The global customer relationship management (CRM) market was worth USD 43.7 billion in 2020 and is predicted to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.6 percent between 2021 and 2028.
According to the Grandview research report, CRM tools are used by 82% of the businesses studied for sales reporting and process automation.
Today, CRM systems are enhanced with integrations that promote cooperation and make data accessible – all under one roof. Using the proper technology can enable businesses to reach diverse audiences, create intelligent automation based on the behavior of each lead or client, and engage proactively with contacts. More significantly, all departments are now able to provide consumers with consistent, customized service.
Here are ten primary reasons why a CRM is often the first investment for sales departments.
1. Centralize Data
CRM tools are packed with connections that make them easier to use while also making data more readily available in one place. An ideal CRM should allow organizations to target diverse audiences, develop intelligent automation based on the activities of a single lead or client, work proactively with contacts, and maintain relationships. More significantly, all departments are now able to provide consumers with consistent, customized service.
The following benefits of a CRM allow for customer-centric interactions, regardless of department or industry:
- Cross-functional insights of individual customers in a single view.
- Dashboards that display data in motion visually.
- Time-saving automation.
- Process optimization.
- Streamlined collaboration.
2. Use Integrations
Selling is all about saving time on administrative tasks. CRMs that integrate well with your other tools are essential for not having to do the same work twice.
Email Marketing Tool Integration
A CRM, when accompanied by a variety of email marketing platforms, allows businesses to connect with potential customers on a more personal level. A CRM enables companies to collect demographic data, purchasing history, personal interests, and all prior brand interactions in one place, allowing for the creation of a tailored message that increases recipient engagement. To be on top of personalized content, integrating your CRM with email is essential.
A CRM also keeps tabs on how emails are doing in real-time. When the recipient opens or takes action on an email, a push notification may be sent to the sales team.
A CRM integrates social media to develop interactions with both new and existing customers. It discovers new prospects using phrases and hashtags, and it allows you to find industry-specific keywords. You will also be able to reply to your consumers on the platform they prefer.
Messaging Integration
A CRM messaging solutions aids in interacting with the audience and catching their attention. Automated reminders for forthcoming offers, events, and so on may be sent to your audience. A CRM with messaging service aids in the achievement of a variety of corporate objectives, including customer service, customer retention, reduced operating cost, and more.
Sales Intelligence Integration
Using this integration, you can rest assured that your data is not lost in the shuffle. To get the information the sales team needs, they don’t have to constantly move data around manually. As a result, there is less risk of data and time being lost. With sales intelligence tools like SalesIntel, users can push leads, contacts, and accounts into the CRM from SalesIntel. Find your ideal accounts and decision-makers, map the data to your CRM fields and push the data you need directly into the CRM. You can even de-dupe records before pushing them.
Calling Tools Integration
Both telephony and CRM software are effective for sales outreach. Using an integrated CRM system speeds up outbound calling, allowing you to reach a larger audience quickly. Your representative can utilize accurate and thorough notes to deliver better services to clients.
3. Automate Daily Tasks
CRM automation refers to a CRM’s capacity to automate time-consuming, manual processes to simplify operations and boost productivity. Marketing, sales, and customer service operations may all be automated using CRM.
CRMs automate routine processes, freeing you up to focus on more important projects. CRM automation can involve data input and contact records updated after every interaction, as well as:
- Follow-ups
- Sales email sequences
- Sales workflows
- Live chat
- Assigning leads to sales reps
- Lead nurturing
- Campaign analytics
4. Create Workflows
A CRM workflow is a set of actions necessary to accomplish a business activity, such as completing a sale or reacting to a customer complaint. You may visualize a CRM process as a series of dominoes that you must knock down one by one to reach your goal.
The finest CRM systems have workflows. To save you time, workflows bring all sales, marketing, and service operations together into a streamlined process. Use workflows to set criteria to enroll records automatically and perform actions according to your preferences.
CRMs like HubSpot allow workflows to be created for a variety of different tasks based on data points such as:
- Contacts
- Companies
- Deals
- Quotes
- Tickets
- Custom objects
5. Make Sure Early Stage Leads Don’t Fall Through the Cracks
Not all leads are ready-to-buy leads.
Most salespeople are primarily concerned with the business they will close in the next month or current quarter. Long-term items lack urgency and might end up being procrastinated in favor of more pressing deals. That’s OK for now, but what about the next quarter? What steps is the sales team taking to maintain a long-term pipeline?
Don’t rely on marketing to nurture your leads. Marketing is essential, but so is sales. CRM solutions make it simpler than ever to nurture long-term prospects and schedule future callbacks. Many even make it easy for salespeople to create customized lead nurturing email sequences.
