How Can Sales CRM Software Help Increase Sales

What is the Need for CRM software?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a tool for managing all current and prospective customer interactions and their data in one place. This enables businesses to build strong customer relationships and leverage the data to help them make important decisions.

CRM software has been in existence for a long time now. It is widely categorized as Sales CRM, Marketing CRM, and Service CRM.

This blog is specifically focused on how Sales CRM software can help your business increase sales revenue.

What is Sales CRM?

Sales CRM is a software application to help organizations automate their end-to-end sales process.

A comprehensive Sales CRM framework is required to help sales teams capture leads, nurture them into qualified opportunities and then convert the deals. It also organizes all customer data in one place which makes it easy for your team to access information with ease. That way, every member of your team has access to the same information across the enterprise.

By automating multiple tasks such as data entry, administrative tasks, contact management, etc., a large part of the sales process can be accelerated. Consequently, data organization and administrative tasks become easier to manage. Therefore, reps are able to focus on building relationships rather than wasting time on boring and time-consuming administrative work.

How is Sales CRM different from a Marketing CRM?

Before we understand this, let us discuss the primary objective of the Sales and Marketing departments.

We know that Sales and Marketing functions are deeply interconnected. Both these departments have a common end objective of helping organizations accomplish their revenue goals, and this is achieved through close collaboration between the two functions.

Having said that, there are remarkable differences between them.

Marketing focuses on creating awareness about the company and the brand. Their primary objective is to attract interest among prospective buyers and help create leads.

Whereas the Sales department’s primary focus is to engage with these prospects and convert them into paying customers.

This is precisely why different CRMs are available to cater to their specific needs.

Marketing CRM

Marketing CRM will help you run structured marketing campaigns to help you generate leads and awareness among your target audience.

Using marketing best b2b CRM software, you will be able to execute specific campaigns based on different parameters. The most common parameters used are based on industry, company revenue, number of employees, location, decision maker, etc.

You will also be able to run channel-specific campaigns like email marketing, social media marketing, inbound marketing, content marketing, tele-calling, etc.

Marketing automation CRM includes features such as contact segmentation, email marketing, event management, social media integrations, etc. Some of them also provide ready-made templates to make the execution easy and faster.

Sales CRM

Best Sales CRM software will help you automate and manage your entire sales process. It is designed to help your sales reps and sales management teams in meeting their revenue targets. At the same time, it supports the backend sales operations team to collaborate with your frontline members to serve your clients better.

A good Sales CRM system includes features such as contact management, lead management, sales management, pipeline management, opportunity management, activities and tasks, quotes and proposals, sales forecasting, and integrations with other business systems.

Using the Sales CRM, sales team members can effectively nurture their leads, track their progress and convert them into customers. At the same time, sales managers and leadership teams can have complete visibility into their team performance and provide the right guidance to support their teams.

Strategic imperatives of a Sales CRM software

The main objective of a Sales CRM initiative is to help clients transform their sales operations and build a strong foundation for growth.

A sales transformation initiative is a very strategic decision that leaders make. It should not be viewed as just a simple software project.

Successful CRM implementation projects take into account all four core components of business –

Business Strategy

It is critical for leaders to define their business goals and objectives desired from this initiative. That way, everyone in the company is aligned completely and works towards a common objective.

Process

A good practice is to document the current as-is sales process and the desired to-be sales process. This document will act as a blueprint for a successful project rollout.

People

The people component is one of the most important yet neglected aspects. It takes into account various factors like change management, technology adoption, training, organizational structure, incentives, etc.

Technology

Last but not least is the selection and implementation of the right technology to support all of the above. This will include multiple aspects like selecting the right software vendor, the technology infrastructure like cloud services, implementation partner with the right domain expertise, data governance policies, etc.

How to select the right Sales CRM

Selecting the right Sales CRM is one of the most strategic decisions you need to make. This decision lays the foundation for your growth in the years to come.

No matter what your company size is, the right Sales CRM can help you be organized from the very beginning. The earlier you start the better.

Here are some of the aspects to be considered while selecting the right Sales CRM for your enterprise –

CRM methodology alignment with your business goals
Cloud CRM or On-Premise CRM
Need for a Mobile-first CRM for quick rollouts and user adoption
CRM solution fitment in your industry
CRM implementation methodology recommended by the software vendor
Ease of use of the CRM to help users adopt fast with minimal training
Is the responsibility of CRM implementation with the software vendor or a third-party implementation partner
Mobile-first strategy
Post-sales support provided by the CRM vendor
Data security
Integration with third-party applications
Last but not the least, Total-Cost-Of-Ownership (TCO) includes – all costs like software, cloud costs, infrastructure, implementation, customization, and training costs