What is CRM (Customer Relationship Management)?
Even if you have never used a CRM system before in your organization, you’ve probably heard the term echoing through your industry. You must be aware that many business houses (including your competitors) are implementing online CRM software because it saves time and drives sales and supports to sell more.
But what is CRM software? And how it supports you?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is business software that helps individuals and teams streamline and maximize their sales efforts and customer communications.
Do not consider CRM, simply an address book. It empowers your sales team to build relationships more effectively and provide the best customer experience from evaluation to purchase and beyond.
In the past, only the largest business houses could afford CRM software, and it was complicated to learn and implement. Today, businesses of all sizes have access to easy-to-use, affordable cloud CRM software options.
Here we’ll explain the value that CRM software can bring to your organization, how to know if your business is ready for CRM, and what to consider when evaluating different CRM products.
What can CRM system software do for me?
In the beginning when your business first started, tracking customers by email, address books and spreadsheets made sense.
But now your business is growing and more growth means more opportunity to change how you run your company. Right now:
- Excel sheets (Spreadsheets) are not an easy task to update, interpret, and keep in sync with your team.
- Valuable customer information sits in your employees’ inboxes.
- Notes are thrown away and it gets lost.
- Customer communication is uncertain between your employees.
The actual complication is that your most critical data is spread across multiple people and systems, making it tough to leverage your information and collaborate on the sales team.
Read more – Mobile CRM Software
How does CRM work?
CRM solutions include the functionalities which will allow the users to track the customers and interactions of the company through various available channels. These channels include all the contact forms, phone calls, emails, and still more.
CRM software will provide the sales and marketing teams with a collection of tools to manage the complete marketing and sales funnel, ranging from the lead qualification to opportunity management, forecasting, and deal closure. It will enable the customer service teams to manage the requests of the customers and automate the service operations by following predefined processes for customer care excellence.
CRM systems are packed with all the tracking features which record numerous customer interactions online. Besides, CRM also automates the routine processes and provides the managers with the tools which permit tracking and measuring the performance and productivity of the company. For instance, CRM software will remind you of the tasks that you simply must complete at a given time. You can make it perform pre-scheduled activities such as sending emails and initiating phone calls. Everything that is through the CRM is recorded, providing you adequate time to form better action plans to shut the potential sales. Some of the CRMs will also offer analytics capabilities that allow the users to track the efficiency of varied marketing efforts to generate the leads and the conversions.
This is where a CRM system comes into the picture.
An Online CRM Solution helps you and your team…
#1 Consolidate all your data into a centralized, easy-to-access location
A cloud-based CRM software centralizes your customer data so that everyone at your company can access all the information they need from a single platform.
Contact information
You have all the information about the customer – email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, websites, and social media accounts.
Communication history
Track all interactions through phone calls, email, online chats, and customer support tickets.
Customer history
Reference the period of customer relationships, purchasing history, and how customers find your business.
#2 Sell more, faster
For sales reps, having to do manual data entry is one of the biggest productivity-killers. Online CRM software automates many of these repetitive admin tasks so your team can spend less time doing data entry and more time selling.
A cloud CRM system also helps you build a standardized sales process, which gives your team a step-by-step guidance for closing deals and helps to reduce the length of your sales cycles.
With a sales process, you can…
Constantly enhance your sales methods.
Sales processes presents the information (data) you need to identify the root cause of stalled deals, take steps to address the issues, and makes sure that your team focuses their efforts on the most revenue generating activities.
Precisely predict your sales
Having a precise sense of win rate allows your sales managers to dependably forecast how many sales their team will close from a given number of leads and set realistic revenue goals.
Get new hires up to speed swiftly
A standard sales process prepares training sales reps fast and nearly foolproof, by showing sales reps what they need to do at every stage of the sale cycle. Even new sales reps can make a fast impact once they learn the basic steps of the sales process.
Provide an improved customer experience
When a sales rep follow-up a prospect into a sales stage they’re not anticipating, it can kill the deal and damage the relationship with the buyer. A standardized sales process makes sure that sellers don’t advance the sale until the buyer is ready to move forward.
