7 Reasons You Should Be Using a CRM

7 Reasons You Should Be Using A CRM

If you’ve been using a spreadsheet to document your interactions with customers—or don’t track your interactions at all—it may be time to step up your customer relationship game. A CRM (client relationship management) tool is about more than just keeping track of interactions with a client; it can also help make your sales, marketing, and support teams more effective.

A CRM keeps track of all of your existing contacts and helps record when you have interactions with them. Most CRMs will also have triggers or alerts to automate follow-up sequences including certain events like sending an email, text message, or ringless voicemail, or will send alerts to your sales or customer service staff to follow up when certain parameters have been met.

When used properly, a CRM can help make your contact with customers and potential customers more professional and effective.

1 – Automates Sales, Marketing, and Support Efforts

We know that multiple touchpoints are crucial in sales and marketing. One of the greatest benefits of a CRM is its capability to automate certain repeated touchpoints such as welcome emails or promotions, drip marketing campaigns, ringless voicemails, social media posts, text messages, and more.

This can decrease rote tasks for your sales, marketing, and support staffs, helping increase efficiency and effectiveness in your organization.

2 – Prevents Contacts from Falling Through the Cracks

With proper use of a CRM, your contacts are far less likely to fall through the cracks. Not only are contacts consolidated into a single system, but the use of triggers and automation ensure your contacts are being engaged with on a regular basis.

3 – Enhances Ability to Cross-Sell or Upsell

Instead of losing track of your customer once a purchase is complete, a CRM can help you improve your upsell and cross-selling games.

A CRM consolidates information about your customer using tags, categories, and notes. While you should always have a drip marketing campaign through your CRM keeping you in touch with existing customers, a CRM also allows you to specifically reach out to segments of your customer base when you launch relevant new products, have certain promotions or specials going on, or have an upsell/cross-sell that they might be interested in.

4 – Improves Your Relationships

Your relationships are only as strong as your interactions with prospective and existing customers. By using a partially automated tool to increase touchpoints and consolidating customer information in easy-to-process segments, you’re improving your ability to maintain productive relationships with your clients.

6 – Makes Information More Accessible

Where spreadsheets or to-do lists are difficult to consolidate or use team- or company-wide, a CRM automatically collects and manages information and relationship management tools in a single platform. This platform is usually cloud-based, which means authorized team members can access customer data and CRM tools whether they’re on-site or working remotely.

7 – Increases Business Intelligence

Most CRMs come intact with an analytical dashboard that empowers you with data about your current sales, marketing, and support efforts. View data points about the effectiveness of certain delivery methods, campaigns, or specific messages. See how certain customer segments perform against others to fine-tune your focus, or analyze how certain sales or service agents are performing within your company. This tool can help identify bottlenecks, challenges, or opportunities within your current systems.