My husband and I have “lively discussions” over the use of CRM (aka Customer Relationship Management). I’m a big advocate of using CRM while he hates having to keep track of his various activities and communications to such detail. However, I know the power of using a CRM solution, either a pure solution like Salesforce, Microsoft CRM, Sugar or an integrated CRM such as Tigerpaw, Connectwise or Autotask. I once only used CRM the way my husband perceives its use – jot down my communications and make a “tickler” to reach out at a later date. But, as the old Ginsu knives commercials used to say, “Wait! There’s more!”
The biggest benefits of using a CRM comes down to the first two letters – the Customer Relationship. Proper use of a Customer Relationship Management solution allows for more accurately segmented lists based on buyer personas or buyer’s journey segment (or both). This is powerful information. Knowing WHO your buyer is and WHERE on the journey they are allows you to better target your information and even automate your communications.
Although I am no longer in a sales capacity, as Director of Marketing, I still use our company CRM to research our clients and prospects, review communications and see what resonates with our clients. Our solution provides us cross-departmental communications – sales can see what services and support are doing, marketing can review client activities to glean success stories, management can view the sales pipeline for forecasting. CRM systems allow for collaboration between various departments.
In addition, you can create certain synergies with sales documentation generation tools. For example, with a solution like SalesDoc Architect, your CRM can “feed” information to SDA to auto-populate forms and information required for proposals, statements of work, RFPs, etc. Some CRM solutions can also pull information back in to the back office module to create service tickets or generate more sophisticated sales forecasts.
Instead of looking at your CRM solution as a glorified Rolodex, why not make it do more for you so you can sell more in less time.
Contact us to learn more about CorsPro SalesDoc Architect and its CRM integration so you can sell more in less time.