Customer relationship management software makes it easier to handle your whole selling process and keeping connected with the best contacts. This goes for any business, whether you have a sales team of one or 100. But if you think of CRM systems only as a way to add efficiency or improve customer service, you’re missing a big part of the full value of CRM.
CRM systems also help you increase your selling results dramatically with purpose built CRM that is well-used. Being well-used comes from an engaging and helpful CRM system. Here are 13 ways businesses boost their sales using CRM software and turn prospects into long term profitable customers. Read more here, Value Creation - Determining the Worth of Well-Used CRM
Increase Sales Numbers with a CRM System
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Share Information Across Your Sales Team
Coordinate your activities when contacting leads and making pitches. We’ve all been in the position of receiving several phone calls from the same company. It seems as if the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing — as if there is no organization. Is this a company you would want to do business with? Don't Be the Lone Ranger - It's Not Best for Your Business Sales Growth! No man or woman should be on an island! “That might not sound like something that would drive sales, but if one person contacted a lead and then another person contacts a lead, that would hurt the sale.”
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Integrate Communications of Outlook Email and CRM
Microsoft Outlook is widely used as the email messaging system. So sales productivity can greatly increase when actions in Outlook quickly and seamlessly feed the CRM system. The CRM system can show enhanced knowledge as you move up and down your Inbox messages. Read more, 12 Tips to be More Productive - Living in Outlook and Using Xbar
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Keep Track of Your Sales Process & Deliver Consistency
Do you have a step-by-step process or some other sales system designed to keep your team consistent when following up leads and closing sales? Have you considered how process is connecting with the buyers journey? One process that mirrors the buying steps will optimize selling time. If you want to be sure your sales team is following it to the letter, than a CRM system can be great for monitoring that too. It may be a simple checklist or have evolved into multiple stages and steps with in each stage that automate emails, create To-Do's or notified management if too long of time has passed. Sales people may say they have followed all the steps, but now you will have a way to double check. Read more, Best Practices to Optimize Sales Process and Using Infor CRM
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Keep Your Sales Manager in the Know
In addition to keeping tabs on your sales team, CRM software keeps your sales manager in the know. These tools let the head of a sales department keep track of what deals are in the pipeline. But more importantly, it keeps track of what stage each deal is in, including which deals are ready to close or have already closed. In short, it allows your sales manager to keep his or her finger on the pulse of the whole sales process. If something is moving slowly the sales manager can redirect and coach the person toward better actions.
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Better Allocate Your Sales Resources from Captured Knowledge
Bigger clients may need more resources from your sales team. This could mean more resources to land them in the first place and then to continue providing service over the length of the relationship. Segmenting the accounts on key data points allows qicker grouping so friends pop up! Some prospects may not need as many hands. Or you may have learned from experience that some prospects are more of a long shot, so you don’t want to expend the same energy. Using buyer personas will help keep people focused on the ideal profile and types of buyers best for your business. Good CRM software lets you see at a glance how your sales resources are allocated. This makes it easier to make intelligent decisions about how best to deploy your team.
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Let Members of Your Team Know Where They Stand- KPI
Individual members of your sales team need to know how they’re doing too. Identify Key Performance Indicators that are meaningful. Are they meeting their sales goals? If not, how far off are they? An important step toward self-improvement is to understand how you measure up. CRM software can give your sales people an easy way to benchmark their performance and strive for improvement. Show quota to forecast dashboards.
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Make it Easy to Share Sales Materials and Other Documents
Give your team an easy way to share sales materials and other documents. The Infor CRM Library can contain any electronic file, document, or link to Web content. These can be attached to individual e-mails or used in a mail merge. Versions of quote documents can be tracked as well. This helps them improve their performance and ultimately close more sales. It also saves time and boosts the efficiency of your sales department. If your sales team is spread out geographically, it’s even more important.
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Simplify Reporting Requirements
CRM software simplifies many aspects of your sales teams’ lives. That includes reporting sales activities. Some mobile CRM apps, for example, automatically journal activities. These include how many sales calls were made in a given day or how much time was spent setting up calls or lunches. Such tools make it easier for your sales team to input important data. Then they can spend the time they save selling. With sales reps actively using the CRM system, we have helped clients eliminate the tedious and offen inaccurate task of creating call reports. Now activity reports are dynamically accessible by sales management. No more after hours spent by the sales team entering past information for management reporting Activity and changes are automatically recorded with daily use. Read more about No more call reports...
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Enable Collaboration
We’ve mentioned how CRM systems help your team share documents, keep track of sales call activity and give sales managers a better look at what’s going on. We can see a bigger picture here too. CRM software helps your sales team collaborate on many levels. It enables team selling to land those really big accounts too. Shared knowledge raises the performance of the whole team and helps new reps get up to speed much faster.
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Create “Web to Lead” Automated System
This involves creating a form on your website to capture leads. The system then routes the leads directly to the person in your sales department who can reach out and make a connection. Say goodbye to hot leads being lost in an overcrowded inbox! Read more, Automating Lead Capture and CRM Contact Record Creation
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Keep Track of Most Important Contacts
Small business owners and sales professionals have a lot to keep track of. That includes your most important contacts and prospects. Who’s the decision maker you need to reach out to when making that next important sales call or sending that next critical email? CRM systems can monitor changes on social sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and others to notify you when important changes occur. Read more, Success with Social Media and CRM
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Keep Up With Notifications and Reminders
Just as you need to keep track of that important sales contact or prospect, you need reminders about when to touch base. Failure to follow through could mean losing an important relationship. So CRM systems provide notifications and reminders about important contacts and prospects you maybe haven’t spoken to lately. Be sure not to lose contact and miss out on that next big sale.
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Business Process Management (BPM) Alerting
Businesses typically follow procedures to manage and respond to certain activities. These procedures are often fulfilled by the combination of manual processes and management software such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). Though, these methods have their own forms of functionality they are often missing key components that would make certain processes more automated and less manual.
Adding a software tool as a utility belt to improve your business process may be the answer. Read more, 3 Issues that Automation Solves Using TaskCentre
Summary of Related Articles:
12 Tips to be more effective selling when using Infor CRM
12 Tips to be more effective using Infor CRM - Filters to Rescue
12 Tips to be more effective using Infor CRM - Groups to Rescue
12 Tips to be more effective using Infor CRM - Manage Activities
12 Tips to be more productive with associations
12 Tips to be more productive - Living in Outlook and using Xbar
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