Increase Your Revenue Through CRM With These Tips
Up until a while ago, it was easy enough for a business to “guess” what its customers wanted. We’ve come a long way since those times. Today’s customer is very different – finicky, spoilt for choice, and with more opportunity to take their business elsewhere if they aren’t satisfied. Today companies must focus on customer relationships to attract and retain customers.
One of the most valuable tools for this is the CRM or Customer Relationship Management system that manages customer relationships. But using a CRM only to maintain relationships and not to increase revenue is a waste of a valuable system and information. Here are some ways to use a CRM to build a more profitable business by giving customers what they want minus the guesswork.
Make information accessible to customer-facing teams
Withholding valuable information about your customer’s needs likes and dislikes from your teams will mirror negatively in sales and revenue. If customer-facing teams like the sales-force are unaware of what prospective customers want, they lose valuable time trying to sell a pitch that they aren’t sure will work in the first place.
On the other hand, if valuable customer information is shared with the team, they know beforehand their likes and dislikes, wants and needs, problems that need addressing, and what selling tactic will work best. A guaranteed method to increase conversion rates. A CRM stores valuable data that must be utilised.
Use CRM features to make a customer for life
Granted that today’s customer has a lot of choices, and if he/she is not satisfied with your services, he won’t hesitate to drop your business for another that gives him exactly what he wants. But, if you maintain good relationships with your customers, you will make a long-term patron of your business. Humans thrive on relationships and connections. Make use of the different features available in a CRM to stay connected with your customers, such as the ability to schedule emails at regular intervals, and keeping a tab of phone-calls made.
Analyze data for suggestion selling and cross-selling
Customer profiles and their order histories are valuable data that can be used to analyse what a customer may need apart from what they buy from you. Suggestion selling is suggesting other products that they might be interested in. The products purchased and the products suggested are not connected.
For example, a customer might buy a computer from you, but you can also suggest buying a television. , on the other hand, involves making suggestions related to the product bought. For example, a customer buys a laptop. You could suggest he invest in a wireless keyboard and mouse. How would you know what to suggest?
Simple. By analysing the customer’s profile and order history – information available on the CRM.
Use follow-up emails to get referrals
Dale Carnegie noted that a whopping 91% of customers are willing to give referrals, but only 11% are asked to do so. A CRM not only stores data but can be used to gather more information such as referrals. Customers are most likely aware of others who would be interested in the products or services that you sell. You could send your customers a follow-up email asking for referrals. This data is again stored in the CRM and can be used by the pre-sales team to follow up.
Another way to get the best from your system is to track the way potential prospects (who approach you) heard about your company. By monitoring and analysing patterns in how prospects find you, you can make better use of those channels to get more referrals.
The above tips are just the tip of the iceberg says SalesFix. The possibilities of what can be done and how revenues can be increased with the right CRM are unlimited. A few other incredible CRM features that make increased revenue possible are: contact management, sales team and customer opportunity management, lead management, sales analytics, reports, email client integration, sales forecasting, sales performance management, call centre automation and integration, web analytics integration, social media marketing management, case management and customer satisfaction.
It’s just a matter of researching well and using all these features, functions and capabilities to the best of your ability.
About the Author
Zac Ronin is a CRM expert. He has experience transforming businesses and connecting customers, partners and employees with streamlined systems.