Read more – Sales Team Management
#3 Stay focused on your customers
By having access to valuable information on customer behavior and interest, your sales reps can pursue to target the right opportunities at the right time or collaborate with your marketing team to deliver targeted and useful content to your prospects. Selling becomes a more personalized experience with a focused approach.
Key information in your CRM system also helps you anticipate your customer’s needs before they reach out to you, and your support team can keep your customers happy by solving their problems as soon as they arise.
Who gets value from the CRM system?
Any team within your company that connects with customers can greatly benefit from using online CRM software, including your sales, marketing, support, and management teams.
CRM promotes sales
Sell smarter
Online CRM software empowers sales reps to manage their deals and conduct entire sales communications from a centralized location. By implementing cloud CRM platform and integrating it with your organization’s business tools—including email, calendar, and marketing automation software—your sellers don’t have to waste time and effort switching back and forth between programs.
Best CRM software also provides complete insight into the status of every sales deal in progress and support sales managers train their team, establish sales quotas and track performance of individual sales man.
Never drop the ball
With a CRM on mobile, you can automate reminders to reach out to leads at the right time for your sales team so that potential customers are never lost. Getting alerts for the upcoming actions for every deal eliminates the guesswork and stress from a sales rep’s day.
Stay within the loop
In today’s world of advanced technology, online CRM platforms can be accessed from any device, anytime; which means your efficiently handling your deals and they aren’t all stuck in the office. With mobile CRM app access and smartphone notifications, sales reps will not miss anything crucial task, irrespective of their location or walking into a meeting with the customer.
Invest in the right place
A sales manager can track the reasons why deals are won or lost, instead of guessing. By analyzing their customer data patterns and sales reports on the CRM platform, sales managers can determine which methods are effective and which needs improvements.
See how prospective customers are finding you
CRM software India – supports and assists you to track how prospects find your business over an online search, trade shows, or precise marketing campaigns. So that you can determine where you’re getting the large return on your marketing investment.
Your marketing team can better understand your prospects’ concerns and generally asked questions, by having access to your company’s sales interactions. And then use this information to create more relevant content.
Customers engagement
CRM on mobile captures valuable data that marketing team can use to nurture prospects into customers. Best CRM software also integrate with multiple marketing tools so that marketers can create effective email nurturing campaigns, forms, landing pages, and advertisements to keep prospects moving steadily through the sales funnel.
CRM supports customer support/service
Personalize the customer experience
With an online CRM system, you can know the history of previous conversations with each customer and it empowers your support/service team to deliver great customer service every time. Cloud CRM platform provides access to detailed customer notes and interactions and lets your support team see the person working on each ticket.
Quickly solves customer issues
Swift response times to support requests means a more satisfying and delightful customer experience. To make this happen, important customer data needs to be a click away. Cloud based CRM software links crucial customer information —including purchase of products, previous interactions and customer history to each support ticket; so that your support team can solve customers’ issues faster and more effectively.
Read more – What Is Customer Service | SalesBabu CRM
Consolidate and centralize all customer communications
Further to logging phone calls and email conversations, cloud CRM software can be integrated with online chat tools so that all customer chats related to support are saved in centralized database in your CRM system. With this feature of online CRM solutions, your support team or helpdesk resource can review these saved chats in the future, or send saved chat summaries to customers after completing service requests.
Measure, analyze and expand your business
Having access to important data on sales opportunities, it’s trends and forecasts are very important for crafting your company’s short-term and long-term action plans. Business leaders can use online CRM data to analyze and identify which markets and products are the most profitable and evaluate how to plan strategy in order to achieve those goals.
Boost team performance
Business leaders can do a health-check of their business with an online CRM platform having access to complete data and whether or not each team is on track to reach department goals. With real-time sales reports (MIS – Management Information System) can help company leadership identify inefficiencies in the sales process, ROI for marketing campaigns, and if any customers aren’t receiving proper support.
Read more – Why CRM Software?
Is Your Business Ready for an Online CRM System?
Decision-makers and business owners most commonly consider implementing a cloud-based CRM platform when they come across a reduction in the productivity of their sales team’s interactions. Unfortunately, by the time this awareness occurs, important opportunities and revenue may already be missed due to organizational inaccuracies.
