I know a lot of people who use Customer Relationship Management software (CRM), and a lot of them have this common misconception about using a CRM application. They seem to only use it as a contact management system. However, that is only one function, of many, that CRM software has to offer. There are many more that aren’t being utilized. That’s like paying for Ferrari and leaving it in your garage. What is the point of that? You have to take that dazzling piece of machinery out for a spin!
Don’t get me wrong, organizing your leads, prospects, customers, and various other contacts is extremely important. A CRM application can greatly improve your efficiency in organizing all those contacts, and log your historical conversations with each one of them. However, what about utilizing the sales and marketing functionality within that same CRM software? You’ll be missing out on tremendous value by not utilizing those features. Once you plan out your marketing road map, you can setup all the communications within your CRM to be automated. All those emails that your typically busy setting up and sending out on the same day will now be setup, all in one day, and scheduled to go out for you. Obviously, it will still require some work to design the emails, but once that is done you won’t have to worry about it for a while. Sit back and watch those campaigns go! That is the beauty of marketing automation.
Your sales team will be able to easily lookup any new leads, prospects, or potential customers that are interested in your emails. They can view the reporting statistics that automatically populate from those emails. They’ll be able to view all the contact information for those new potential customers! Another great piece of functionality that you could use would be to have an automatic task setup for your sales team to be notified when somebody clicks on one of your links in the email blasts. This way the CRM application will always tell them to follow up with those interested parties. Think about how much time that will save everybody.
It is possible that you didn’t know these features existed before in your CRM application. Maybe you’re using sales software, marketing software, and then something else for contact management software. That will eventually get the job done, but you’re probably paying more money than what you need to. CRM software will typically combine all that functionality into one solution. That will help not only streamline costs, but efficiency as well. You will no longer have to search for contacts, marketing strategies, and sales status in different programs. It will all be in one.
As you can see there are many benefits to properly utilizing a CRM application. You gain better communication between departments as everybody can see the same statistics from campaigns. The purpose of a CRM is so you don’t have to bounce around between multiple applications, therefore streamlining costs and efficiency. You gain automation in your marketing campaigns as opposed to constantly micromanaging all of them. There are many more benefits to using a CRM application the proper way, but get started with these and you’ll be anxious to find out all the other features a great CRM can offer you.
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