CRM is a short form of “Customer Relationship Management” used frequently in modern business. It is a management function ( mix of policy, tool, strategy and process) that makes companies better organized and have easy access to real-time customer data.
We all know that customers are the lifeline of every business. Thus, managing your business’s relationships with customers is a priority over competing effectively in the marketplace. All you need is a reliable system built on CRM software that helps you strategically approach lead generation, lead nurturing, and sales conversion.
A CRM software is a digital platform that helps you connect different departments, from marketing, sales, and customer service, and organize the customer data, activities, and metrics into one cohesive system. CRM is technology product on the cloud and it is typically a subscription driven product available for B to B and B – C customers.
CRM makes easy and direct access to the real-time client data, which helps the functional head make a customer-focused decision, take corrective measures, twist the marketing campaigns well to assist the business to grow and scale up faster.
Lead Generation – A Necessity for Every Business Today
Leads are not lotteries, and you need to work hard to attract potential customers, capture real-time information ( if
anyone is interested in your brand), and create suitable sales opportunities for your field sales team.
Today, we always make a consistent effort to attract and capture the data ( contact info) of a prospect/leads and follow a systematic process online either by a planned inbound or outbound marketing strategy.
Inbound marketing online would typically cover many activities, including planned content marketing, distribution, and social media marketing. On the other hand, outbound marketing may have paid applications of Google Ad ( display), PPC and on-ground event capitalization.
The best is to have a perfect blend of outbound and inbound techniques to get the customers attention and organically bring them to your content. But you must consider your marketing budget before mapping out your lead generation strategy and play the dice.
CRM – Adding Values to the Complete Lead Management
Adding a CRM into your existing customer /marketing MIS forSME business is never a big challenge. Most CRMs tools have a step by step guide on how to set it up. Collect all your current contacts in a . CSV file, and that is the primary step.
You can follow it with the import and mapping of all your contacts. Subsequently, you can design your custom emails, follow-ups schedule, customer segments, lead pipeline stages, and the rest of your routinesales activity.
Every CRM tool starts to create value the moment you enter your very first lead. As a result, all your sales, marketing, and customer service reps get familiar with the company’s CRM introduction and its day-to-day application. For the best results, please ensure that all information is processed through your CRM system.
With CRM application, you will come across a positive change. You would soon start witnessing that the salespeople are now going for the ” KILL”and the ones facing the bottlenecks reverting to you for advice and solution. Day in and day out, you can monitor the sales deal progress and brainstorm with your sales reps on moving ahead with theprospective deals.
You can watch your sales pipeline at a macro level, and you instantly know if leads and deals generated are enough to support your revenue and cash flow goals for the defined sales period. Several global brands are available to help you implement a complete circle of lead generation for your business. They are Microsoft dynamics 365, hubspot.com, sales CRM, Zoho, salesforce; however, have a joint internal meeting with your CRM manager, sales head and marketing chief and CTO, before you zero on to any of them. Because you can customize your CRM software to a great extent based on all the departmental heads feedback.
Integrate Online Marketing Leads in CRM & Complete The Chain
A typical CRM exercise involves analyzing, tabulating, computation and customizing customer data that suits your marketing, sales and comprehensive business objective. Online leads generated every day should go directly to the CRM system, which adds them to the complete CRM list. Old Leads are less likely to convert, and it is the gospel truth. However, Leads that come in through your business’s online marketing channels fresh and go right into the CRM system give salespeople the best chance to convert into sales.
A hot lead ( where customers show interest ) is more valuable than a cold lead in the sales funnel. CRM makes it clear to the users to prioritize which leads they contact first for sales closing effectively.
A customized CRM software has inbuilt dynamics to capture leads straight from your website and put them into your CRM system. You can do with well-designed web forms on the platform or using marketing automation software or a combination of both. Stop your worries and run your business in a comfort mode, but you must complete the lead management chain with customized CRM software.
Please research all the leading global CRM software brands and see what best works for your company’s business interest. While doing the stated CRM research, you need to have any advice or opinion, please place your “enquiry” in the comment section below, and I will come back with my professional views.