Sales CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is a tool designed to help businesses manage and optimize their customer interactions and relationships. It is a central platform for storing customer information, tracking sales interactions, and analyzing data to improve sales processes and drive growth. By automating and streamlining sales operations, a Sales CRM can help sales teams be more productive and efficient, and provide a better customer experience.
Whether it’s tracking leads and opportunities, managing contacts and accounts, or providing insights and analytics, a Sales CRM can be a valuable asset for any business looking to grow its sales and improve customer relationships.
What is Sales CRM?
Right from prospecting to closing the deal, there is a need for a clear vision, streamlined sales process, and effective salespeople. If there is no proper system in place, it will be havoc.
But there is an escape from all of these with a Sales CRM. CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management.” This Sales Customer Relationship Management software is quite effective and will help in becoming better at various works of an organization.
With a CRM, the salespeople will have all the information that they need to make better sales. All the customer-related information is present in one unified place making it easy for them to close the deals.
Features of Sales CRM
Multiple Pipelines
When you have all the prospective leads, customers in a pipeline view, you will get an overview of the entire sales funnel. You will get to see clients categorized into different segments, stages, and have color-coding that will help in better identification.
It will also help in lead management. You can just drag and drop the leads into various stages. There is sales pipeline management software that can help with all of this. However, remember that sales pipeline software doesn’t offer multiple pipelines for different locations, lead sources, and products.
An effective CRM will help in this segmentation. You can add tags for each of these pipelines and use them to identify location, device, language, lead source, retention, and much more.
Omnichannel Approach
With an omnichannel approach, you can provide seamless customer service. You can deliver more value to your prospective customer and reach new customer segments with this. Apart from that, the operational efficiency will also be increased as you just need to collect the respective customer data just once.
Appointment Management
You can use CRM to schedule appointments and demos with just one click. Sales reps can easily add an appointment, send it to the respective customers, and also send reminders related to it along with updating the outcome of the appointment.
As said, everything related to a customer can be stored in one place using the appointment management feature in a CRM.
Lead Tracking and Management
So, you are conducting different marketing campaigns on different platforms. You need to know from which platform you are getting the leads and with CRM, it becomes easy to get these details. Once you have the details of a lead source, you can know which of your marketing campaigns are a success and which of them are not.
Apart from that, lead management becomes easier for you with an effective CRM in place. It will determine which of the leads are important and need a follow-up by checking the demographics and physiographic factors. The lead score will help in increasing the productivity and efficiency of your sales team as they get to focus on the right leads at the right time.
Contact Management
Contact management or sometimes called customer management is a very vital feature of a CRM. The users will get to segment contacts into groups according to their preset rules. This way they can run special campaigns, contact those particular customers and get all the details that are required. It will become easier for organizations to gather customer data and work on marketing strategies.
The personalized campaigns will make customers feel important and provide them with a sort of satisfaction.
Follow-Ups
Do not let your customers slip away from the cracks by having a proper follow-up process. If a prospective lead wants you to contact them later, make sure to add this into your follow-up bucket. Once you do this, you will be notified at the time when they want you to get back to them.
If you miss this follow-up, it will go overdue. This way, every lead matters to a CRM and you will get a chance to have an eye on all of the leads with just a click.
360-Degree View of Customer Profile
One of the greatest advantages for a business from CRM is that it provides a 360-degree view of your customer journey. From where that particular lead is captured to their previous orders, you can get a glance at everything related to that particular customer.
Salespeople can use all of these data to close deals quicker and also for upselling as well as cross-selling.
Task Management
Task management is one of the most helpful features of a CRM. It gives you an overview of what needs to be done and also you can set the deadlines according to your requirements.
Shared Calendar
Having an integrated calendar in the CRM is nothing less than a boon for the sales team. This helps in managing the events, schedules, resources, and meetings. You can create events by linking your customer profiles, this will give a glance to the entire team and everyone will know whom that particular customer is meeting.
