04/04/2014
10 REASONS WHY YOUR SALES TEAM SHOULD ADOPT CRM TECHNOLOGY
Customer relationship management (CRM) technology is becoming more prevalent in the workforce, particularly for sales teams. Generally, CRM is a model implemented to manage a company’s interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. CRM applications can help your sales team organize, automate, and synchronize business processes to help you find, attract and win new clients in addition to retaining those you already have. The relevance of CRM technology used in conjunction with sales may not be immediately recognizable to some, but there are several benefits to its use.
1. Increase sales team productivity
The utilization of CRM technology with sales can give your sales team’s productivity a huge boost. CRM can streamline your process by making pricing, order processing, and other sales tasks completely automated. Adopting CRM technology will give you sales team a competitive advantage by reducing your production costs, increasing sales revenue, and increasing market share.
2. Build stronger customer relationships
As a sales team, building strong relationships with your customers is one of your primary goals. By implementing a CRM solution, the productivity of your team will be increased, therefore enabling you to spend more time with customers. Not only will your team be able to spend more time with current customers, they will be able to spend more productive time with potential customers due to the efficiencies put in place by CRM technology. Ultimately, more time with customers means an increase in the number of deals closed, generating a larger, stronger customer base.
3. Reduce costs
Costs can be difficult to reduce when you are working in sales. Errors and extra time spent on placing orders within your team costs you additional money. CRM technology provides the tools you and your sales team needs to increase accuracy and effectiveness. Minimizing order errors will eliminate the time spent correcting those errors. Importantly, CRM applications are accessible on demand so you are not wasting time with applications that slow down your processes. This effectively decreases wasted time and will reduce your costs.
4. Enhanced communication
Communication within a sales team is critical when it comes to customer management. There are several opportunities for confusion and mistakes to occur when a sales team has not employed solid communication tools. A CRM application is a great way to help increase communication between the sales force and sales management. CRM technology allows individuals to share information quickly about sales that are currently in progress. This can help make the entire sales cycle more efficient and subsequently help you close deals and help your team get commissions faster.
5. Easy access to lead intelligence
The ability to quickly access information on leads for a sales team is a necessity to their production. CRM technology has the capabilities to maintain lead intelligence which is easily accessible. If your sales team works with a CRM application that is incorporated with marketing software, your team will be able to access lead intelligence from one source. By using this technology, a sales team can add information to a record in a CRM application so anyone who speaks with that individual will have all the information about the lead and what interaction they may have has with your team members.
6. Get organized
Organization can be any team’s potential downfall. With CRM technology, organization comes easily. Implementing a CRM application will help your team prioritize their responsibilities and tasks. CRM applications provide full visibility so you and your team can know who to call first when following up on leads. You can also use a CRM application to find the best leads by prioritizing the best opportunities. Being more organized means your team is no longer wasting time on a disorganized search through leads that are at different stages in the sales cycle. Instead, you can easily access the leads that need to be followed up on today, allowing more time for other responsibilities.
7. Complete view of your customers
Working in sales means working with several customers and potential leads every day. With so many contacts, it is important to have all the necessary information at your fingertips as you communicate with them. CRM technology provides a complete picture of all of your current and potential clients. Within a CRM application, your sales team can build a profile for each current and potential client which can be added to in order to provide a more robust picture of each individual. There are obvious advantages to having more detail and the extra data should not be simply dismissed as unnecessary. More detail will allow your team members to know details which can help them formulate a sales pitch which successfully outlines how a product can meet the client’s needs. Instead of having silos of client information, your sales team will have one complete picture, therefore allowing your team members to easily create stronger customer relationships.
8. Improved sales reporting
It is of the utmost importance that sales is up to date in order to develop accurate forecasts which help provide a good view of the market conditions and predict sales. CRM applications are frequently used to resolve challenges that arise in sales reporting. You can avoid duplicate data and retrieve high quality reports which are readily available at your fingertips. A CRM application has tools that can be accessed in real time, providing reports that are accurate and up to date.
9. Bringing the field staff closer to the team
There often can be a large separation between the sales field staff and sales team. Primarily this is due to a lack of effective information. If the field staff and sales team are using a CRM application, the field staff will be able to send information to the sales team more often. Information can be sent to management after each sales call completed by the field staff, rather than provided daily and weekly reports. This reduces management’s response time and gives way for a more alert and responsive team overall.
10. Increase customer satisfaction
Customers are the primary concern of any sales team. CRM technology can help your sales team increase customer satisfaction by analyzing the customer information your team members collect. The information obtain can be analyzed within the system to provide reports and data which can then be used to create a product that matches or exceeds expectations. The sales team can also use the CRM system to help customers more expertly, as described earlier. Customer satisfaction leads to increased loyalty and increased profit margins. Essentially, CRM technology can give your sales team a competitive advantage.
CRM technology may not seem like something your sales team should adopt, but the benefits should be seriously considered before pushing the option off the table. CRM applications can streamline your sales processed, enabling your sales team to build strong customer relationships and become more efficient. And the cost? That is completely up to you. Most CRM applications provide a pay as you go solution which you can add to if needed as you learn exactly what CRM technology can do to improve your sales team’s capabilities.
Posted by Meghan Bassett
