No matter which industry or vertical it is, every company needs sales. Be it an enterprise or a small business, sales are the driving force. However, if you want your sales team to be successful and effective, you need to provide them with the right set of tools and a proper process such as sales CRM.
I know this is interesting. You are going to learn everything there is to learn about Sales CRM software in this article. Make sure to read it till the end because sales are important and you cannot afford to make any mistake with it.
Table of Contents:
- What is Sales CRM?
- Features of Sales CRM
- Some Helpful Sales CRM Stats
- Benefits of Sales CRM
- 10 Reasons Why Salespeople Need a CRM
- Definitive Guide to use Sales CRM
- Best Sales CRM Available in the Market
- Working of a Sales CRM
- Things to Look for While Purchasing a CRM
- Tips to Choose the Right Sales CRM
- Wrapping it Up
What is Sales CRM?
Right from prospecting to closing the deal, there is a need for a clear vision, streamlined sales process, and effective salespeople. If there is no proper system in place, it will be havoc.
But there is an escape from all of these with a Sales CRM. CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management.” This Sales Customer Relationship Management software is quite effective and will help in becoming better at various works of an organization.
With a CRM, the salespeople will have all the information that they need to make better sales. All the customer-related information is present in one unified place making it easy for them to close the deals.
Features of Sales CRM
Multiple Pipelines
When you have all the prospective leads, customers in a pipeline view, you will get an overview of the entire sales funnel. You will get to see clients categorized into different segments, stages, and have color-coding that will help in better identification.
It will also help in lead management . You can just drag and drop the leads into various stages. There is sales pipeline management software that can help with all of this. However, remember that sales pipeline software doesn’t offer multiple pipelines for different locations, lead sources, and products.
An effective CRM will help in this segmentation. You can add tags for each of these pipelines and use them to identify location, device, language, lead source, retention, and much more.
Omnichannel Approach
With an omnichannel approach, you can provide seamless customer service. You can deliver more value to your prospective customer and reach new customer segments with this. Apart from that, the operational efficiency will also be increased as you just need to collect the respective customer data just once.
Appointment Management
You can use CRM to schedule appointments and demos with just one click. Sales reps can easily add an appointment, send it to the respective customers, and also send reminders related to it along with updating the outcome of the appointment.
As said, everything related to a customer can be stored in one place using the appointment management feature in a CRM.
Lead Tracking and Management
So, you are conducting different marketing campaigns on different platforms. You need to know from which platform you are getting the leads and with CRM, it becomes easy to get these details. Once you have the details of a lead source, you can know which of your marketing campaigns are a success and which of them are not.
Apart from that, lead management becomes easier for you with an effective CRM in place. It will determine which of the leads are important and need a follow-up by checking the demographics and physiographic factors. The lead score will help in increasing the productivity and efficiency of your sales team as they get to focus on the right leads at the right time.
Contact Management
Contact management or sometimes called customer management is a very vital feature of a CRM. The users will get to segment contacts into groups according to their preset rules. This way they can run special campaigns, contact those particular customers and get all the details that are required. It will become easier for organizations to gather customer data and work on marketing strategies.
The personalized campaigns will make customers feel important and provide them with a sort of satisfaction.
Follow-Ups
Do not let your customers slip away from the cracks by having a proper follow-up process. If a prospective lead wants you to contact them later, make sure to add this into your follow-up bucket. Once you do this, you will be notified at the time when they want you to get back to them.
If you miss this follow-up, it will go overdue. This way, every lead matters to a CRM and you will get a chance to have an eye on all of the leads with just a click.
360-Degree View of Customer Profile
One of the greatest advantages for a business from CRM is that it provides a 360-degree view of your customer journey. From where that particular lead is captured to their previous orders, you can get a glance at everything related to that particular customer.
Salespeople can use all of these data to close deals quicker and also for upselling as well as cross-selling.
Task Management
Task management is one of the most helpful features of a CRM. It gives you an overview of what needs to be done and also you can set the deadlines according to your requirements.
