How to Get Your Sales Teams to Successfully Use CRM Software

Written by Matthew Ludden / July 7, 2023 / 4 Minute Read
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Implementing CRM software can revolutionize your business operations. This guide walks you through the essential steps, from choosing the right platform to training your team. Dive into the benefits of CRM, understand common pitfalls, and ensure a smooth transition. Boost efficiency, nurture customer relationships, and propel your business to new heights.

Marketing

You may have heard the term CRM before but may not fully understand what it does and how it can help your business. CRM, which stands for customer relationship management, is software that manages a company’s interaction with potential and current clients and analyzes and stores all past data and interactions. CRM software is growing in popularity and being implemented by numerous large and small companies, including many of your competitors, to improve sales and maximize customer service.

When CRM was first introduced in the late 1990s, it was difficult to implement and use, and only the wealthiest and largest companies could even afford it. That’s ancient history. Advances in CRM software have made using such platforms more affordable and easier to use.

In this blog, the marketers at Valve+Meter Performance Marketing discuss CRM more in-depth and how your business can use it to improve customer service throughout all of your company’s departments.

What Can CRMs Do?

CRM is a must-have to improve relationships with clients and leads. In a nutshell, customer relationship management software gathers customer data analysis from across all channels and stores it in one, convenient place. The goal is to ultimately drive more sales while improving customer retention. This software provides a full picture of all past interactions and keeps all notes and conversations.

In the past, most companies tracked their customers’ data on spreadsheets. However, spreadsheets can be difficult to update, interpret and share across an entire team. Historical data is often lost when using spreadsheets, and important data can be hidden among all of the other data. Without CRM software, your company’s data is spread across multiple computer systems and platforms, making it confusing to know where everything is.

What Are the Benefits of CRM Software?

Improving relationships with clients

Because CRMs manage all of your contacts, you’ll have easy access to their important information, including purchase history and previous communications across various channels (email, phone, social media). Because you have all of their information on hand, you’ll know exactly how to serve them without pestering them with questions they’ve already answered in previous communications.

With a CRM system in place, your customers benefit from personalization tools. In recent surveys, customers have cited the importance that personalization played in their purchasing decision. The personalized data that is gleaned from the CRM database can help build stronger relationships.

Increasing sales

CRM software follows customer purchasing patterns and provides useful insight into their buying trends. This type of data can provide for more targeted strategies and encourage increased sales during specific times of the year. Because you’ll have all of your customers’ past communications, you’ll earn more sales by delivering the right message to them.

Consolidating customer data

One of the biggest benefits of using CRM software is that it centralizes all of your clients’ data in one, easy-to-use platform.

CRMs allow your company’s employees to find pertinent client information in one place. This includes phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, websites, purchasing history and more. The platform also tracks all past interactions with clients, whether they were online, over the phone or through email.

In essence, CRM will become your company’s central hub for all of your clients’ information. CRMs allow companies to track the following and much more:

  • Address
  • Company size
  • Contact title
  • Current sales pipeline stage
  • Customer type
  • Detailed reporting
  • Emails
  • Lead scoring based on triggers
  • Names
  • Notes history
  • Phone numbers
  • Purchase data
  • Websites

Improving retention

CRM data shares important information about a client or lead’s behaviors. Knowing these behaviors can assist your company in developing a strategic plan to retain customers that are at risk of leaving. On the other end of the spectrum, this same data can be used to reach out to successful clients and have them advocate on your behalf.

Selling quicker

CRM platforms eliminate the need for manual data entry because it automates these repetitive tasks so your team spends more time selling and less time making sense of notes and spreadsheets.

Contact Valve+Meter for Individualized Marketing Solutions

Are you looking to take your company to the next level? Valve+Meter is a lead-generation agency built to focus on outcomes that grow your sales opportunity pipeline. We work with B2B companies looking to scale their marketing efforts by focusing on qualified lead generation and prospecting campaigns driving growth. Contact Valve+Meter today to request a free marketing analysis.

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