SME Knowledge Series on Marketing 1.4

In our last series, we talked about how a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is an important ingredient for your lead management process and is an important tool for any business if they want to grow.

Customer Relationship Management programs can add value to your business in many ways. Next to being a very important sales improvement tool, CRM software strengthens the company’s professional image, and thus, helps it impose itself on the market.

And yet, getting a best-in-class CRM application is not enough to get a hold on these critical benefits. While used to maintain relationships with customers, CRM software still requires a solid loyalty strategy to keep customer relationships. Many CRM users are utilizing the software less than fifty percent of the time. The reason, however, is not the system they’re using, but how they’re using it. If you’re among them, it is about time to explore what your CRM can do for you.

1.    Automate the basic tasks

Automation of simple basic tasks can help your business to go to the forefront of the sales goal you have decided.  The process of automation is to simplify the tasks, which are repetitive and unnecessary. There are some tasks in the company that can be done by the CRM tool rather than a person like scheduling calls, generate emails for new or existing customers, creating reports, lead scoring, matching leads with reps, leaving voicemails, etc. The CRM tool is very helpful when you have bigger goals set for your company and your team is spending time doing tasks that can be automated.  The end result of the business or a company is to sell and CRM tool has an auto-creation of tasks & deals which are intended to shorten the administrative tasks and let people work on making sales.

2.    Gather business intelligence from your CRM metrics

Establishing a strong business intelligence strategy for your business can be very powerful as well helpful in growing the business if it’s done correctly.  CRM tool not only helps in improving the customer- management relationship but also provides the management with the inner insights of the business’ health.  One of the advantages that CRM tools provide you with is the insights of customer intelligence as the tool can easily analyze & pull out any information on the behavioral patterns of the customers in the time you have to come up with the best solution.  The CRM tool software is specialized in adaptive sales enablement, which gives you (the company) an upper hand over the customers or market to evaluate & analyze them and has an approach towards the target group. 

3.    Create and maintain profitable customers’ portfolios

What is better than having an entire data on your customer and planning your next plan according to that? The CRM tool helps you gather the data of your customer under a platform and then you can use the data to make your communication according to their demands or needs. If they’re facing some issue, you’ll be prepared to deal with it before they come up to you with the issue.  The CRM tool keeps your service consistency, & how it turns quality relationships into a recognizable standard.  There will be a time where you’d want to know who is your most profitable customer then rather than going through the files, you can simply check in with your CRM tool to distinguish them & prioritize their requests.

4.    Put your CRM in the center of your marketing strategy

CRM tool can be used for developing marketing campaigns, which makes it easier for the companies to make or strategize their approach to the market and the techniques & tactics that tools tell you are most successful ones.  The CRM tool gives you an insight idea on how to approach a particular market as it offers shared access to all of the lead contact information to both sales & marketing teams.

5.    Sync your CRM to other important tools

Syncing or incorporating your CRM tool to other important tools makes it even more powerful & helpful. Integration with accounting software combines customer and financial data, eliminating redundant manual data entries and providing more insightful reports are some of the benefits that CRM tool does when synced with other important tools. The CRM tool should also work in synergy with your calendars and email service providers so that there is no need to double-enter information. Lastly, a CRM tool can also be linked to social media profiles.

6.    Recognize and reward good work

The CRM tool helps in handling all the internal communication as well as your brand’s relationship with the customers. The essential task of the CRM is to track the communication, which involves both customer & an agent receiving his request. The people in the brand or company will work harder when they are rewarded for the task they have done. CRM tool is the best means to evaluate and reward your agent’s performance.

7.    Customize it

Your CRM tool is the first ever interaction that your customers will have with your business or brand. This tool would act as your first impression and you should use to make a long lasting & a positive impression. The tool can be customized according to your brand strategy, which will help you deliver consistent & cohesive service to your customers. Improve navigation and ensure seamless user experience can also be used to avoid conflicts and failed deliveries. So customize your CRM tool for better & positive service.

8.    Keep customer data up to date

In the process of succeeding and making your CRM to nurture & grow your business or leads, all you have to do is keep updating the data on a regular basis. Every customer’s detail is recorded under a single system so that you don’t end up wasting time over gathering information or intelligence of customers. This also helps in the fact that once you have gathered the information your relationship with the customers starts evolving and you focus on closing the deal.

The CRM tool provides a brand or a company an easy way to improve for better success & growth. The effectiveness of the CRM tool in the day – to –day operations will provide you with a better success rate than you already have now. It is an amazing new technology, which is revolutionizing the business industry.

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Coming up next: “How to attract leads that convert faster”