People working in the field of sales and marketing might be familiar with CRM or Customer Relationship Management software. The benefits of CRM for businesses are many, however, if you are one those people who are new to this technology and want to learn more on what does a CRM do before you can integrate it into your business, then this article is for you.
To begin with, let’s take a look at what CRM means.
Short for Customer Relationship Management, CRM is a software that helps you to organize and track every interaction with your customers, thereby assisting you in improving your customer service.
Two of the most popular CRM systems are Zoho & VTiger. These powerful tools are especially beneficial for small businesses, as it helps employees improve their productivity, which in turn, helps you to achieve your business goals, and generate maximum return on your investments.
In this post, we have listed the 27 awesome ways CRM can help you to grow your business. Also, here is a buyer’s guide on how to choose the best CRM for small business that you can check out.
So without further ado, let’s get started!
1# Assists in Managing Your Data
A primary benefit of CRM, this tool helps to organize leads, customer information, accounts details, and sales opportunities in one centralized database, thereby making it easier for you to manage your data. It also helps to improve work productivity, by allowing access to information to various departments across your company.
By having all your data stored in one single unit, you are also able to quickly access valuable information, which enables you to take faster decisions, leading to speedy implementation. Furthermore, since the collection of customer data is important for research as well as analysis and for marketing purposes, using a CRM system can help enhance customer relation and marketing campaigns, ensuring that you are always one step ahead of your competitors.
2# Reduces The Task of Manual Data Entry
CRM provides you multiple options through which you can capture and enter leads into the system. This helps you to reduce manual data entry, thereby saving your employees precious time. It also helps minimize the risk of duplication, thus ensuring that your data is error-free and accurate.
As a robust tool, it also helps reduce repetitive tasks that can be frustrating for employees, leading to sloppy work that can be messy. It provides you with features like task automation, one-click imports and updates, and automatic call logging, reminders and notifications. Plus, it also offers you the option of scheduling and sending personalized bulk email messages to all your customers.
3# Smoother Coordination of Sales Team Activities
When a company or an organization run like a well-oiled machine it helps boost the efficient level among team members leading to a greater output and a higher productivity. Coordination between the sales team is extremely important for optimal collaboration, which will ultimately lead to more sales and conversion in a less span of time. As such, by making use of the CRM system you will be able to better coordinate with your team members.
From effectively managing internal team communication to keeping a track of what your team is up to, a CRM system offers a complete overview of what task each team member is carrying out and how effective they are in closing a deal. It can also prove to be extremely useful when your team is facing a bottleneck, as you can then step in and easily evaluate the situation and direct your team to carry out the sales activities in a specific way that can help meet your business goals.
Better team coordination is another CRM benefit that you can obtain by investing in this system. Also, here is another dynamic tool known as Slack that can help keep your sales team coordinated.
4# Improves Work Efficiency
As a centralized unit that provides data to various departments through a single source, a CRM system helps to seamlessly integrate marketing and sales functions. It helps various teams to easily collaborate with each other, thereby assisting employees to address customer inquiries faster, which in turn, can help increase sales.
Moreover, as mentioned above, a CRM system helps automate repetitive tasks which are time-consuming, thus enabling employees to focus more on important tasks that will help grow the companies revenue. Further, when the employees are not burdened down by the least productive aspects on a day-to-day basis they are able to use their time intelligently to improve customer relations which is sure to attract repeat business.
5# Provides Valuable Business Insight
One of the best benefits of CRM, it provides valuable insight into business performance by monitoring and analyzing data. It provides you with vital information to deal with any bottlenecks before it becomes an issue. In addition, it also helps to discover new areas of revenue, thereby assisting you in building a strategic business plan for the future.
The data which is obtained through consistent monitoring of key performance indicators can also help you develop proactive strategies that yield maximum conversion. In addition, since most CRM systems today such as the Zoho CRM, offers advanced solutions that provide a 360-degree customer view, it will enable you to better engage with your customers, leading to an easy conversion of prospective buyers.
6# Helps to Segment & Identify Your Best Accounts
Another reason why CRM is important for all business is because of its ability to segregate key buyers from prospective buyers. By segmenting and identifying your best accounts, a CRM software helps you to devise marketing plans that would directly appeal to your targeted groups. This would also help your employees to serve your key customers or clients more effectively, thereby strengthening the bond between the customer and your company, leading to improved ROI.
Plus, that’s not all! Through segmenting you are also able to discover new markets and untapped opportunities, which will assist you to further expand your reach. Additionally, it would also enable you to create relevant and high-converting marketing campaigns that will help turn prospects into buying customers.
7# Provides Accurate and Timely Forecasting
Forecasting is a means through which you can measure your company’s growth and success. With the help of accurate and timely forecasting, you are able to better deal with customers future needs. It also helps you to effectively strategize future marketing campaigns, and this, in turn, will ensure the ratio of closure on deals in higher leading to more profitability in the long run.
