What is CRM?

A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE

CRM will help you to bring selling discipline, accelerate your sales and grow your business.

Excel files in your desktops, contacts in the phones of sales team members, and fragmented WhatsApp messages with everyone, all hinder sales conversions and growth.

CRM, on the other hand, serves as a central repository of all leads and customer data that are sharable, up-to-date, and brings efficiency.

Developing a relationship with the customer, prospective or current, is one of the most important needs of a business.

A great customer relationship is developed when the organization stays connected with its customer, from stage of prospect till the end.

You need a knife for cutting vegetables. Imagine yourself if you have to cut vegetables without using a knife and with just hands.

Similarly, all the tasks in a business need tools. Without a tool, it will be messy and customer relations and sales is not an exception.

If knife is to cutting vegetables, CRM is to managing leads and improving sales.

How does CRM help my business?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a software that helps businesses in improving their relationship with prospective customers and existing customers.

CRMs help in managing customer and lead records in one central repository, help in tracking leads, following up, managing sales, and taking care of customer support, all under one roof. Managing customer data in a central place helps team members to have instant access to data, take quick decisions, and improve sales and customer support.

CRM or Customer Relationship Management tool is all-in-one solution for gathering customer data in one place.

Managing customer data in central place helps businesses improve customer experience and customer satisfaction. With a CRM in place, it is easy to track all customer interactions resulting in better relationships and better sales.

Business Challenges and CRM

Creating a successful small business isn’t easy. It takes a considerable amount of time, energy, and resources to build one and maintain it.

For small businesses, the two key drivers of growth are finding new customers and retaining the existing ones.

The growth of your business depends on how well you understand customer needs, how fast you qualify them, and how quickly you respond to leads. Given the collaborative nature of sales today, it is not prudent to keep lead data and customer data in excel sheets, phone contacts, business cards, or in any other fragmented ‘not-so-easy-to-access’ forms.

A CRM cultivates strong bonds with prospective customers by the way of faster and better responses and hence helps in improved sales conversion rates.

What are the business benefits of a CRM?

CRM supports sales, marketing and customer support by organising data properly and improving productivity. A CRM helps you in qualifying leads better, addressing customer needs and improving sales. Below are key benefits a CRM brings:

All customer data in one place
Access to customer information anytime and anywhere, on the go
Managing your leads more efficiently
Building strong relationships through effective customer interaction
Streamlining your sales process
Actionable report on sales and team performance
More transparency of customer data
Improved customer service

All these help in getting new customers, retaining existing ones and increasing your sales revenues.

Grow your business with a CRM

For any business, staying on top of customer data is difficult with manual records, sticky notes, and n^th version of our excel files. Closing business deals is even more difficult. To win a customer, a streamlined process is essential. CRM plays a vital role in improving the business process and relationship with leads and customers.