Does your business have any goals to achieve? What are they? Every business will have their own long and short-term goals, targets, as well as objectives written in the business plan. However, the majority of businesses possess a common goal of earning more profits than its competitors.
But how does a business earn more profits than its competitors? For a business to reap maximum profits at first it must have a sale. But how do sales happen? Sales will happen only when your customer shows an interest in purchasing your company’s products and services. Customers are important for every business type; they are the lifeline for businesses of all sizes. Businesses cannot exist without its customers.
Customers are the focal point for businesses to achieve its organizational goals and objectives. However, generations are changing and customers are becoming more intelligent than ever before. Thanks to the rise of social media and the internet, customers have a wide range of options to easily choose a brand. But it is in the hands of businesses to catch hold of these customers. Businesses should strive and work hard to impress and retain its customers. They have to provide superior customer experiences that can include greeting them when entering the business, addressing them by their name, answering all of their questions patiently, understanding their needs, interests, and expectations. In addition to offering them relevant products as per their choice in affordable cost, businesses should keep in touch with customers’ on a regular basis, resolve customer issues and complaints quickly, predict the future needs of consumers, as well as provide them with similar or complementary products.
However, it is not always easy to win customers. With ever-growing competition, businesses should strive to gain loyal and trustworthy customers. However, in this digital age, customers still prefer to purchase from a brand that provides personalized customer experiences as well as brand value aligning with their own interests. Therefore, it is in the hands of businesses to win the loyal and trustworthy customers. In order to have a better customer-centered atmosphere, as well as to gain a loyal audience, every business needs to invest in a robust solution where they can plan the best customer-focused strategies to achieve their business goals.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the best technological tool for businesses to manage, record, and organize complete customer information on a single centralized CRM database. A cloud-based CRM solution provides immediate access to the customer data at any time and from any location in the world. Additionally, a CRM software help businesses to study and learn more about its customers’ behavior patterns, browsing history, spending history, past purchases, average incomes, gender, demographics, age, likes and dislikes etc.. The marketing team can use this information to segment customers into different targeted audience groups as per the customers’ age, gender, demographics, purchasing habits, and so on. Segmentation enables a business to send relevant and interesting products to its customers thus improving sales, boosting customer satisfaction levels, increasing the trust of your customers, as well as decreasing the customer churn rates.
In simple terms, CRM software is imperative for businesses to support the sales, marketing, customer support teams as well as the numerous other teams working across your organization.
Besides streamlining various customer activities, a business can use CRM software to achieve additional business goals. Let’s discuss them here:
1. Lead Nurturing Made Easy
Leads are new customer contacts that enable a business to achieve its goal of earning more profits. Basically, a CRM allows a business to identify the source of contact from where the lead came from, register all the lead details on a single file, follow up the lead, as well as record the entire conversation with the lead. This provides a holistic picture of your lead’s interest in purchasing your company products and services, as well as it tells whether the lead can be qualified or not. Depending on the lead’s interest in your business, the lead can become a promising prospect and with further follow-up, can be qualified as a sales opportunity. Whenever a lead is qualified as an opportunity, it subsequently enters the sales pipeline cycle.
2. Manages Sales Pipeline Effectively
Sales are important for businesses to earn profits. But to increase the number of sales in addition to closing a higher number of deals successfully, businesses should take advantage of the CRM solution to manage and organize sales effectively within the sales pipeline cycle. Whenever a lead is nurtured and converted into an opportunity, it enters the sales pipeline cycle. There are several stages in the sales pipeline process and depending on the lead’s interest and capabilities, the lead can be in any one of the following stages: Initial demo, demo to key decision makers, proposal submission, price negotiation, closed won, as well as closed lost. You can effectively utilize the CRM software to gain a clear picture of where your lead is currently within the sales pipeline cycle.
3. Proliferates Better Internal Communication
Communication between internal teams is imperative for an organization to share vital information. Especially, if you are working on a CRM platform, it is imperative to know what is happing with a customer across the various departments. For instance, there are cases where a single customer is contacted by various departments within your organization. For example, You have contacted a customer in the morning, but how do you know if the same customer has been contacted by someone else in the afternoon? Use CRM system to receive inputs on who else is following up with the same customer, what kinds of conversations they are having with your customer, and so on. Utilize the CRM software to enable smooth communication between various internal teams, across your organization.
Additionally, CRM software is used to automate administrative tasks, increase sales numbers, create better marketing campaigns, retain existing customers, identify profitable customers of your community, maximize up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, and the list goes on. In other words, a professionally implemented CRM system is a direct path for your business to achieve its company goals and objectives in an organized fashion.
Emma James is a freelance content writer at SutiCRM, who frequently blogs on Business, Marketing, Sales, ERP and SaaS trends.