When it comes to sales, it is always a race to the top, and for small businesses, there’s a lot riding on how high those numbers can climb. If you’re lucky and more established, your reputation alone can go a long way towards closing more deals. However, most small businesses out there need to rely on various tools and strategies to get them where they need to be.
A small business CRM can be an investment, but it can help your company grow in a myriad of ways that makes that investment totally worth it.
By next year, most businesses will be spending the largest portion of their software budgets on CRM systems. And this checks out. By incorporating your CRM into various aspects of your sales process, you can gain the edge to outpace your competitors and win big in today’s market.
Your CRM is jam-packed with insightful, valuable information on your customers, and it helps your sales teams organize their deals. If you have an all-in-one CRM, you can automate sales follow-ups and prioritize qualified leads. Your CRM can even help you see what processes aren’t valuable so you can cut down on operation costs and, in turn, focus on boosting revenue.
Let’s take a deeper look at all the various ways your CRM can help your small business attain growth.
Increases Sales
When it comes to sales, time is money. From the time a deal is created, the clock is ticking, and certain sales cycles can take months, even years. Spending time wisely is extremely crucial to success.
With the assistance of a CRM, your sales team is able to reduce time spent by cutting back on all the manual work that comes with vetting, qualifying, and nurturing an individual lead. The customer journey takes time, but at least with a CRM, every minute your sales team spends on a lead is used wisely. Individual follow-up would take hours, and it could be expensive when you consider sales salaries and other potential deals that would need to take a backseat. But, instead of pouring over numerous contacts and organizing them, a CRM does all the work, allowing your sales team to focus on other important tasks.
Your CRM software does more than just make life easier, though. It can shed some light on how effective your sales channels are, so you can spot inefficiencies sooner and brainstorm on better tactics quicker. Your CRM can tell you:
- The length of your sales cycle
- Any steps that are holding up the entire process
- The number of sales opportunities in the pipeline
- The average size of the deal with respect to deal value
- Conversion rate or the close ratio
With a clear indication of which deals are at which stage, your team can better identify and prioritize high-value opportunities. By giving these more beneficial opportunities more focus, they’ll be able to create more opportunities for closing.
Quicker Issue Resolution
If you have a problem with systematically organizing customer transactions, then you’re probably not using a CRM. Nothing eats away quicker at your small business’s morale and competence than when you can’t recall prior interactions with customers in order to solve an urgent issue. Angry customers leave bad reviews, and bad reviews can be a nightmare to deal with.
For example, if a client was expecting you to send him a resource document on how to write a blog post but claims he never received it, your CRM software can be the investigative tool that uncovers the truth. It will help you retrieve all activities relating to that client—including past resolved issues, procurements, certain account preferences, and desired means for follow-up. Basically, your CRM can provide you with any kind of information related to your customers as long as you do your part to track your personal interaction.
But that’s not all.
Your CRM also automatically tracks your customer’s interactions with your emails and website, so you can see what they’re downloading, what pages they’re visiting, and whether or not they opened your monthly newsletter or nurture email.
With this kind of knowledge, you can track the genesis of any problem your customer is experiencing and quicken the resolution process. The result? A happier customer and a saved relationship.
When you improve your customer’s experience with your brand, you’re building the foundation for a long-lasting, trusting relationship. Customer retention matters greatly for the overall success of your small business, and if you can effortlessly contribute to that retention by using a tool that does the work for you, well, wouldn’t you?
Better Process Tracking
Tracking business processes is like a giant sigh of relief because it brings certainty to resource management. Instead of wasting time and money on the “see what works” method, wouldn’t you rather gain tangible insights into effective and ineffective practices?
As mentioned, a CRM system helps you track data about a lead. And while that helps you better sell to that lead, it also helps you understand if your sales process is effective.
You can not only determine if your process is generating the right amount of ROI, but you can also indicate where most of your revenue is coming from and how well your other teams are providing support. You can:
- Track your marketing channels to see where your most lucrative leads and sales are coming from
- Tap into which website pages are converting the most new leads
- Which emails are leading to sales conversations, like demo requests, consultations or proposal requests
- Whether or not your drip campaigns need more resources or touchpoints
- Track optimal time and days to send your newsletters
- Track the efficiency of outreach and the quality of your customer service
Your CRM doesn’t necessarily condense this information into a digestible summary. It’s up to you to track activity and to see where the holes may be or where improvements can be made. But, it’s a lot easier to do that with a tool that tracks every step of the process.
Identifies the Best Buyers
Your CRM pulls information on each of your customers, like job title, industry, company size, and budget, so you can get to know them and their needs as much as possible. This also helps you identify any patterns among your customers so you can see who your best, most loyal, and long-standing customers are.
You may think you already have a grasp on your buyer personas, but having actual proof of who your customers are can either validate those personas or help you refine them, so they’re more accurate.
This knowledge can shape how you offer support to your customers, how you approach new customers that are more aligned with your existing clientele, or how you segment your lists for better personalization. All-in-all, having this information eliminates any guesswork tied to who you should be targeting in your marketing and sales strategies, which can lead to improved revenue over time.
Presents Upsell Opportunities
Since a CRM system keeps detailed records of clients and their buying habits, you can integrate them into your marketing and selling plans so you can make accurate upsell suggestions. Data generated to reveal purchasing trends helps your marketing and sales teams focus their efforts on pairing clients with the best services or products to suit their needs.
If you have a client who has mentioned on a call that organization is a real issue for them, track it in your CRM, and see if there is a pattern across your other clients. Then, bring the idea to the table and have your team work on building an organizational aspect to your tool or offering. You can then bring that offering to your client when the time is right, which can result in an upsell, along with better, more tailored service.
Again, Why a CRM?
Let’s recap. If you adopt and use the CRM software correctly, it will help grow your company by boosting performance in critical areas, including:
- Efficient searching, sorting, and qualifying leads
- Systematic and timely follow up on sales opportunities
- Rationalization and prioritization of follow-up activities
- Better targeting
- More tailored customer service and upsell opportunities
- Improved processes and less time wasted on areas with little return
- More understanding of target audience and specific needs
So, are you sold on a CRM? Let us help you determine if our software is a match for your needs. Watch a demo and get a behind the scenes look at BenchmarkONE and all it can do for your small business.