Are You Using A CRM?
When we’re looking at a sales spreadsheet, it can be easy to think of our customers as just names and numbers. It’s important to remember they’re people, each as varied and complex as we are, and our interactions with them are equally complex.
How do we keep track of all that complexity? The best companies take the time to get to know their customers’ habits and preferences to better serve them. While that’s great, it also generates a lot of data. Where does all that data end up? How can we effectively use that data to improve our relationship with our customers?
Tracking customer relationships
The answer is a CRM. If you’re not familiar with it a CRM system, or Customer Relationship Management system, is a way of keeping track of all that data so you and your sales force can have the information you need when you need it. Without it, it becomes all too easy for important details to get lost or forgotten. Did you set up the meeting with that prospective customer or did someone else on your team? Was that phone conversation with the new client followed up on? Which sales leads show promise and which ones don’t look like they’ll go anywhere?
Eliminating multi-system chaos
With older sales systems, that information was scattered or on a mix of systems. Different people had different pieces to the sales puzzle, making it a challenge to quickly find out who had what piece. Even worse, someone who had those pieces could leave at any time, taking that knowledge out the door with them.
It’s these kinds of problems that a CRM system is designed to handle. It’s more than just a glorified database. Of course it will hold all the important contact details for your leads, but it also allows you to view the details of any interactions you may have had and track those activities all the way from first contact to successful sale and beyond.
Tracking sales and marketing results
A CRM lets you generate sales and marketing reports so you can better see how customers are moving through the various stages of the sales pipeline, which leads are producing the best results and how your sales people are doing with their sales targets.
The software allows messaging within your workgroup so your sales staff can ask and answer questions as well as share information in real time. As situations change, team members can easily upload new information straight into a shared database that’s viewable by the rest of the team.
With a CRM, the days of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing are over. Calendars and contacts can be shared within the group, so everyone knows who everyone else is doing, saving costly (and sometimes embarrassing) duplication of effort. There are even handy dashboard analytics, so you can tell at a glance how you’re doing.
These are just a few of the benefits of a CRM system. Interested? If you’re already an Infusionsoft user, you don’t have to worry about how it will integrate into your existing system. Infusionsoft already comes with a CRM system so you can get started right away. Take a look at our demo to find out more.