enterpreneurs

What Is CRM And 10 Ways CRM Can Help Your Small Business

by Josh Biggs in Software on 26th October 2019

It is well-known that CRM is destined to take the business game to a higher level. However, there are other, lesser-known tasks that a CRM system can do for your business, which can be understood well at Ixact Contact. There may be no other application or technology that better serves corporate purposes than CRM. What many small companies don’t realize is how effective CRM applications can be when used to their advantage. CRM technology has the potential to leverage your business in multiple ways.

But what is CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is an enterprise-wide business strategy that aims to improve revenue and profitability, reduce costs and increase customer loyalty. The philosophy of CRM is simple: the customer comes first. Analyzing every transaction with your customer’s eyes will help you deliver a better customer experience, which in turn increases loyalty to your business.

The real CRM software collects all the information from the various departments of the company to provide a real-time, comprehensive vision of every customer. Employees who work in areas such as marketing, sales, and customer service can make quick and informed decisions in all areas of upselling and cross-selling.

Why Is CRM Important To Your Business?

CRM is more important to business than ever, as it can help you gain new customers and retain existing customers. And it shows no sign of stagnation when a 2017 Gartner report found that CRM software revenue has now surpassed database management systems to become the largest of all software markets!

Let’s summarize the different uses of CRM technology and how it can be useful to your business, as shown below:

Number#1. Provide Easy Access To Information

Customer Relationship Management on cloud provides instant access to sales and support activities, allowing for a customizable view. Sales and customer representatives and management can have full access to customers’ records, purchases, inventory information, and more from any web browser or maybe mobile device.

Number#2. Provides High-Quality Sales Tools

With CRM, companies can generate leads through the use of software that enables a shorter sales cycle. Companies can also use CRM technology to create workflow rules, customize automated sales processes, and manage orders.

Number#3. Manage The Sales Activities

With CRM, companies can track what their sales force is doing. It can be managed when potential customers call or not. The CRM tool allows a sales manager to instruct his team to achieve business goals. You want to manage your sales effectively employing this software and your small business will grow beyond your imagination out there.

Number#4. Helps Maintain Existing Customers

CRM can help retain existing customers by identifying repeat customers. It can inform your sales team about the customer’s purchase cycle. The CRM also retains the entire history in relation to the customer’s purchases. This technology has also helped to cross-sell other products on the same platform.

Number#5. Better Decision-Making

CRM highlights important information related to your small or big business. Business owners can benefit from this information in the form of detailed reports on sales forecasting, ROI and business results tracking. This helps companies to decide between potential business opportunities and solve problems efficiently.

Number#6. Improvement In Customer Service

With CRM technology, employees can manage, assign, and resolve problems with automated routing and queuing. This allows the smooth operation of employees with a minimum of conflict and chaos.

Closer communication and timely responses will allow customers to work more contented with you as they can see your satisfaction efforts. This also helps with storage and referrals.

Number #7. Efficient Management Of The Data

Data stored in multiple places and split into several parts could be tricky to handle and even hard to find. A Customer Relationship Management tool helps you manage your data efficiently, and not only that, but it also helps to improve the quality of the data by keeping the data connection to a central database and making it accessible and actionable.

By analyzing your customer data more closely, you can identify the needs of your customers. This will help you cross-sell your other products and services that match their current and past purchases. This, in turn, increases your sales and leads to better sales.

Number #8. Build Customer Loyalty

CRM stores customer information that benefits employees as well as aids them comprehend each customer in a better way. This increases customer loyalty and satisfaction, ultimately strengthening the company’s reputation.

Number #9. Higher Productivity

marketing and product sales functions could be well integrated and even automated using CRM out there. When essential data is indeed stored in a shared environment that benefits all employees, they can access and share it to increase the productivity of the business.

Number #10. Provides Insights Into Necessary Data

Good CRM software provides insight into the data required to assist employees take suitable action. For example, the very number of inactive accounts can be requested to actually reactivate using Customer Relationship Management applications.

A Change Of Business Is Possible

In a competitive environment with a wide range of products and services, customers are picky and customer retention seems to be a thing of the past. The moment a new product is launched, it only takes a few months for this product or service to suddenly become a commodity, which in turn means that a simple change of business is possible.

Regardless of what you think, not all customers are the same.

Some are a burden on the customer service teams, though very little is spent. Other customers are often in business, often buying new products and services, and can even be powerful influencers in their market.

CRM helps prioritize sales and marketing activities to this very group. In addition, companies can better understand the needs and desires of their customers to improve the product portfolio offering. The more you know about your customers, their buying preferences and their behavior, the more likely your offer will be.

Lastly, no matter how you look at it, there is no denying that customers are the lifeblood of any business. The relationship with customers thus determines the future success of your small business, and this means that CRM is used. CRM does not replace human resources in terms of customer management. Key benefits of CRM for small businesses include improving customer relationships and employee performance.

Categories: Software

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