In a lot of ways, the principles of top-notch customer service have never changed. Throughout history companies have tried to provide the information, attention, flexibility, and perks necessary for customers to feel like they made the right purchase from the right provider.
What has changed are the tools that companies now use to provide that level of service. Customer relationship management (CRM) software has revolutionized the way that companies of all sizes and across industries find, attract, serve, impress, and retain the customers they target. If your sales need a boost, consider the benefits of CRM for your organization:
Improve the Customer Experience
Following the advent of eCommerce, customers expect a customized and optimized experience from every company they work with. That means it’s easy to find and buy exactly what they want, exactly how they want, the first time and every time after. A CRM solution such as a Copper CRM makes it simple to develop a customer profile for everyone you conduct business with and then tailor the services you provide accordingly. Your customers consistently receive the kind of experience they’re seeking, incentivizing them to return regularly and make bigger purchases.
Refine Your Marketing Efforts
In addition to individual customers, salesforce ERP and CRM solutions empower you to take both a broad and deep look at your entire sales pipeline. You can identify the current or future customers most likely to make a purchase and then adjust your marketing efforts to target them specifically. That not only leads to more effective marketing, it reduces the amount of time and money you spend on marketing since your approach is less scattershot.
Utilize Analytics and Reports
Sales strategies are too often based on intuition and assumptions. These occasionally pay off but more often produce underwhelming returns or outright failures. A CRM automatically tracks, compiles, and analyzes data about who you are selling to and what they are buying. It then produces reports that give you deep insights into the sales tactics that are working and not working. Instead of gambling the future of your organization on guess work, you can base your strategies and planning on hard metrics and objective data.
Encourage Collaboration Across Departments
Customer relationship management is not handled exclusively by your sales and marketing departments. In reality, every one of your departments and every one of your employees plays a role in keeping your customers happy. Once you have a CRM platform implemented, data from all your departments is stored and accessible in one place. Your sales and marketing staff can now easily communicate and collaborate with staff from financing, logistics, HR, and any other corner of your company. If there’s an opportunity to do things better or a looming problem that must be addressed, a CRM makes it much easier to identify.
Automate Administrative Tasks
Managing your sales pipeline is a time and labor intensive process. It routinely involves updating calendars, amending records, sending out stock communications, and repeating changes across data sets. The burden of these tasks falls on your sales and marketing teams, and the risk of human error is high. Thankfully, a CRM automates most of these tasks and can be customized to meet the specific needs of your pipeline/workflows. That allows your customer-facing staff to spend more time establishing the merits of your organization and less time working on spreadsheets.
The great thing about a CRM solution is that it has a huge impact on your sales without drastically altering the way you sell. You can continue to do what you have always done, but now do it more productively, efficiently, intelligently, and innovatively. Put this asset in place, and you’re on your way to cornering the market.