With CRM, you can propose multiple meeting times and this will help your customer choose the one that he is comfortable with.
Import and Export the Data
The core of any sales CRM software is the data and companies would want to download it to conduct some campaigns, etc. On the other hand, the leads for any organization would come in different ways.
Having details of all such leads in one place is another benefit for an organization and this can be done by importing the data into CRM.
A CRM should have both of these features so that companies can make the most out of it whenever they need it.
Integrate Social Media
If you aren’t active on social media or don’t have a solid social media marketing strategy in hand, it is very tough to sustain in this competition. You have to integrate your social media channels with a CRM and track a lot of things.
Apart from that, social media integration will also help in catering better customer service for an organization.
Reminders/Notifications
This is an add-on benefit for CRM users. If you are managing more leads at once, you need reminders or notifications if any customer hasn’t been contacted for a long time or if anyone needs a follow-up.
With sales management software, you will have that feature that will come in handy as you scale your business.
Customization and Privileges
If you have a large sales team, every one of them doesn’t need all the features that a sales CRM software provides. A sales rep doesn’t need to have access to the lead generation or marketing CRM right! However, CRM will provide you with a customization feature, and using this you can limit the access for each of your sales reps.
The reporting manager or CEO will have the privilege to customize CRM for each of the sales reps according to their requirement.
Integrate with Third-Party Sources
Do you know what makes a great CRM? Its ability to integrate and work as a mediator tool between different business processes.
You may be using various tools for different business processes, a CRM will integrate all of these and provide you with better output. Make sure to opt for a pipeline software that you can rely on and you can reap benefits out of it.
Dashboards
You can get a quick overview of your monthly sales results on the dashboard. This dashboard is completely customizable and you can add various metrics that you want on it using the customization feature.
Benefits of Sales CRM
If the CRM is properly deployed and used, it brings a myriad of benefits to the table. There are various technologies that come and go but CRM is something that companies can rely on without any second thoughts.
Stay Organized
One of the secret ingredients for the success of any business is proper organization. In spite of the team size, it will become easy to create a streamlined process and follow through it with the help of a CRM.
You can now stop relying on spreadsheets, notepads, scribblings on papers that disappear magically when you need it, etc., and just work around with CRM. In CRM, you can save and access everything with just a click.
Most of the sales CRM software is offering a mobile app lately and with this, it has become even easier for salespeople to have all the details at their fingertips.
Enhanced Communication
For any business, communication is the key. Be it internal communication or external, a sales CRM can be your trusted partner when it comes to communication. Let us take an example to understand this better.
There is a lead that has been handled by one of your customer executives and this particular executive wasn’t available on a day when that lead wanted to have a meeting and discuss some important things.
You have to send in another executive and that person must have to get his basics first and then delve into the matter. If he asks questions related to earlier meetings to the lead , it will leave a bitter experience for that particular lead.
However, if you have a CRM, this won’t be a hassle. Every small piece of information that there is to know about lead will be present in the CRM. With just one click, whosoever executive it is can access and check about the customer details, which stage lead is in, etc.
This enhanced communication will not just deliver great customer satisfaction but will also ease the efforts of your executives.
Improvises Customer Service
Remember that time is valuable, be it yours or customers. If any of your customers are facing some issues and need a resolution, it is on you to solve them as soon as possible and save their time.
With the right CRM system in place, when a customer contacts an organization raising any issues, executives can look at customers’ past purchases, their preferences, and other details. These will help in resolving their issues as soon as possible.
Executives with a lot of experience in hand can solve these issues even quicker. Solving customer concerns and providing better service is a cakewalk when you have an effective CRM in hand.
Automation of Recurring Tasks
Closing a business deal isn’t just limited to getting your customer to commit. There is a lot of backend work that needs to be done. Right from curating an agreement and sending an invoice to checking out all the legalities.
While all of these are important, they are recurring monotonous works that can be automated. A CRM will take care of all of this paperwork while your salespeople can work on other leads.
