Customer Relationship Management, more commonly known as CRM, has become the talk of the town for businesses. With the rise in technology and digitization, this software tool has gained increasing popularity for its significant contribution towards boosting sales and overall profitability. It hence comes as no surprise that 65% of businesses adopt CRM technology within the first 5 years of their launch.
While this number indicates a positive trajectory for tech adoption among small and growing businesses, the reality is that a lot of SMBs are still hesitant towards adopting technology such as CRM. Due to a lack of awareness about the vast functionalities of this software and the benefits it can bring, businesses are reluctant to divert large chunks of their limited budgets towards it.
Let us explore what CRM can do for your business and try to ascertain whether it is a good investment for your small business.
WHAT ARE THE USES OF A CRM SYSTEM?
As the name suggests, CRM is a robust tool that helps you interact better with your customers and track their journey with your brand. 74% of users state that CRM has improved their access to customer data. With this customer data, you can personalize your communications and offerings and create an enhanced customer experience. This is the foundation of creating a loyal customer base that will provide you with a steady stream of revenue.
However, the uses of a CRM system are not limited to merely managing your customer relations. It is a unified platform through which you can manage the end-to-end operations of your business. CRM enhances the efficiency and productivity of all your teams and thereby helps you scale your sales. It can do so due to the wide range of features available in CRM systems that can resolve every pain point that you may face in your daily operations.
WHAT ARE THE COMMON FEATURES OF CRM?
Although the feature specifications vary with each different product, there are a few basic crm features that you will find in every CRM system.
- Lead Management
Leads are extremely valuable for all businesses, but especially so for those businesses that are starting out in their journey. These businesses need to explore sales opportunity that comes their way and cannot afford to let any lead fall through the cracks.Â
Here, the Lead Management features of CRM can greatly help you by:
- Automatically capturing every incoming lead
- Gathering all essential lead data
- Optimizing your sales funnel
- Workflow Automation
A lot of your salespersons’ bandwidth is wasted on redundant and time-consuming tasks. Due to this, they cannot divert a lot of time and attention towards meeting prospects or pitching your product. However, sales CRM systems take over these tasks for you and allow your sales teams to fully focus on closing sales. Workflow automation also brings consistency to your processes and eliminates the chances of manual errors.
- Pipeline Management
It is essential for businesses to monitor the status of every lead/prospect as they move towards making a sale. This is where the Pipeline Management features of sales CRM can help you, as it allows you to visualize and track the complete journey of your buyers. You can learn useful insights from pipelines such as:
- The number of leads in every stage of your sales process
- Bottlenecks in your process etc.
These insights can be leveraged for a clear picture of your sales process, as well as to make informed decisions upon how it can be improved.
- Team Collaboration
The key to business success is to have a well-functioning team. With traditional methods of business management using spreadsheets and files, your teams cannot collaborate as efficiently with one another. However, a CRM can easily achieve this. It helps you delegate tasks to your teams and helps your team members communicate better regarding the actions taken on every ongoing deal.
- Customer Nurturing
Leads need to be nurtured towards making a sale from you. Besides, even once you have acquired a customer, you need to nurture them over time to retain them as loyal customers to your brand. CRM can boost your nurturing efforts by helping you maintain timely, relevant, and contextual communication. You can auto-send WhatsApps, messages, emails, etc. at every touchpoint in their journey.
With these expansive features, CRM manages every aspect of your business. It is a one-stop shop for optimizing the work of your teams and your sales.
THE VALUE ASSOCIATED WITH CRM
As elaborated above, there are innumerable benefits associated with a CRM system for your business. These benefits enhance the ROI associated with the software, which has been shown to be as high as $8.71 for every $1 spent. Your small business can stand to earn a lot through the adoption of a CRM, as it boosts your revenue and profits. If you choose the right system and implement it will, its value and ROI can scale up to 245%.
CONCLUSION:
Sales CRM is not just a crucial tool for the success of your small business, but it is one of the best investments that you can make towards it. It will be money well-spent from your budget as it can take your SMB to new heights of growth.