Saving time and making more money is usually always top-of-mind. Finding practical ways to do that is important to the future of the company. One very valid method of doing this is to utilize a CRM system. I know what you might be thinking, “why would I want to bog down my salespeople with unneeded processes?” Well, let’s dispel some of the time-waste myths surrounding the concept of the CRM.
- Eliminates Double-Work
All too often, salespeople will gather the same facts that the salesperson before them gathered. If you are paying a salesperson to sell, but not requiring them to input data into a CRM, then you are losing money in the long run.
Your market is a landscape and your salespeople are the surveyors. Getting a good picture of your sales landscape will help new employees and other salespeople to understand what opportunities have presented themselves. If each new sales employee begins the journey again, then the overall picture is never complete.
- Saves time on customer fact finding
As a result of not beginning the journey again, over time the CRM will contain many facts about each client that will be beneficial to the current salesperson.
If a sales person does not have to ask extra exploratory questions, then the sales process becomes shorter. This is also good for the client, because the interaction with your company can seem more smooth.
- Eliminates Confusion & Clutter
A good CRM will eliminate confusion and clutter in two ways:
- Consolidates customer information
Often customer information gets placed everywhere…in the car, on the desk, in the padfolio, in the cell phone, on the iPad…the list is endless. I cannot count the times that I found myself searching through old papers for a note that I made 2 months prior. It can easily become maddening!
By bringing all of that information into one central location, salespeople are able to save time by not searching for customer information in multiple places. Incidentally, every time the salesperson realizes that they are looking for information on an old paper, it will reinforce the logic of using a CRM.
- Updates same copy of information, no two copies
While this may seem a lot like the last point, this one solves a different problem. Sometimes, customer information changes. This means that there is the potential for two copies of the same data to exist with different values. When changes are made to the customer profile, it should be updated in one place. This will allow salespeople to have the accurate information the first time.
- Improves Company Efficiency
Overall, the use of a CRM system is more efficient. By utilizing technology into the sales process, everything becomes better oiled:
- Sales and marketing can begin to get better lead data and begin winning more business.
- Customers become repeat buyers, because the sales process is so smooth.
- Purchasing can use the customer data to forecast better
- Marketing can start building better customer personas and targeting them more specifically
- Managerial decision making becomes easier due to historical data provided by the CRM
As you can see, the utilization of a CRM can affect nearly every part of the business.
- Increases Revenue
Most companies can never have too many good salespeople. So, it is important to utilize the good ones that you have to their fullest potential. By having a solid understanding of landscape and more synchronized data, conversion rates improve and the sales cycle is shortened. This allows the same human resource (A.K.A. Salesman Sam) to continue on to the next hot lead and make the company even more revenue.
