Using Your CRM to Execute Your Sales Strategy

There's a direct link between sales and CRM usage, and the statistics are staggering.

According to Innoppl, 78% of salespeople don't hit their target sales when they don't use a CRM. By simply implementing a CRM strategy, 65% of salespeople hit their quotes. That leads to one question—how can a CRM improve sales that drastically?

Using a CRM effectively is one of the easiest, most efficient ways to improve your sales. In fact, it's basically an essential tool for businesses nowadays.

If you're ready to use a CRM in your sales strategy, then keep reading. We'll show you how you can build a trusting relationship with your customers, keep track of customers, and provide the best customer service by barely lifting a finger.

How a CRM Can Improve Sales

In the past decade, marketing has become extremely customer-centric. Customers are demanding personal relationships with businesses they choose to work with more than ever because of the number of choices they have. Essentially, they have the option to be picky, and most of them are.

This new marketing strategy is called inbound marketing, and it's one of the biggest marketing strategies out there today. It focuses on what small businesses have argued is the best possible strategy for doing business: treating the customer right.

The rise of inbound marketing created a rise in CRMs because a CRM is used to help manage customers, potential customers, and past customers in an easy, strategic manner. This leads to more, and better, sales. Here's how:

Building Trust

The main thing that a CRM does is creates trust with your customers. It provides this in a few different ways, and it also relies on you using your CRM correctly. A CRM lets you establish your presence as an authority in your field by letting you provide your customers with relevant news to them.

Most CRMs have a function that allows you to tag each customer by what he or she may need. This lets you send marketing emails and updates that are actually relevant to the customer, which is a vital way to show your customers you know what you're talking about.

You're also able to use your CRM to build trust by providing the correct information at all times, no matter who's talking to who. Miscommunication is an all too prevalent part of the business world, and if a potential customer speaks to multiple people within a company, it can create problems. A CRM will show you every time a prospect has interacted with anyone at your company, letting you align any information you send out.

You can read more ideas on how to build trust with your customers here.

Creating a Relationship with Customers

A CRM lets you create relationships with your customers. This ties into building trust with your potential customers, but it's a little bit different.

The right CRM can be a place for you to gather information about your potential customers so that you can change how you sell to them. This is a sales tactic that most people use, but a CRM lets you manage information easily.

For example, let's pretend someone just submitted an inquiry on your website. Good sales tactics say you should do a quick search of that person to see what other types of things they enjoy or other places they buy from so that you can relate to the prospect when you're trying to sell.

That information is stored in your CRM after you input it, so you don't have to remember everything about every prospect you interact with. This can be a huge asset for companies that have a longer sales time.

Making Follow-Up Easy

Follow-up can be a daunting task, and many small businesses just don't have the time to do it. This is where a CRM can come in.

One thing you can have a CRM do is send automated emails to contacts depending on a variety of factors. After setting it up initially, all you have to do is create the emails and a situation where they should send.

For example, if you want to contact your customers after not hearing from them in one week, then you can set up an email to go out one week after the last date of contact. These emails will automatically send out, and you or your sales workers won't have to do anything special except wait for customers to come back.

A good follow-up process is essential to create customers, and CRMs automate it so that you don't have to do a thing. It's basically free customers after it's been set up.

Establishing Repeat Customers

It's common business knowledge that it's cheaper, and easier, to get repeat customers than it is to get brand new customers.

Because of the automation that CRMs provide, creating repeat customers is as easy as 1, 2, 3. All you have to do is create factors and situations when you want to send emails, and then you sit back and let customers come back to you with minimal effort.

When you combine repeat customers with the other benefits we discussed above, it's easy to understand why a CRM can help your business exponentially. They help you create more and better sales, and it's easy to get started.

It Costs to Not Use a CRM

It's pretty easy to see why using a CRM can improve sales, and it's something that every business, both big and small, should be doing as we go into 2021. There's nothing else that can organize your workflow as a CRM can, and you're only losing money by not using one.

To learn more tips and tricks to using a CRM, check out our blog. We have plenty of resources that are designed to help you make the most out of your CRM and improve local business.