Most CRM software, such as Zoho and VTiger, offers powerful sales forecasting tool that provides real-time updates on the company’s key performance indicators. This includes details like current targets, products sale cycle, pipelined to close sales, etc. which are vital statistics that’ll assist you in developing a better sales and marketing plan for your business.
8# Helps To Quickly Review Data
Customer data enables you to not only provide better-personalized services but it also helps you create high-value marketing campaigns that drive targeted traffic to your business. Easy access to real-time data can help increase the conversion rate exponentially. As such, since CRM consist of a centralized database that you can access anytime, it helps you to quickly review important data, thereby helping you to keep track of everything with less effort and it enables you to make well-informed decisions that help boost business growth.
9# Speeds Up Your Decision-Making Process
A solid decision-making process doesn’t involve making snap choices that fail to yield results. It involves a lot of researching about various solutions, monitoring, and tracking opportunities, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of a particular strategy to final establishing an action plan that is profitable.
For a manager or a business owner to take an important decision they need to have real-time data on all these factors and as such, this can be easily obtained through a CRM system. A CRM software provides you with accurate and detailed data through its constant updates, thus helping you to not only speed up your decision-making process but also alerting you to any potential business opportunities or bottlenecks.
10# Generates More Sales Leads
Generating and managing new sales leads are important for all companies. It is one of the key factors for running a successful business, as it is only by garnering targeted leads would you be able to boost your company’s profitability index.
However, at times by overlooking important information, your employees may miss out on sales opportunities. Thus, with the help of a CRM system, this risk is reduced as it helps to consolidate all ongoing opportunities into a single view, thereby enhancing productivity and ensuring that your employees are up-to-date on each and every qualified lead.
11# Enhances Customer Engagement
To improve customer engagement you need to ensure that your customers have a positive experience every time they interact with your company (employees), and this can be achieved through a good CRM system. Since CRM provides detailed information on each customer, your employees are able to effectively engage with them, thereby providing quick and hassle-free service which results in customer satisfaction, leading to enhance engagement, loyalty and repeat purchase.
12# Improves Your Email Campaign
Email marketing is a cost-effective way by which you can successfully market your product or service. Also, unlike other marketing tactics, this method is more targeted which ensures a better return on investment. Through email marketing, you are also able to increase brand awareness. Plus, it is easier to implement, monitor and measure.
When you use a CRM system, you have access to important customer metrics such as purchase history, demographics, contact information etc, which can be used to create personalized emails that’ll yield better returns. This, in turn, will increase your engagement with customers and improve your email marketing campaign thereby generating a higher return on your marketing spends.
13# Helps to Create a Target List
As mentioned before, CRM helps to segment accounts into target groups, which makes it easier to create a powerful list of leads based on various criteria. This information or lists can then come in handy when running specific campaigns based on a particular demographic or geographical area, leading to effective target marketing and more profits.
By helping you identify your target market, a CRM system can also help you prioritize your resources in segments that are most lucrative. Plus, it will help you devise strategies that enable you to handle your audience’s future needs and wants effectively.
14# Helps To Follow Up Leads
A follow up with your target leads can help increase your chances of converting them into a buyer. Not all qualified leads will take an instant decision when it comes to purchasing a product or service. As such, it is only by following up with them that you would be able to build a rapport with your customers, thus helping them make the right decision which could lead to a sale.
The advantage of CRM in this scenario is that since all essential information is stored in one place, it makes the task of following up with leads more simple. It also allows you to create appointments, set notifications, reminders and more. Plus, since it is accessible to all departments, sharing updates on follow up or accessing client information becomes easier.
15# It Enhances Your Online Marketing Campaign
In order to close more deals, a one-size-fits-all marketing approach is not going to be fruitful. Creating promotional ads and offers that don’t match with your target audience interests can lead to a higher bounce rate, thus, this is another area where CRM can be beneficial.
With a CRM system, marketers have access to important data such as customers demographics, their recent activities, last purchased products, personal likes, and dislikes etc. This data helps them to focus on creating marketing campaigns that are relevant to a customer, which, in turn, ensures that the marketing message appeals to the target group, leading to increased CTR (click-through-rate) and more sales.
16# Provides Easy Tracking of Orders & Sales
As your company grows, keeping a track of the ever-increasing number of orders and sales can be challenging. However, with a good CRM, you’ll be able to easily keep track of everything. It will also help you to reduce the risk of human errors thereby ensuring that your business runs smoothly and more efficiently.
From inventory tracking to sales orders, purchase orders, invoices, reminders and much much more, a CRM software can help you to effectively organize and track these tasks. In addition, since CRM helps you to streamline the entire operation you are able to process and ship orders at a faster rate leading to a greater customer satisfaction.