Shared Calendar
Having an integrated calendar in the CRM is nothing less than a boon for the sales team. This helps in managing the events, schedules, resources, and meetings. You can create events by linking your customer profiles, this will give a glance to the entire team and everyone will know whom that particular customer is meeting.
With CRM, you can propose multiple meeting times and this will help your customer choose the one that he is comfortable with.
Import and Export the Data
The core of any sales CRM software in Nairobi is the data and companies would want to download it to conduct some campaigns, etc. On the other hand, the leads for any organization would come in different ways.
Having details of all such leads in one place is another benefit for an organization and this can be done by importing the data into CRM.
A CRM should have both of these features so that companies can make the most out of it whenever they need it.
Integrate Social Media
If you aren’t active on social media or don’t have a solid social media marketing strategy in hand, it is very tough to sustain in this competition. You have to integrate your social media channels with a CRM and track a lot of things.
Apart from that, social media integration will also help in catering better customer service for an organization.
Reminders/Notifications
This is an add-on benefit for CRM users. If you are managing more leads at once, you need reminders or notifications if any customer hasn’t been contacted for a long time or if anyone needs a follow-up.
With sales management software, you will have that feature that will come in handy as you scale your business.
Customization and Privileges
If you have a large sales team, every one of them doesn’t need all the features that a sales CRM software provides. A sales rep doesn’t need to have access to the lead generation or marketing CRM right! However, CRM will provide you with a customization feature, and using this you can limit the access for each of your sales reps.
The reporting manager or CEO will have the privilege to customize CRM for each of the sales reps according to their requirement.
Integrate with Third-Party Sources
Do you know what makes a great CRM? Its ability to integrate and work as a mediator tool between different business processes.
You may be using various tools for different business processes, a CRM will integrate all of these and provide you with better output. Make sure to opt for a pipeline software that you can rely on and you can reap benefits out of it.
Dashboards
You can get a quick overview of your monthly sales results on the dashboard. This dashboard is completely customizable and you can add various metrics that you want on it using the customization feature.
Some Helpful Sales CRM Stats
- Numbers never lie and here are some important sales CRM stats that you have to know.
- According to Nucleus Research, you will get an ROI of $8.71 for every dollar that you spend.
- 48% of the companies say that they are focusing on improving their sales funnel and it is on their top priority list. (Source: Adam Enfroy)
- Salesforce studies have concluded that a sales CRM in Nairobi can help in increasing sales by 29% and productivity of the sales team by 34%.
- CRM forecasting has helped in improvising the sales forecast by 34%.
- 74% of the sales reps said that CRM solutions provide them with better access to the data which gives them an edge when it comes to customer satisfaction.
- With CRM mobile apps and social networking, sales reps are seeing their productivity increase by 26.4%.
- According to Capterra, 47% of the polled users said that CRM had a great impact on customer retention and customer satisfaction.
- G2 users have said that companies can expect average ROI on their CRM software within the first 13 months.
- 75% of the decision-makers are on their way to embracing technology and employing it in their business.
- CRM with mobile access helped 24% of salespeople achieve their deadlines.
Benefits of Sales CRM in Nairobi
If the CRM is properly deployed and used, it brings a myriad of benefits to the table. There are various technologies that come and go but CRM is something that companies can rely on without any second thoughts.
Stay Organized
One of the secret ingredients for the success of any business is proper organization. In spite of the team size, it will become easy to create a streamlined process and follow through it with the help of a CRM.
You can now stop relying on spreadsheets, notepads, scribblings on papers that disappear magically when you need it, etc., and just work around with CRM. In CRM, you can save and access everything with just a click.
Most of the sales CRM software in Nairobi is offering a mobile app lately and with this, it has become even easier for salespeople to have all the details at their fingertips.
Enhanced Communication
For any business, communication is the key. Be it internal communication or external, a sales CRM in Nairobi can be your trusted partner when it comes to communication. Let us take an example to understand this better.
There is a lead that has been handled by one of your customer executives and this particular executive wasn’t available on a day when that lead wanted to have a meeting and discuss some important things.
