How CRM can improve your business, not just your sales

By Woven Agency, Thursday May 24, 2018

CRM? Blimey, not another acronym!

We know. And we’re sorry. You can’t move in the marketing world for acronyms – but, if you haven’t already, you really should commit this one to memory. Because, at its heart, Customer Relationship Management is all the strategies, activities, and systems used to manage interactions with your current and future customers. And it’s not just a sales tool, either. It can drive your entire business and change the way you work. In fact, that’s exactly what it should do. CRM marketing, for example, is a great way to better understand your audience and target your messaging more effectively. But more on that later.

In the meantime, let’s find out how CRM can be used across all kinds of touchpoints to help drive your business to new heights:

A sailing vessel used to symbolise how CRM can put the wind in your business' sales

CRM as… the wind in your sales

It’s simple: a well-utilised CRM boosts your bottom line. According to this HubSpot infographic, every pound spent on CRM returns over £4 in revenue (at current exchange rates to the dollar). What’s more, when a company engages a customer using CRM, the customer is likely to spend 20-40% more money the next time they make a purchase with that company.

CRM platforms help sales forces in a number of ways: they optimise daily schedules to ensure important calls aren’t missed or prospects aren’t ignored. They make creating weekly or monthly management reports a doddle. They help sales people understand precisely when customers need to be contacted for time-sensitive reasons, such as contract renewals or product replacements. They cut back on all those repetitive admin tasks that typically drive sales people mad. And they highlight your best performers so you can extrapolate their methods across your sales force.

Not bad, right? But, if used the right way, the benefits of a CRM platform go much further.

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CRM as… the ultimate storage solution

CRM doesn’t just bring in more revenue, it gives you more of that vital resource: time. No more wasting hours trawling emails or Post-it paper trails to decode a client’s communication history. Instead, CRM is a storage unit for client information, correspondence, and customer feedback.

And because you can store all kinds of client data in one platform, CRM improves company-wide communication. Got a prospect you haven’t spoken to in a while? Or a sales rep who’s about to leave the business and take all their knowledge with them? No problem, because everything you need is stored away in one centralised place that all stakeholders can access.

CRM as… a scalable tool for growth

You might only be a small business with a handful of clients. If so, you’re probably thinking you don’t need a CRM platform. But what if a lack of a CRM system was stopping you growing? What if implementing one could free up time to better use elsewhere (i.e. generating new leads)? And what happens if you grow in size – if those two or three clients become ten, fifteen or fifty? You’ll need more than just a spreadsheet to keep them happy!

CRM both stimulates and manages growth. Without it, you will struggle to realise your growth ambitions and your sales team will become glorified administrators, spending hours a week recording prospect and customer data instead of an automated system doing it for them.

Image symbolising CRM as a tool for growth

CRM as… a marketer’s best friend

Do you know how many customers you have and where they live? How many prospects you have in your sales pipeline? Can you track how people found out about your latest product or sales promotion? Do you need an easier way to send out marketing emails?

CRM marketing lets you do all this and more. Through it, you can understand where your customers come from, what inspires them to interact with you, and contact them quickly, easily, and at the right time.

You can use your collected data to sift through prospects and target those that are potentially more profitable or more appropriate for certain products or campaigns. And you can use it to create personalised messaging that feels more relevant and relatable to your targets.

When it comes to marketing, knowledge is power – and through CRM you can give your marketers plenty of it.

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So, there you have it: an efficient, integrated CRM platform is much more than just a sales app. By finding efficiencies, aiding growth, and improving your customer targeting, it can drive productivity, improve your CRM marketing, encourage digital transformation, and boost revenue across your entire business.

Not bad for just another acronym.

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