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3 Ways a CRM Helps Close More Deals and Make More Money

By: Alessandra

When it comes to boosting your bottom line and improving the overall health of your organization, CRM is the most effective tool for longterm, sustainable growth. 

A CRM, or customer relationship management tool, is software that all businesses should use. From sales to marketing to support, a CRM establishes a solid foundation for all business relationships.

The CRM myth
Many people believe that CRM is just for sales. The truth? It’s not just a sales tool. While a CRM does track sales information and helps salespeople stay on top of their leads and clients, it provides so much more than that to your entire team. 

CRM is not a sales tool. It’s a business management tool. 

What is a CRM?

CRM is a software that is set up to help you streamline your business, so you're not spinning your wheels, while you're spinning in circles. A CRM is more than a database of contacts or leads; it's a multi-dimensional software platform and strategy that allows you to communicate and interact with customers in new and unique ways. It helps teams work smarter, not harder. Choosing the right CRM can help you develop, manage, and grow customer relationships throughout the entire customer lifecycle, which are the fundamentals of good business sense, and cents.

Because a CRM is important for the entire organization, it’s not enough to have a traditional CRM that acts as an online Rolodex. Instead, you need what we like to call a Complete CRM, or a CRM solution that integrates marketing, customer service, operations into one, highly customizable platform.

No department can achieve operational efficiency and peak productivity without data from other parts of the company. Complete CRM helps organizations streamline the flow of information between each department. This allows each department to access the data they need, when they need it. For example, once a lead comes in, they typically go through a lead nurturing journey or flow, which then triggers a follow up from sales. When you integrate sales and marketing into the same system, you create harmonious and sensible transitions between the two departments. 

What’s more? A Complete CRM allows you to segment your contacts based on both behavioral and demographic data so you can truly personalize the customer experience. Simply adding a first name doesn’t cut it anymore. You want to engage clients when they are hot. With so many customers entering your funnel, and not always ready to buy, it’s critical that you integrate your sales, marketing, and customer service to deliver a fully customized user experience.

Each department's engagement directly impacts sales. 

The bottom line

No matter where your company's focus lies, the goal is to get customers and keep customers. The way to achieve this goal is through sales. Sales are the lifeline of all businesses. The more time your team can focus on finding new deals and keeping them in the funnel, the better it will be for revenue growth. With the right customer relationship management software, you will see that less time is spent trying to decide where to focus your sales efforts. With more time, you and your teams can focus on cultivating leads and closing accounts. A CRM will keep data at your fingertips and align your sales, marketing, and customer service teams, so your business has consistency throughout the entire customer experience.

Now let’s get into the three main ways that a Complete CRM helps you close more deals and make more money.

360-degree view of the customer

While a CRM is more than a database, it indeed can be used as one. However, the advantage of using customer relationship management software is that your client information doesn't just sit static on a spreadsheet. Instead, it becomes a complete customer profile and a comprehensive 360-view of your relationship with the customer. A CRM gives real-time tracking on interactions like purchases, engagements, clicks, as well as any interaction your company has ever had with your client. Being able to follow every aspect of your client's experience with your business significantly improves the relationship. 

For example, marketing can send messages based on previous emails they’ve read or blog posts they’ve viewed. Sales can see what interactions they’ve had with customer service, giving them more context for their next conversation. Support can see what how-to’s the customer has accessed or tutorials they have watched. A single contact record paints the entire relationship with that client. 

Having this full view of the customer relationship helps you make data-driven decisions. Reporting helps you determine trends, effective campaigns, and important touchpoints, which will help you down the line. Integrated data streamlines your efforts to fill the funnel from the top, while keeping the people that have already been funneled in, coming back for more.

Ability to manage the entire customer lifecycle

From the time a lead comes into the moment they become a customer, you need to be able to effectively track, manage, and most importantly, build that relationship. From the time a lead learns about you, it’s important to understand the customer journey. Let’s say a lead comes in requesting a demo, but then never responds to your initial outreach. What do you do? Instead of putting them in a cold leads box and letting them slip away, put them into a lead nurturing campaign geared towards re-engaging and converting that lead. Now, let’s say they click on one of your emails. Don’t you want to be notified right away so sales can follow up while you are top of mind? Yes! 

The goal here is to create a flexible customer journey, where the paths each customer takes is determined by their actions and demographic data. Put the control in their hands, but ultimately lead them to your end goal of conversion. 

Let’s say a lead never ends up converting. I’ve seen a lot of companies simply forget about these leads. Instead, why not put them in an Unresponsive or Cold Leads group that you email every so often with updates, promos, and more. You never know when someone is ready to buy, but you want to be there when they are. 

Customer journey mapping is a key component of a Complete CRM. A customer journey map ties sales, marketing, and operations together while creating personalized and seamless experiences for the customers.

Increase productivity 

Productivity happens when your sales, marketing, and customer service teams are aligned. These teams can give the customer a smooth experience, from the first engagement, until after the transaction is complete. Your sales and marketing teams will be able to use customer profiles and tracking to create better strategies, while your customer care team can use the data in the CRM to determine how to provide the best service. Your customer is left feeling confident and satisfied with their interactions from start to finish. This results in increased sales, better customer satisfaction and employees that will work smarter, not harder. 

Productivity is measured by the rate of output compared to input. So inherently, if your team has access to all of the data they need, productivity soars. 

When you can track customer behavior, create profiles and see who your customers are, and increase productivity, you're able to generate more opportunities for sales and close more deals. A win-win for all.

 

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