CRM affects a company’s marketing, management, and business intelligence. Here are a few reasons you should invest in the software and make it a focal point of your strategy:
Consolidate your data in one place
Many businesses are all over the place when it comes to data and analytics. Their first problem is storing the data in different programs based on its intended use.
Although this may not seem like an issue initially, it can lead to unexpected problems. First, employees need to remember where the data is kept. If they forget, they won’t be able to access it. Additionally, it can be tough to find the data if an analysis relies on several factors.
CRM software consolidates your data in one place. Thus, it’s more accessible, organized, and structured.
Make sense of endless data
Companies now have access to seemingly endless data. This is both a blessing and a curse. For each business that’s able to utilize this data in their marketing campaign, there’s one that gets overwhelmed by the millions of entries and gives up.
CRM can help with the latter case. According to this TechTarget article, it’s particularly useful for helping eCommerce businesses manage their data:
“For example, a large retail marketplace may have tens to hundreds of millions of distinct products and hundreds of millions of consumers…. CRM data is particularly suited for enabling this, and modern development in statistical and machine learning can enable this.”
But it’s not just about putting entries in the right columns and rows. With CRM, businesses are able to make sense of the data so they can evaluate and forecast. This helps you refine and tweak your business strategy.
Get your teams to collaborate
Even small businesses need to group their employees into teams. But it doesn’t take long for these teams to get competitive and uncooperative.
You need to get these teams to work together, and CRM can help you do that. This Customer Think article explains why sales and marketing teams in particular need to work together:
Instead, in 2018, shake things up. Have sales connect with marketing, marketing with customer service, and so on. Set up monthly team meetings. The more teams communicate, the better they can share ideas, set goals, and become more engaged. As the saying goes, “two heads are better than one.”
With CRM, you just need to give both teams access to the data. Sales representatives should enter new information about clients and marketers should refer to the data when planning a new campaign. Both teams can use the software to communicate and share their goals.
Create a sales funnel
When you generate hundreds of leads, you need to know how close each one is to placing an order. Most importantly, you need to separate the qualified leads from your target audience from the irrelevant ones.
With all the data you get from CRM, you can have a more concrete idea of what your sales funnel looks like. Based on the behavior of your prospects, you’ll be able to tell which leads are likely to buy one of your products. Sales representatives can then focus on these leads for a better use of their time.
Predict sales
It’s nice to know when you’re going to have slow months and busy seasons before they happen. This way, you’re better prepared to serve customers and deal with your finances. With CRM, you have a large enough sample size to identify trends and seasonality and make accurate sales forecasts.