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7 Features You CRM Must Have for Productive Sales

Traditionally, a CRM system is a software application used by salespeople to manage client relationships. Their core function was to track contacts, schedule meetings, and follow up on previous conversations with customers, prospects, and leads. Today, CRMs have evolved into full-fledged business operating solutions, like GreenRope. They are used by marketing, sales, and customer service to track every touchpoint throughout the entire customer lifecycle. 

With CRMs having so many more features available to meet the needs of the entire organization, it’s important to make sure your CRM has the core functionality your sales team needs to track sales and grow revenue. 

As a salesperson, you work hard to make sure your company is making money. You spend every day talking to people and building business relationships. Having a CRM system can help you keep track of all this activity, make it easier to manage your leads, and let you focus on growing your business. It acts as your second brain or assistant, keeping you on top of all your tasks and sales opportunities.

However, when purchasing a CRM system for effective sales team management, there are several features you need to consider. Below is an outline of the essential CRM features and why they're crucial for your team.

1. Robust contact record with task tracking and custom user-defined fields for data management

Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to sales. Sales people need a robust contact record filled with custom data points, notes, tasks, previous conversations, emails, and more. A good CRM allows you to completely customize the contact record with customized custom user-defined fields, activity tracking, notes, custom layouts, custom objects, etc. 

These features allow you to house and organize important data and effectively manage your relationships. You need to keep accurate records of every person you interact with and maintain a history of your interactions. The more history you have about the relationship with a lead or customer, the better able you are to provide them with the personalized service they need. People like doing business with people who show they care. With the information stored in your CRM, sales can prove that the lead or customer isn’t just a number. This results in longer-lasting, more valuable relationships over time. 

2. Integrated sales & marketing

As a salesperson, it is crucial to track your customers across multiple platforms and touchpoints. It’s not enough to only track your sales relationship, it’s important to have context on the entire relationship with the company. 

For example, When someone visits your website, opens an email you sent them, or engages with your marketing in some capacity, it all counts as a conversation that should be logged and managed by your CRM. Behavioral information like this provides a lot of insight into the customer and their interest in your product or service. If they are opening and clicking on your emails, attending webinars, and visiting your website they are most likely further down the sales funnel or a more qualified lead than someone who has not opened any emails or engaged in any other way. 

A company needs both sales and marketing data for a full 360-degree view of the customer relationship. 

A complete CRM like GreenRope automatically ties together your sales and marketing, so all of that data is updated in realtime in the contact record. No more time wasting importing and exporting of data, or managing costly integrations. 

When you eliminate silos in your organization, your team works more productively towards a common goal. Especially in a remote work environment, it’s absolutely essential your team has access to the data they need when they need it. An integrated CRM system like GreenRope gives your team the freedom, flexibility, and power to use real data to generate better strategies that drive real results. 

 3. Mobile app for on-the-go sales calls/management

The ability to work on the move and manage your CRM from any device is a huge plus for your sales team. When you are out of the office and need to add a task for your sales team, make sales calls or check on upcoming meetings, you should be able to do it from anywhere. This is why having a CRM that offers mobile app services is crucial to sales team management.

The mobile app doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should have all the essential features, like CRM tasks management, sending emails, etc. 

You should also make sure that you have IMAP set up with your CRM, so any emails you send/receive from your contacts are automatically stored within the CRM. 

4. Click to call, so you can call and track your calls right from the CRM

Click to call is a viable feature in CRM because it centralizes all your communication with leads and customers. It adds automatic notes to your CRM, so you can look back and remember any previous conversations. With this feature, you no longer need sticky notes of phone numbers, no more trying to remember what you talked about on your last call. Just click, call and track it all from one interface.

With GreenRope’s transcription feature you have the option to save your entire conversation in your CRM records. When transcription is enabled, calls are automatically logged in your CRM and you can use that information to score leads, trigger automation, like sending a follow up, or some other automated sequence. 

Not to mention, you can more accurately report on the calls that you make and see how they contribute to your bottom line. 

5. Opportunity management to control high-value sales and track your pipeline

A great CRM should provide you with different ways to track your sales pipeline and manage potential sales possibilities. You and your team need to see how many leads you have and compare that with the number of opportunities you have at various stages.

Along with an opportunity pipeline, sales should be able to create personalized paths for each type of opportunity. For example, some opportunities might require more or less steps along the way to closing. Being able to customize each phase of your pipeline allows for better transparency and tracking. 

Automation is also important when it comes to opportunity tracking. First, certain lead behavior should be able to move a prospect from one phase of your pipeline to another automatically. What’s more, it’s nice to be able to have checklist items at each stage in your pipeline, so you can keep track of each task that needs to be completed at each phase. 

Pipeline and opportunity automation helps to streamline both your internal process, and the customer experience. When you can automate your pipeline, you increase productivity, alleviate human error, and standardize the process across all departments. 

6. Robust reporting

Reporting is another crucial feature for any sales-ready CRM. First, your salespeople should be able to pull reports on their leads and customers easily. They should also be able to pull reports on their closes, CRM activities, pipeline movement, and more. This should be a regular activity for your sales team. Understanding their pipeline helps them work more efficiently. 

Management also needs access to robust reporting. Reports help both sales and management determine performance, conversions, lead quality, quotas, sales team activity, and much more. 

Here is a list of basic sales reports you need with CRM: 

  • Contacts reporting (data reports) 
  • Opportunity tracking & performance
  • Pipeline reports
  • CRM activity reports
  • Sales forecasting
  • Lead sources & campaigns
  • Call tracking 

7. Automation

You want your CRM to be able to automatically remind you of tasks, routinely send emails to clients, texts, documents, etc. Having automation tied into your CRM is important for sales productivity and effectiveness. 

Automation can help sales: 

  • Qualify leads
  • Remind sales of important tasks
  • Send contracts & documents
  • Nurture leads
  • Personalize communication
  • Send emails
  • Automatically assign leads to salespeople

When you automate different parts of the sales process, you streamline and create consistency for not only your internal team, but your customers as well. Automation helps teams become more efficient by taking out a lot of the manual, tedious tasks. 

For example, automation can help qualify leads, identifying the hottest leads to send to sales while disqualifying non-leads without alienating them. Automatic data collection can assist in personalizing communication, as well as providing additional context to sales. This can be done through lead nurturing, and other tactics like forms, surveys, online chat, transcribed phone calls, and more. 

Building automation into your pipeline and opportunity management also helps your sales team stay focused and on top of leads. For example, if a contact moves from the qualified lead stage to the proposal stage, your CRM should be able to automatically send a contract or a quote/invoice. Adding these little automated touches speeds up your sales cycle, creates accountability, transparency, and consistency - all necessary characteristics of a successful sales process. 

Takeaway

CRM is essential for your sales. It can help you keep track of all these activities, making it easier to manage your leads, and letting you focus on growing your business. However, you need these seven features to help you boost your sales management.

GreenRope is an advanced CRM and marketing automation platform for sales team management. We are an integrated platform that meets the needs of sales, marketing, and operations departments by tying the three together. We provide a wide range of tools and features that give you the ability to manage your entire sales department efficiently.

At GreenRope, we offer you a 14-day free trial for all our customers. Make your subscription today to improve your sales process.

 

Alessandra Gyben Blog Bio

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