3 Surprising Ways a CRM Could Help Boost Sales
While it is one of their main functions, customer relationship management or CRM tools are not just there to improve customer service or tech support. They are an invaluable tool at every stage of the sale process and can be extremely powerful if you know how to utilize them. They can also be used to do much more than send targeted emails based on customer demographics and can help coordinate and improve your sales in more ways than one. Here are three surprising ways a customer relationship management tool could help boost sales in your organization.
Know When to Act
Customer relationship management systems can be used to take action when it is beneficial to do so and keep tabs on customer behavior. One of the things you could do, for instance, is have the system notify you when an account has been stagnant for a certain amount of time. This will allow you to prevent opportunities from falling through the cracks or make sure that long-time customers don’t feel neglected.
You can also use your customer relationship management system to track customer complaints and overall satisfaction levels. This will allow you to know when customers are unhappy with the features in your latest edition or when customer service is falling short. You will then be able to take action before the negative customer impressions impact your sales.
Leverage Your Data
Your CRM could become a treasure trove of data that will allow you to become better at following up with customers. You could use it to target customers who own older models when you’re selling the next generation of a product, for instance. You could identify those most likely to be interested in complementary products, as well.
Use your CRM to identify changes in individual or group purchasing behaviors so that you can understand them as soon as it happens. You’ll then be able to adjust your sales pitch, marketing material, or coupons as the target moves.
Make Everyone in the Back Office More Efficient
Implementing the right customer relationship management system will improve the productivity of the back office as well as that of your sales team. You could use your system to segment and personalize your contacts better and only send relevant content to your customers, for instance. This will improve the click-through rate of your email marketing messages without additional effort on your part.
You could also use third-party tools to improve communication between your CRM and cloud applications you might be using. One of the tools you could use is PieSync. PieSync has a unique two-way sync function that allows various applications to communicate with your CRM and vice versa. It could also allow you to painlessly combine several different offices or subsidiaries into a single data repository since PieSync can connect with Zoho, Copper, ConnectWise Manage, Nimble, Pipedrive and Salesforce.
The best customer relationship management systems tie into your marketing, financial, and customer support management tools, creating a seamless experience for customers while minimizing work for your team. When used right, they will allow you to increase revenue while reducing costs.
