CRM makes it easier for salespeople to make their periodical reports, which in turn not only saves time but also enables others to see the sales activities in progress.
• Through CRM, sales teams can segment the data, which helps them in identifying better opportunities.
• Through CRM, your sales pipelines are fully visible thus indicating the health of your business. The analytical tools in the CRM help you in optimizing your sales processes leading to a better customer experience.
• CRM tracks all the communication the salespeople have had with the customers. This enables them to know exactly when to contact the customer.
• Through CRM, the entire sales cycle can be streamlined which helps in closing the deals that are in the pipeline. This helps everyone in the sales team to reach their targets faster.
• The best part of good CRM systems is that you can customize them to suit your business needs. This means you can get the full benefit of CRM in any part of your sales process.

Conclusion

In short, a CRM, if used in the right manner, can uplift the performance of your sales team. They will be able to search and close the deals better. They will be able to pursue the sales opportunities in a systematic and timely manner, prioritize their activities, and work more effectively. The information-sharing will get streamlined and better coordination will be achieved. Data storage and updating will become easy and with the benefit of accessibility of data on multiple devices from different places, the sales team becomes more mobile. And more mobility means more business.