Empower Your Sales and Marketing Teams

Ten Things You Can Learn about your Sales and Marketing Efforts from Your CRM System

Customer relationship management (CRM) vendors often claim that their software can do practically anything, from revealing which leads work (and which don’t) to who your best customers are to which products are the most or least profitable. But what do business owners have to say?  To find out if CRM systems really deliver on what they promise, dozens of business owners and managers were asked what they can learn from their CRM systems.  Here are the top 10 responses:

  1. You can learn which leads work (and which ones don’t). By tracking leads you can spot trends which will tell you where to focus your efforts. This allows sales team to be more productive for increased sales.
  2. You can learn how much you are selling of a particular product and what your profits are — in real time.
  3. You can see which trade shows are the most profitable — and tailor marketing efforts accordingly.
  4. You can better segment and target customers based on criteria such as responsiveness to discounts and promotions, frequency of purchases, referral and influencer activities, marketing channel origin and gifting activity.
  5. You can learn when is the best time to contact prospects and existing customers.
  6. You can pinpoint the most effective marketing strategies by tracking leads from inception to close. By knowing the source of each lead and how much it costs to convert that lead you can demonstrate the ROI that each of your marketing efforts yields.
  7. You can learn how often you really need to call prospects. Call history can be analyzed to show which call and which message generated the most appointments, opportunities and sales wins. From there, you can determine how many call attempts are needed to get the best results.
  8. You can discover what your closing cycles really are. From the initial customer contact to the number of appointments required to close the deal, you can learn what percent of purchases are made at 15 days, 30 days, 45 days, etc.
  9. You can improve the quality of communication with your customers. Instead of just sending out automated replies or form letters, take the time to chat or email with your customers. Find out what their concerns or problems are, and do your best to resolve or address them. Not only does that build good will, it builds customers for life.

10.  You can learn about outstanding customer issues and resolve them faster.

If you could benefit from just one of these points, what would the impact to your business be?  Contact us today to learn more about the real world impact and return on investment you could realize by tapping into the power of a full featured CRM system.

This entry was posted in Customer Relations Management (CRM), May 2011, Newsletter and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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