A CRM is like any other business tool where it is only as effective as how it is used. When used properly, a CRM can help each of your sales team members increase their sales by 40%. Unfortunately, nearly half of all businesses that implement a new CRM solution do not use it to its full potential and lose out on a substantial amount of potential revenue. There are a few things you should learn that can help you use CRM as part of a growth strategy.
Set Your Goals
Create a list of goals you plan to use a CRM to help you accomplish. For example, you can set a goal to increase the number of leads by 20% each quarter and sales by 15%. You can track this within the CRM by generating reports based on time, number of leads, or other criteria you create. Once you establish your goals, you need to determine a strategy to reach them. You can do this by breaking large goals into small objectives and map a plan to complete the steps to meet each objective.
Categorize Your Customers
While it may not sound democratic, you should categorize your customers based on the value they provide to your company. Some customers may purchase more products and services than others. You may have frequent return customers who come back on a regular basis that spend more in the long term than a customer who makes a large one time order. A CRM can help you track these metrics through a customer spending report or frequency report that shows every time they’ve made a purchase.
Keep the Communication Flow
While a CRM is developed to handle large volumes of data, you must be able to manage and control it to meet your goals. Part of this requires involvement at every stage of your strategic process. Communicate with your sales team so they can build the objectives internally and offer them personal ownership of the direction their team or section takes. Employees who are included in the strategic process will be better able to implement new policies that will benefit the entire company.
Track Customer Data at Every Stage
A CRM can help your business collect data at every stage from initial contact to long term customer. Don’t be one of the several companies that fail to use their CRM until after a lead becomes a customer. You can nurture your leads through ad campaigns to get them to buy. Once you’ve made that first sale, you can use a CRM to continue reaching out by sending thank you emails for their purchase and suggesting other products or services they may be interested in. You can use a CRM to categorize the type of information your lead shares in social media. By following leads and customers, you will have a better idea of what they want so you can meet those expectations and understand what they will most likely be interested in for the future.