Improved Efficiency
Right from marketing to customer service, all departments in your organization will have access to the data present in CRM. The centralized database will allow everyone to check emails, phone call details, and calendars all in one place.
This will help in skyrocketing the progress. All of the teams will have access to valuable information about the clients that will help in getting them down to the sales funnel. Apart from closing a sale, they can also upsell and cross-sell other products with a click.
Teams become more efficient with the help of a CRM.
Smart Decision Making
Miscalculated data isn’t something that any business can afford. With sales software, all of the customer-related information is available in one place. When this happens, it becomes easy for an organization to analyze the data.
By using different types of plugins, various reports can be generated according to the data available. All of these will help in making better decisions in an organization, understanding customer behavior, and many more.
Lead Management
Lead management means capturing the leads, tracking all of the touchpoints that your business had with every lead and keep engaging with them until they purchase your product.
These leads come into a CRM from different sources. Sales reps can categorize these leads depending upon their location, tastes, buying behavior, preferences, etc. A CRM will help in this segregation.
By using the key insights available in these leads, the sales reps can tailor their approach. This customized approach will increase the chances of closing a deal. Lead management is one of the most notable benefits of a sales CRM system.
Pipeline Management
Sales pipeline management is a process of managing all the incoming sales opportunities and tracking their different stages until confirming whether the lead’s journey is closed or lost. This is a common journey for every lead that comes into a business.
This lead journey can be long at times and without a proper CRM, it becomes tough for sales reps to track these leads and do their follow-ups.
According to CSO insights, 27% of the sales representatives consider that the longer sales cycles are, the more barriers they face in closing the business. However, with a CRM, it becomes easy to track the leads and know at which stage they are.
A sales CRM will check the potential of each lead and then segment them accordingly. The sales reps can curate effective strategies that will help in moving the leads from one stage to another.
Sales managers can also check the deals that they have closed and also get an idea about their weekly and monthly targets, where they are in the achieving process.
Sales Forecasting
CRM analyzes and provides real-time data that will help in optimizing the performance of an organization. The data sets related to case times, call volumes, revenue per call, up-sell rates, etc. will help in devising effective strategies.
They can use the sales CRM to augment new clients and also retain the old ones.
Do More in Less Time
With a CRM, a lot of processes can be automated, and also with the data available, a lot of things can be handled with ease. All in all, it will help in getting a lot of work done within a shorter amount of time.
Increase in Employee Productivity
Employee productivity is improved manifold with a CRM. They have all the information related to customers and leads at their fingertips. With a lot of data automated, the team will get to reach their targets within very less time.
The reporting managers will have a real-time screen where they can track the performance of each employee.
10 Reasons Why Salespeople Need a CRM
It is a fact that there are so many salespeople who still dread using CRM. They think that CRM is just another tracking tool that reporting managers use to pressure and keep an eye on them. But, that isn’t it.
Salespeople can make the most out of a CRM if they use it in a proper and efficient way. What is the biggest challenge that salespeople face often?
1. How to follow up and qualify the leads?
2. How to prioritize their sales activities?
At least that’s what we think. What if I say, both of these challenges can be sorted out with a CRM. Yes, CRM will not just ease these tasks but will also help salespeople in performing better too.
Let us dig in to know why salespeople need this CRM.
Safe and Properly Aligned Database
CRM offers a centralized database. Salespeople can store their activities, contacts, sales opportunities, and schedule plans. The best thing about this is that they get uninterrupted access to the database from anywhere on any device they want without any hassle. All they need is a proper internet connection.
Target Customers with Ease
With CRM, salespeople can segment the data effectively and identify valuable opportunities. They can set up filters and select leads whom they want to target and approach. There won’t be any disorganized lists, cutting and pasting from different documents, etc.
Better Planning and Time Management
A CRM will help in managing time effectively. The salespeople will have a proper daily schedule that they can follow with CRM. They can plan their appointments, tasks and reach out to customers with ease.
