A long time ago—when the concept of CRM, or customer relationship management had not been heard of, and that there was no software that would help you with it—businesses would utilize various kinds of applications to keep track on the performance of their enterprise. For instance, to serve as a database for their customers, they make use of a spreadsheet. They also have a fax machine, and e-mail account, and mobile phone to reach out to their customers. Moreover, they generate reports manually, based on whatever information they can find in their Excel file.
Times have changed, and today you have CRM solutions that will allow you to integrate all these tools into one and centralize all kinds of data that you can pick. This has been beneficial for businesses because of the following reasons:
1. You spend less training time on your sales agents. You do not need to waste valuable time orienting your sales agents different types of marketing automation tools. You already have one centralized system. It may appear to be complicated at first, but there are a lot of user-friendly CRM solutions that will cut off the learning curve of your sales agents.
2. All information is updated in real time and is more accurate. CRM can actually prevent the entry of the same leads in your database, especially if they are coming from different touch points (a telephone call, e-mail sent, or a snail mail delivered to the office). Since there will just be one application that will be accessed by all, you can minimize redundancy. This will also make your sales agents effective because they do not have to contact the same person twice or even more than that. They also do not have to miss out on leads, since the CRM can indicate which of them have been worked on and which ones were not.
3. They can better cross-sell and upsell products. Centralizing CRM data can also boost the profits of your business. Sales agents can have an idea which of the products has been bought by your customers previously. They can then identify new ones that these existing customers may be interested in.
4. You can easily track, score, distribute, and prioritize your leads. CRM plays a huge role in effective lead management. Not only will you be able to keep track on your leads, but you can also score them, assigning them values to determine which of them would probably be interested in your products as of the moment. You can then evaluate and identify which of these leads will be your priority in your marketing campaigns. Moreover, you can distribute them among your sales agents, who will then permit you to assess the performance of your team based on customer experience, accounts closed and wasted, and profits derived from these sales leads.
Though centralization is highly effective, it is still very important that businesses will be able to use the software according to their company objectives.
