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10 Ways Your Sales Effort Can Benefit From a CRM

If the ultimate goal of your business is to earn revenue and grow, looking for ways to improve both your business processes and sales efforts should be a constant effort. As we’ve detailed in this space, a CRM can help you in accomplishing both. At the same time, simply stating that ‘Customer Relationship Management software will benefit your business’ is vague. So allow us to go one step further, with ten very specific reasons your sales efforts can benefit from a CRM, based on an awesome infographic by Cloudswave.  After reviewing this list, hopefully you will have a better idea of the types of tangible benefits CRM can provide to your small or medium-sized business. 10 Reasons Why CRM Systems Are Popular in Sales In this infographic, Cloudswave cites numerous studies in coming up with data-based reasons to implement a CRM system. These statistics are particularly compelling in understanding the benefits of this software solution: When asked why they use a CRM, 61% of sales distributors responded that it allows for key access to customer information and data. In addition, 75% of sales managers say that using a CRM helps to drive and increase sales. On average, a CRM provides a $5.60 return for every $1.00 spent, an ROI of more than 50%. A CRM helps nurture leads that are not ready to become customers yet, but 75% of companies have no lead nurturing process in place.  This means that simply nurturing your leads can often catapult your company above your competitors. Customers of companies who use CRMs to engage with them spend between 20% and 40% more compared with those customers who only experience manual sales outreach. That’s because CRMs generate a positive customer experience — and as it turns out, 70% of customers with positive brand experiences will refer your product or service to their peers. Your sales representatives love the software because it helps them reach their goals: CRMs increase revenue per sales rep by 41%. Similarly, sales conversion rates for your sales efforts will rise by up to 300%. Customer retention also matters, as CRMs have led to retention rates of more than 25%. Given all of these reasons, it’s no surprise that implementing a CRM will increase your profit margin by more than 2%. Change is difficult, so you may encounter initial resistance in your sales department to changing ‘the way we’ve always done things.’ That’s where these statistics can be so beneficial. Not only do the above reasons provide leadership with a clear view of the potential of a CRM, but they can also help convince your individual sales representatives that after an initial transition period, they will be set up for success. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts: because your sales team knows about these statistics, they will be more motivated (and more likely) to accomplish them. Thinking Beyond Your Sales Department toward BPA Of course, one thing that the above infographic does not highlight is the ability of CRM software to benefit your business beyond sales processes. […]

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How Business Process Automation Can Benefit Small and Medium Businesses

As your business grows, business process automation (BPA) becomes increasingly important. While it’s relatively simple to manually manage and enter your business processes as they occur with just a few customers, the same cannot be said for a growing business managing an increasing number of both customers and processes. The key, then, is finding a software solution that allows you to automate the process. Keep reading to learn how business process automation can benefit both small and medium-sized businesses, along with the functions a reliable system should include to maximize these benefits. 6 Undeniable Benefits of Business Process Automation 1. Increased efficiency Naturally, automating your business processes will increase the efficiency with which you can run your business. If you know that a number of essential functions will be taken care of in the background, you can focus your attention on marketing and other activities that help to grow your business. As this collection of case studies shows, BPA consistently increased efficiency for businesses who embrace the concept. Everyday tasks require less human touches, which can be better focused elsewhere. 2. Reduced Labor and Time Commitment Automating your business processes will take time initially. But after the transition, it will save both the labor and the time (and, ultimately, your budget) required for these tasks. If, for example, you decide to automate your sales flow from lead to customer, your marketing and sales team can spend their time focusing on actual customer outreach instead of having to calculate lead qualifications to determine which contacts they should reach out to. 3. Customer-Centric Advantages Ultimately, thanks to the above shift in priorities, BPA helps improve your ability to reach out and interact with your customers. That, in turn, will result in greater satisfaction by your audience, who will appreciate a more personal approach that is customized to their needs. 4. Cross-Departmental Benefits Too often, BPA software like a Customer Relationship Management solution is viewed with limited scope. It is ultimately a sales tool, helping you automate and personalize your outreach. But in reality, a number of other department and areas within your business can benefit as well. Marketing automation, for example, reduces the need to send emails to new and existing leads. Software like Microsoft Dynamics CRM can also help you track HR processes, collect and sort documents, and manage orders from your suppliers. In short, it can benefit a number of departments within your growing business. 5. Consistency When relying on manual business processes, consistency is almost impossible. Each employee will work on and complete these processes a little different from the other, making it difficult to come up with a set of universal rules and guidelines that apply to everyone in the process. With BPA, that problem doesn’t exist. Every aspect of the automated process is identical to the ones preceding and following it. If you set up a singular lead scoring process, for example, each lead will be evaluated for its sales-readiness in the exact same way. Compare that to manual lead scoring, in which inexact […]

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Customer Relationship: Infographics Tell All

A chain of events has occurred over the last few years that has changed the world of business. Advancements in technology increased the pace of globalization. This, in turn, allowed businesses to gain consumer bases in far away places and allowed startups to have increased access to funding. More businesses began to pop up, and with this growth came a growth in consumer expectations. Customers expect more of the organizations they purchase from. When companies fail to deliver, customers leave. One of these customer expectations is a better relationship with brands. They want to be able to have access to the companies they buy from whenever they want, wherever they are. They want businesses to be more engaging and to provide more value to them. Due to this, the practice of improving the customer experience has become key. Revenue Without profits, businesses fail. There’s no way around it. And one solid truth that has emerged over the last few years is that when customer experience is focused on, revenue goes up. This has become widely accepted, with 41% of senior marketers saying that in terms of its impact on revenue, customer experience is second only to the product. Nearly three-quarters of consumers spend more when they experience good customer service. And even more consumers, 86% to be exact, openly express that they are willing to spend more for a better experience. But it’s not just about increasing revenue, it’s also about maintaining it. Without providing a positive customer experience, businesses are seeing severe drops in sales. 78% of consumers have opted out of making a purchase purely because they experienced poor service.  The brands that lead in customer experience, see their revenue grow up to 8% above the rest of their competitors. One of the reasons for this above average growth is due to how companies, that put effort into the customer experience, respond when a customer isn’t pleased. When companies respond effectively and efficiently to bad customer experiences, they see customer spending increase by 30%. When they respond poorly, customer spending can decrease by up to 63%. Another reason for the additional revenue growth is because companies that see the value of investing in improving customer experience are concentrating efforts online–and they’re succeeding. 97% of consumers’ purchases are influenced by their online experience and 65% of consumers’ opinions about a brand have been changed by their online experience. Retention It’s expensive to bring in new customers. A company first needs to develop a marketing campaign. Then they need to identify leads, pursue them, and bring them through the customer journey. This takes time and money. In fact, when compared to keeping an existing customer, attracting a new one can cost seven times more. But it’s not just about holding onto customers, it’s also about keeping them happy. Strongly loyal customers have between six and 14 times more lifetime value than others. These figures should immediately shock organizations into maintaining current customers. And the best way to do that is […]

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Selling Effectively using Dynamics 365

Your customers know more than ever before, and are making buying decisions before you can even engage. With all of this information available to customers, your sales team must adapt to the new customer journey. Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, your sales team can stay focused on the right customers and priorities, win faster by collaborating with colleagues to harness the power of the entire organization, and build a trusted relationship with customers through personalized and relevant engagements.

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