Our advice: don’t wait until you figure out yourself in such a scenario. The moment your business establishes a sales team members, it’s advisable to examine a cloud-based CRM software. Before making this dedication and to assure maximum value from your CRM investment, contemplate the following three imperative questions:
#1. Do I Have a Defined Sales Process?
The ideal CRM system is developed to complement and automate your current sales practices. If your company is deficient in a streamlined process for transforming leads into customers, now is the opportune moment to assess how your sales team members generate leads and the underlying activities they undertake to close further deals. Demonstrate step-by-step sales process strategies for your team members to follow.
#2. Do I Understand and Address Challenges?
Recognize customer-facing obstacles within your organization, whether it’s connected to sales growth, upselling, potential customer retention, or satisfaction. Identifying such obstacles enables you to focus on generating solutions immediately upon relocating your systems to the online CRM platform.
#3. Is My Sales Team Ready for CRM Software?
Poor user implementation is a common cause for successful CRM initiatives. Assuring the overall sales team members on board is imperative. The dedication of top management to transition business information to the cloud CRM is necessary, and sales representatives and team leaders must be dedicated towards regular and consistent utilization.
To promote CRM adoption, demonstrate how the CRM will generate value to each role in your business, and include your sales team members in the decision-making procedure. If your salespeople tend to find the CRM platform intuitive and inviting, they are more likely to encourage its use.
How do I choose the right online CRM solution?
For SMEs sales teams, a few CRM benefits are nice to have and others are definitely needed. These eight items should be non-negotiable when exploring online CRM solutions.
#1. Can CRM system track all team and customer communication?
Interactions with your customers can be done via phone calls, email conversations, and online chats. Your CRM platform should be able to capture and centralize all communications in a centralized location so that you never lose important details and know the next action to take.
The best Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) makes it simple to enter customer data, follow customer interactions across different teams, and find the information you need quickly. Before you choose a best CRM, confirm that it can import communication history from the contact management tools you currently use.
#2. How easy is CRM software for your employees to use?
Generally, sales reps are not software experts, so your CRM should be simple and user interface (UI) must be friendly. Ideally, the design and interface of cloud CRM system should be intuitive enough so that everyone at your company can learn the system quickly and love to start using it right away.
#3. Can you use a CRM system on the go?
Your online CRM software should be accessible and provide an attractive user-friendly experience from all devices including mobile phones so that you can connect to your deals wherever you are. Your CRM should have a mobile CRM app to access customer data from any location.
#4. How well does CRM software adapt to your current sales process?
Implementing a CRM in your company doesn’t mean changing your selling style. A cloud-based CRM platform should easily mold and adapt to your current practices while adding time-saving automation tools and customization to help you sell more efficiently, smartly.
#5. Can CRM software import your existing customer data?
No one starts from scratch. Be sure that the cloud CRM platform you’re considering makes it easy to import existing customer information so you don’t have to spend time manually typing in your current leads, prospects, and customers.
#6. Does online CRM offer custom reports and performance tracking?
Take a close look at how the cloud CRM picks customer data for its reports. What insights can it draw from your customer behavior, interactions, and team activity? Can the reports be exported and shared? How easy is it to customize the CRM’s reporting to find the information that’s most important to your team?
Read more – CRM Reporting System – E Reporting And Sales Analysis
#7. Does online CRM integrate with the tools your business uses?
Your online CRM system should allow you to manage all your sales activities and customer data from a central location. By choosing an online CRM software India that easily integrates with your online chat, email, and document sharing programs, you’ll no longer have to spend your time switching back and forth between applications and browser tabs.
#8. Can I really afford a Cloud CRM System?
Are there required fees for training and onboarding? For additional contacts or reporting ability do you have to pay extra? Are there extra charges for data storage? All of these additional costs can blow up your annual CRM spend, so make sure you do your research in advance. For many CRMs, those low monthly costs don’t reflect all the hidden charges that you might be stuck with along the way.
Finally, What’s next?
Now that you know how an online CRM solution brings value to your business, what to consider when evaluating different CRMs, and if your business is ready to select one, it’s the right time to start evaluating your options and learn if SalesBabu CRM is a good fit.
Request SalesBabu CRM free FREE DEMO, or use our contact form to reach one of our CRM experts. We’ll be happy to answer any questions about how SalesBabu Business Solutions could drive the growth of your business.
