Written by: Elliot Roazen
Great customer relationships are the foundation of any growing business and the key to your long-term success. Your small business needs CRM software; if you haven’t implemented one, it’s about time to give it some serious thought.
Research and Markets reported that the CRM SaaS industry is expected to reach $81.9 billion by 2025. From startups to unicorns, companies of all sizes have hopped on the CRM software train. And it’s pretty clear why—Nucleus Research estimates that a CRM generates $8.71 in revenue for every $1 spent.
But if you’re still on the fence about jumping into a CRM, below are 8 reasons to convince you to make the leap.
Improve the quality of your sales data
The core function of a CRM application is recording and managing data about your prospects, leads, and customers.
Sales teams fear upgrading to CRM software because they believe, paradoxically, that it will bring on more work. These assumptions are based on steep learning curves and fear of adopting complex workflows.
But these assumptions are baseless. Most quality CRM apps focus on ease-of-use and enhanced workflows as core features. Without CRM, small businesses risk missing opportunities at every stage of the sales process. The benefits far outweigh the costs.
CRMs help sales people form better work habits—from more detailed record-keeping to closer collaboration. A substantial decrease in workload is the result.
A single, centralized point for your team to find and record data is essential to setting your sales and marketing teams up for success. Without a central point, they will spend hours sifting through spreadsheets and emails to find the most accurate information on customers. These searches are a waste of valuable time, or worse yet, a cause of missed opportunities.
An updated CRM ensures that your sales reps are fully aware of a customer’s history and past interactions. Essentially, this data is the main asset they will use to nurture leads and grow sales.
Organize your contacts better
A one-size-fits-all sales strategy simply won’t work. Prospects, leads, and customers all require varying degrees of nurturing. Your sales team requires leads at a different stage to your marketing staff, and so on.
A CRM can help quickly solve this organization issue by segmenting your contacts into helpful lists. For example, a lead who exchanged their email for gated content will require a different level of nurturing than, say, a repeat customer or cold prospect.
Quality segmentation leads to a clearer sales pipeline. Sales teams can better understand where in the pipeline they take over, and marketing can assess bottlenecks clearly. As a result, sales reps understand the history of leads to personalize their sales playbook.
Using powerful filters and lists will help you uncover patterns in your customers that you might otherwise have overlooked if you were using spreadsheets.
Built-in marketing tools
Once upon a time, on-premise CRMs were exclusively used by sales teams. But those days are (long) gone. Many cloud solutions now come equipped with a suite of communication tools that can be used for inbound and outbound marketing.
Regular contact is an essential component to lead nurturing. Keeping in touch regularly through quality email campaigns and newsletters will increase your opportunities of closing sales with prospects. Email communication also helps increase awareness and is a brilliant channel to distribute new offers and updates for your business.
Increase productivity with automation
Crafting emails, sending campaigns, making calls, and organizing your data all take time. According to a recent study by CSO Insights, salespeople spend only 25-30% of their time selling. Automation is one of the main reasons that companies have begun to adopt powerful CRM solutions: to free up time and increase productivity.
Automation is one of the main reasons that companies have begun to adopt powerful CRM solutions. By automating daily, mundane tasks, sales reps free up hours of time that they can use for selling.
CRMs on average increase sales reps’ productivity by more than 25%. In heavily competitive industries, this can make the difference between success and failure.
Personalize your customer interactions
We all have brands we love to work with… and others not so much. Your perception of a brand often bubbles down to an experience you have had, positive or negative.
An impersonal customer experience can be very damaging. In the SaaS industry, referrals from trusted sources make up a substantial portion of new business growth. According to a study by McKinsey, experiential word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50% of all purchasing decisions. A bad customer experience can, therefore, have a snowballing effect.
On the other hand, a good customer experience can boost loyalty and retention. For small businesses, higher retention can mean saving thousands of dollars that would otherwise be used to acquire new customers. The key to highly personalized experiences is in quality CRM software.
Without a CRM, it would be impossible to stay on top of all your customers’ touch points. Recording these data points allow your sales and marketing team to quickly get up to pace with a customer’s account, from their past service queries tickets, birthday, social profiles, and more.
A CRM is the first step towards becoming a customer-centric company.
Share sales processes across your team
There are no lone wolves in growing companies; collaboration is key. Many CRM platforms focus on improving workflows with collaboration. Leadscore allows reps to share email templates, campaign messages, and other sales assets to foster company-wide success.
Sharing information and tactics across your company can help uncover data to improve future strategy. If a sales rep keeps losing deals, it helps to inform the rest of the team about the mistakes they’re making. Likewise, replicating successful actions is much easier when data and content are shared.
Transform your sales process
Technology should help you achieve your goals, but your CRM can’t help you do that unless it gets used. Identifying a CRM that integrates with your existing applications is critical in making sure that you’re making the most out of your CRM software.
Most CRM applications integrate seamlessly with your stack of sales and marketing tools. For example, Leadscore allows users to connect their email client for two-way email sync. That way you can receive real-time notifications for the emails you have sent.
Growth that is scalable
CRM applications help coordinate the complex workflows of high-growth sales teams. Deals go much faster when your reps can get instant information on sales deals, marketing campaigns, and account updates.
By increasing win rates, strengthening pipeline deals, improving customer overview, and providing agility and the tools a modern sales team needs, Leadscore helps small businesses achieve revenue and growth goals.
If you’re a small business that’s driven to grow, find out why Leadscore is the right match for you.