6. Do More in Less Time
Improved productivity has always been one of the stated benefits of CRM tools. Unfortunately, early editions and complicated execution underdelivered on that promise. However, newer CRM tools have come a long way. Most CRM tools are easily integrated with Outlook and Gmail to help sales stay focused on prospects.
A salesperson with the right integrations can perform multiple activities with hundreds of prospects in a day and never leave their inbox–and all of their activity ends up stored in their CRM. In addition, things like email templates, sales collateral repositories, call recording functionality, and calendar management links are new features sales is coming to expect for their work.
7. Stop Manual Reporting
Are you still filling out daily or weekly activity reports or updating sales forecasts in an Excel spreadsheet?
CRM tools offer a better way. If salespeople enter their notes and update all of the appropriate data fields in CRM, then management should always be able to access the information they need. Your manager will never have to ask you to update your forecast ever again.
Most platforms allow you to select between canned and bespoke reports. Canned reports are pre-configured and quick to get (just a few clicks), but they are typically restricted to basic, industry-standard metrics (sales forecasts and revenue). These insights are valuable, but they may not meet your company’s more sophisticated reporting requirements. Custom reports may be used to bring in unique factors or to combine different data sets to identify underlying causes and correlations.
8. Enjoy on the Go Access
Mobile CRM gives sales professionals access to client data and accounts on the move via their phones/tablets. Sales reps can make well-informed judgments and respond to leads rapidly if they have access to critical information such as product information, account history, pricing lists, and so on. Less time is lost looking for a contact and attempting to remember the previous chat, and more time can be spent conducting productive and meaningful talks.
For instance, imagine you are at the client site and get a new lead assignment update on your CRM mobile app. The lead is in the same area as you are, and creates an opportunity to ask for having a one-to-one meeting.
9. Improve Pipeline Management
A prolonged sales cycle in B2B is a significant impediment to sales efficiency for 27% of salespeople. A CRM is the most effective approach to track leads and prospects in the sales pipeline.
The sales pipeline increases sales potential and categorizes the whole lead database. It assists salespeople in developing efficient methods for moving leads from one sales stage to the next and alerts them when a lead advances to the next level. With a CRM, the whole pipeline can be easily viewed, managed, and analyzed. No more surprises towards the end of the quarter.
10. Enable Smarketing Coordination
A consumer expects nothing less than the best. To develop good client connections, both the sales and marketing teams must collaborate. Aligning sales and marketing becomes critical to maintain existing consumers and boost revenue.
A CRM helps marketing and sales departments stay on the same page by providing real-time data on a customer’s profile. CRM marketing automation tools enable the marketing team to send leads to the sales team as soon as they are ready without manual review. The sales staff may then follow up on those leads. They strike while the iron is hot with full knowledge of the prospect’s past brand interactions.
With the above-mentioned benefits, a CRM becomes a crucial tool for your sales activities and management. However, having a CRM is not enough.
Keeping Away From Bad CRM Data
After putting in the large investment of time and money to keep your database organized and your business development teams on track, you’re still missing something. To increase sales, more than a single location to handle contacts and accounts is required. You need data to fill it. Without high-quality data in your CRM, your sales and marketing teams will fail to see the full value of your investment or their team’s potential.
Bad CRM data wastes time and money tracking down bounced emails and ignored phone calls. Not to mention the embarrassment of sales reps when they ask for someone who isn’t at the company anymore.
Poor data hygiene has a wide-ranging impact on the business and revenue.
Organizing and cleaning your CRM data periodically is an essential strategy for ensuring it stays reliable, relevant, and up to date.
You can search SalesIntel’s 95% accurate human-verified data directly from your CRM. Fields may be assigned to leads, contacts, and accounts, and new entries can be sent straight into your CRM for processing.
SalesIntel can also maintain and enrich your database. When you are viewing any lead, contact, or account in your CRM, you can see when SalesIntel has new or additional and instantly update the relevant fields. You can also specify filter criteria to perform updates and enrich certain records, and you can plan for SalesIntel to automatically enrich your whole database regularly.
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CRM Tools are Essential for Sales
With a CRM, every team member is empowered to acquire insights, view data, and collaborate together to deliver great client experiences. A CRM’s organization and data presentation lead to a holistic client view and improved messaging and outreach. Most of which may be automated, allowing you to provide better, more efficient customer care.
Additionally, your teams will be able to interact more readily and remove data silos. All of which has added up to a CRM becoming the default, first investment for sales teams.
Interested in learning how you can take control of your CRM and drive better results? Check out our guide Bad CRM Data: The Silent Revenue Killer to learn more.