This way no customer is ignored and all the key prospects are reached in time.
New Sale? Be There on Time
When all the communication with a customer is tracked and provided, it becomes easy for salespeople to be there on time and make a new sale. Let us take an example of a customer whose contract needs to be renewed soon, a rep can approach him and get the contract renewed.
Meanwhile, they can also make the most out of the sale by either cross-selling or upselling.
Hierarchical Monitoring
With CRM, everything can be shared among the team members. The calendars, document templates, having all the members on the same page, and making everyone stay up-to-date.
The sales manager can handle, and monitor the entire department’s performance with just a few clicks.
Streamline Sales Moves in Real-Time
CRM has the entire sales pipeline properly set and aligned. This makes it easy for the salespeople to identify lead buckets and take action accordingly. Since most of the paperwork is handled by CRM itself, reps can concentrate more on talking to customers and closing the deals.
Transparent View of Customers
All of the data related to customers is present in the CRM and can be viewed at one glance by reps. This will help in better analysis and even help in anticipating their problems. All of this will help in enhancing customer satisfaction, inculcates loyalty, and may lead to an increase in margin.
Eases the Reporting Manager Tasks
The reporting manager gets some privileges and can access everything related to a lead or a particular rep with just a click. They can work on other pressing issues rather than focusing on micromanagement.
Saves Money and Increases Sales ROI
At first, investing in an effective CRM may sound like a costly affair for businesses. However, it helps in saving money by reducing errors. You can save both time and effort using a reliable CRM. Apart from this with customer details present at a glance, it becomes easier to make sales and increase ROI.
Prepare and Share Activity Reports
Activity reports will give an idea of all things that have happened in the past week. They also provide the monthly reports which will come in handy at the end of the month. These activity reports can be shared across teams which will eventually help in keeping everyone in the loop of all the happenings related to a client.
Unified Experience
In CRM, you will have both- a marketing and service team working together with the sales team. All of these verticals work on CRM and this makes it easy for salespeople to have a unified experience.
Cross-Sell and Upsell
By using CRM you will have an idea about your customers’ preferences and their purchases. An experienced sales rep can use this information to sell other products or services that your business offers or even better sell something that is costlier than the product that they have purchased.
Definitive Guide to Use Sales CRM
Now that you have an idea about what a sales CRM is, it is time to understand how to implement this tool and make the most out of it.
Add Your Sales Team
A sales CRM software is all about salespeople. The sooner they get habituated to the software, the better they will perform and get results.
Add the salespeople as users and ensure that they know how valuable it is. You can make them sit for demos and tutorials so that they can get a complete idea about the product. Once salespeople get a grip on it, using the CRM and making the most out of it would be like a cakewalk.
Customize
A CRM is one such tool that can be customized as you want. So, make sure that you got all the features and privileges which you can use as per your requirement.
Understand the sales process of your organization and map the tool according to it. If you don’t have an idea about the sales process, take some time to observe how your sales team is closing deals, what is the difference between a successful deal and a failure one.
This will help you in addressing those gaps properly.
Import the Data
Before you opted for a particular CRM, you must have been using another CRM or spreadsheets as a repository for all of your databases. You can upload all of the data present in your CRM or wherever you have it into this new CRM in the CSV file format.
Integrate Your Tools
In every organization, it is important for the marketing, sales, and support team to have a 360-degree view of the prospects and customers. If you are already using a different CRM for customer service, just integrate it with this new CRM using integration APIs.
Setup the Dashboard
The dashboard is a control panel for the reporting managers and team leads to have a look at what each and every sales rep is doing. You can customize this dashboard and see about the clients and at which stage they are.
This way, there are so many other options available in the dashboard and you can pick the ones you need and set them up.
Create Reports
CRM gives you a lot of data and you would need it to be present in the form of a report that you can have a look at. These reports will help your sales reps in understanding at what level they are performing, how can they improve, and various other options.