You have to send in another executive and that person must have to get his basics first and then delve into the matter. If he asks questions related to earlier meetings to the lead , it will leave a bitter experience for that particular lead.
However, if you have a CRM, this won’t be a hassle. Every small piece of information that there is to know about lead will be present in the CRM. With just one click, whosoever executive it is can access and check about the customer details, which stage lead is in, etc.
This enhanced communication will not just deliver great customer satisfaction but will also ease the efforts of your executives.
Improvises Customer Service
Remember that time is valuable, be it yours or customers. If any of your customers are facing some issues and need a resolution, it is on you to solve them as soon as possible and save their time.
With the right CRM system in place, when a customer contacts an organization raising any issues, executives can look at customers’ past purchases, their preferences, and other details. These will help in resolving their issues as soon as possible.
Executives with a lot of experience in hand can solve these issues even quicker. Solving customer concerns and providing better service is a cakewalk when you have an effective CRM in hand.
Automation of Recurring Tasks
Closing a business deal isn’t just limited to getting your customer to commit. There is a lot of backend work that needs to be done. Right from curating an agreement and sending an invoice to checking out all the legalities.
While all of these are important, they are recurring monotonous works that can be automated. A CRM will take care of all of this paperwork while your salespeople can work on other leads.
Improved Efficiency
Right from marketing to customer service, all departments in your organization will have access to the data present in CRM in Nairobi. The centralized database will allow everyone to check emails, phone call details, and calendars all in one place.
This will help in skyrocketing the progress. All of the teams will have access to valuable information about the clients that will help in getting them down to the sales funnel. Apart from closing a sale, they can also upsell and cross-sell other products with a click.
Teams become more efficient with the help of a CRM.
Smart Decision Making
Miscalculated data isn’t something that any business can afford. With sales software in Nairobi, all of the customer-related information is available in one place. When this happens, it becomes easy for an organization to analyze the data.
By using different types of plugins, various reports can be generated according to the data available. All of these will help in making better decisions in an organization, understanding customer behavior, and many more.
Lead Management
Lead management means capturing the leads, tracking all of the touchpoints that your business had with every lead and keep engaging with them until they purchase your product.
These leads come into a CRM in Nairobi from different sources. Sales reps can categorize these leads depending upon their location, tastes, buying behavior, preferences, etc. A CRM will help in this segregation.
By using the key insights available in these leads, the sales reps can tailor their approach. This customized approach will increase the chances of closing a deal. Lead management is one of the most notable benefits of a sales CRM system.
Pipeline Management
Sales pipeline management is a process of managing all the incoming sales opportunities and tracking their different stages until confirming whether the lead’s journey is closed or lost. This is a common journey for every lead that comes into a business.
This lead journey can be long at times and without a proper CRM in Nairobi, it becomes tough for sales reps to track these leads and do their follow-ups.
According to CSO insights, 27% of the sales representatives consider that the longer sales cycles are, the more barriers they face in closing the business. However, with a CRM, it becomes easy to track the leads and know at which stage they are.
A sales CRM will check the potential of each lead and then segment them accordingly. The sales reps can curate effective strategies that will help in moving the leads from one stage to another.
Sales managers can also check the deals that they have closed and also get an idea about their weekly and monthly targets, where they are in the achieving process.
Sales Forecasting
CRM in Nairobi analyzes and provides real-time data that will help in optimizing the performance of an organization. The data sets related to case times, call volumes, revenue per call, up-sell rates, etc. will help in devising effective strategies.
They can use the sales CRM to augment new clients and also retain the old ones.
Do More in Less Time
With a CRM, a lot of processes can be automated, and also with the data available, a lot of things can be handled with ease. All in all, it will help in getting a lot of work done within a shorter amount of time.
Increase in Employee Productivity
Employee productivity is improved manifold with a CRM in Nairobi. They have all the information related to customers and leads at their fingertips. With a lot of data automated, the team will get to reach their targets within very less time.
The reporting managers will have a real-time screen where they can track the performance of each employee.