17# Helps Monitor Progress of Ongoing Tasks & Campaigns
Switching over to an automated system helps you to monitor the progress of each task right from the very beginning. With the help of a CRM you are able to check details like:
- When was a task assigned to an employee
- When did the process start
- When did the customer or client receive the final output
In short, you are up-to-date on all the on-going campaigns and tasks. Plus, it helps you identify areas that need improvement for better workflow.
18# Improves Field Team’s Productivity
In the fast-paced world that we live in today, having information at your fingertips is extremely crucial in order to succeed in this competitive environment. Inability to provide instant services due to lack of essential technology can hurt your credibility. Thus, one of the best benefits of CRM is its easy integration with mobile devices.
CRM is a mobile-friendly solution and as such, makes the task of your on-field sales team easy, by providing them access to customer information on-the-go. This helps your employees to quickly respond to any queries from anywhere, thereby improving your team’s effectiveness and increasing cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
19# It Helps Increase Customer Retention
KYC or knowing your customers is what CRM is all about. It provides you with details on each customer’s profile, their purchase history, how they have been marketed to, their response to your marketing campaigns etc. This data can then help you to come up with solutions that meet your customer needs. And once you have an idea of what your target market is looking for, you are able to personalize your interaction with them, thereby increasing customer retention and generating more revenue for your business.
20# Helps Simplify Your IT Assets
It is a fact that as your business grows, your IT infrastructure grows too. This leads to managing number of different systems and application, which could prove to be costly as well as a time-consuming experience. However, with CRM you can streamline your entire IT asset, as it provides you with a centralized data source with a single user interface. This means no more switching from one application to another, as all information is stored in one place, resulting in better time management and reduces the cost of additional IT infrastructure.
21# Helps Identify Repeat Customers
By providing data such as an individual’s past purchase history, their product and service preference, and payment history, CRM technology helps you to identify repeat sales opportunities. This, in turn, makes it easier for the sales rep to cross-sell relevant products or services that the customer may be interested in, based on their brand preference or last purchase, thereby improving your company’s conversion rate.
22# Helps Identify Product Sale Trends
It is only when you can identify what customer requirements are in the current marketplace, would you be able to meet its demand. And this where CRM can be of immense help. This technology helps you to compare current sales trends with historical sales results, thereby providing you key insight as to what product or service is in demand and what has become redundant. This data can then help you make competitive changes in your marketing strategy, thus ensuring customer satisfaction as well as more sales.
23# More Efficient Customer Service
Customer support plays a vital role when it comes to building solid relationships with your target audience. Providing a poor customer service can lead to a negative impact and can hurt your bottom line. Thus, by investing in a CRM system you would be able to effectively improve your customer service.
A good CRM system will aid in increasing the overall efficiency of your customer service team, leading to greater customer loyalty. Plus, it will ensure that all issues, no matter how small or big is handled professional leading to more brand exposure resulting in more leads through word of mouth marketing.
24# Increases Accountability of Employees
A simple fact, when you don’t have any comprehensive system in place through which you can track your employee interaction with your customer or clients, the possibility of important things getting side-tracked can increase. Thus, by using CRM you are able to keep track of your employees progress thereby increasing accountability in your team. Additionally, if something does go wrong, you are able to easily identify and rectify the issue before it becomes a serious problem.
25# Helps in Analyzing Employee Performance
By allowing you to examine the performance of each individual, CRM reports can help you understand how many deals a rep has closed, the success of his cold calls, what went wrong with the unclosed deals etc. This information can help managers identify individuals within their team who are struggling and help find better ways to improve their performance, thereby increasing employee capabilities within your organization.
26# Helps To Streamline Various Reports
An easy-to-use platform, CRM helps to streamline vital reports through the means of its user-friendly reporting features. You can generate reports such as :
- Lead Status Reports
- Total Sales Reports
- Initial Response Time Report
- Call Log Reports
- Most Profitable Service Offering Report
These reports can then help you to get an accurate and overall picture of your entire business process, thus enabling you to make crucial changes in your business model, so that you can incur better returns on your investments.
27# Improves Your Brand’s Credibility
Consistency is the key through which you can improve your brand’s credibility. Thus, when you invest in CRM, it aids in providing your customers with a consistent and hassle-free service, thereby assisting you in maintaining a good reputation for your business, which increases customer base as well as sales.
Conclusion
Apart from being a powerful tool, the benefits of CRM are endless. It helps you to organize & centralized your database, thus offering valuable aid to all your employees. It assists you in strengthening your relationship with your customers and at the same time provide you with valuable business insights, which could help to accelerate your business’ growth.
This article covers that primary advantages of CRM and gives you a comprehensive overview of why is CRM important for your business. Thus, if you are in the process or want to install an ideal CRM software for your business then do check out our Zoho CRM Consulting services to know what we offer or get in touch with us for further details or inquiries.