How CRM helps your business grow
Any innovation implemented in a company should make a measurable contribution to its development and guarantee benefits to the organization. One such tool is a CRM system, without which it is difficult to imagine a company in the 21st century. It is a component part of an information system that, using multi-source databases, assists employees in managing customer relations. How exactly does a CRM system help a company grow? Below we discuss a summary of the seven benefits most frequently cited by our customers.
Better organization of work
This is by far the most important and most common buzzword – improving the quality of work and organizing it better. The CRM system acts like a remote data dispatcher – it communicates to everyone what they need to take care of, while noting every activity. A user with authorization data can log into the system from any authenticated source. This means that work on contacts can be done not only in the office, but also remotely – from a hotel on a business trip, from home during home office or on the train in hybrid mode. The manager – even if not on-site – can effectively supervise his team and delegate tasks to be completed. The employee, in turn, receives a list of contacts and referrals, which allows him to manage his activities more effectively over time. Sales funnels also play an important role in ordering the sales process. Based on them, it is possible to determine who should handle a particular lead at any given time.
More accurate planning of activities
The CRM system not only allows for effective action in the current situation. Also, future actions – both in the shorter and broader time horizon – will be more accurate and easier to plan. Let’s say we have three customers: one is using a service that needs to be refreshed in a year’s time, another is considering between two options and has asked for a week to think about it, the third has bought a product with resale potential. Contact with the first person can be scheduled about 10-11 months ahead, so that you can remind them to refresh the service. The second person is scheduled for an interview next week, and in the meantime you can prepare an additional “ace up your sleeve” to convince him. The third is contacted in a month’s time – on the one hand, we want to inquire about satisfaction with the current product, and on the other hand, we are taking a crosseling action. This is probably the kind of example your organization is filled with, which is why a CRM in each of them will work perfectly as a planning tool.
Gathering data in one place
Imagine that each of your employees records information about the customers entrusted to them in a separate way. One uses an Excel table, another notes everything in a handy calendar, and another uses Google Docs. This is neither a safe, comfortable nor efficient method of data collection. A CRM system is a space where all information is centralized and data that would have been scattered before is combined. The whole thing is protected from unauthorized access – employees see only as much information as you as their manager provide. Similar centralization is observed in terms of collecting leads and orders from various sources. Inquiries from your email, from the chatbot on your site, from Google paid sheets and from Facebook Ads will be transferred directly to the CRM system. This is much more convenient, efficient and less cumbersome than refreshing each customer communication channel every hour.
Comprehensive reporting capabilities
It is hard to imagine a good manager who wants to effectively manage his team without access to analysis and reports. It is necessary to know how the team, understood as a whole and as individual links, performs. Of course, nothing prevents you from calculating sales volume, percentage of goal achievement, tasks completed, contacts taken on your own. However, if there are more than a dozen such data to be compiled, and there are at least two members on the team, such work will take dozens of hours. It is much more convenient to pull a report from the CRM system, which can be freely filtered. It is possible to show statistics for the entire team, for an individual employee or a group of employees. The data takes into account a number of criteria to assess the effectiveness of the organization’s work. This is a very good source of knowledge about the team – who is doing best, who may need additional training, and who is simply not performing their duties.
Scalability of the team during the development period
The emerging success on the horizon and the surge of customers is not always a harbinger of good news. Many businesses collapsed by growing too fast and having a supply they couldn’t meet. In other words – there was a shortage of manpower, and the staff present up to that point could not cope due to overwork. Customers left, often leaving behind negative comments that, in the calming phase, scared away other potential interested parties. The solution to this situation is a CRM system. This tool will greatly facilitate work by managing contacts, incoming orders and inquiries more efficiently. In doing so, you don’t need to hire dozens of new people – contact-by-contact service is possible in a CRM system. Thanks to this, we can say that through the CRM system, the team gains the attribute of scalability, because more emerging leads can be added to the employees and they can be successfully processed in further stages of service.
Increased customer satisfaction with service
Each of us has a certain need for ego gratification – and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We feel much better when we are treated specially, when we are more than just another customer at a particular company. We like to be appreciated, to be treated exceptionally, and this is not always obvious when using a large company. However, if this enterprise has its CRM system, then it certainly has recorded information on customer preferences and needs. The archive contains data on products offered, active and inactive contracts, and customer reviews. On this basis, he is much better able to match his offer to the customer’s needs, which also increases the likelihood of a deal. So there is a win-win situation – the company profiles the proposal, and the customer feels listened to, taken care of, so that his satisfaction increases. This, over time, will translate into a higher rate of successful sales, i.e. increased profits.
Maximize profits
All the above arguments lead to the key argument for implementing a CRM system – maximizing profits. Better organization, more accurate quoting, improved sales closings, faster access to data are not only more efficient use of time. It’s also a real higher turnover for your employees, who are more easily able to “finesse” sales (which, de facto, will again be helped by the CRM system, and more specifically, the quoting module). Less time spent contacting a cold lead that has poor sales success means more time and energy spent working with an actually interested customer. This, in turn, is the vision of a sales commission and an additional motivation for success in finalization. All this also benefits the company, for which an effective, highly motivated employee is the most valuable asset. The decision to implement a CRM system should be considered in the category of an investment in modernization and revenue growth for the company, not as another expense.
