CRM, the word itself imply a relationship management tool with your customers and we cannot overlook the fact that CRM provides businesses up to 65% boost in sales shares (source: Innopple technology research). The questions are:
- What is so particular about it?
- How can it change the lives of your salespeople?
- Was it just to track the sales?
- How does it help in growing the business further?
- What about the ROI?
- How can I get the maximum benefit from the tool?
- How to choose an ideal tool for our business?
These are the essential questions we ask while selecting a tool for our sales. Now let’s start by looking at the challenges, the sales division commonly faces:
- Knowledge sharing
- Data analysis, Performance management, and measurement
- Time Management
- Aligning with the Marketing team
- Account management post-sales
- Customer management and retention
- “You” vs Competition
- Keeping your sales team motivated
As we all know that we face above challenges on our day to day sales operations. It will be notably important to understand each of them and get a notion of how to resolve them. Understanding the tools needed is one of the decisive factors. Apart from that, understanding the local needs and customizing the standard solutions, therefore, is also significant concerns in the current business.
Knowledge sharing
Knowledge sharing is important in various business stages, but do we consider this as an important factor in sales? Most of us don’t. When we talk about knowledge sharing, most of us think about the project we completed, the challenges we faced and how we overcome all of such situation. However, considering the factors affected the sales deals, we can reliably say that knowledge sharing is very important.
How? With given context let’s pretend we are dealing with a prospect for a product. And we have already dealt and lost the deal in the past for another product after 2-3 rounds of negotiations.
If we have a track and manage this information on why we lost and what are the factors the prospect was looking then, it can help us in making our proposal sharpen, to the point, stand out from the competition and get the deal closed quickly. It helps us track the information for future uses such as account management. How do we do that?
Many solutions are available in the market currently. One of them which stood out for us is Microsoft D365 CRM solution and especially the ISV version developed by Intech systems. Functions such as task management and comments attached to each task, help us to track the details of the sales management and what happened at each stage and how to improve it.
Data analysis, Performance management, and measurement
Proper data representation really helps you to get proper timely insights which eventually lead to getting accurate information about how to close the deal, what and where are your sales team is lacking, how effectively your team is handling the leads, how your various marketing campaigns are performing, whether you’re getting your desired ROI of your marketing campaigns or not?, and what could be the preventive actions we can take to improve the sales of your organization.
Well, database management and data analysis are the key aspects of it. It enables your sales team to look at the things which cannot be seen otherwise. With tools such as Microsoft D365 CRM, various services and functionalities are available such as Sales Management, Lead Management, Service Management, Marketing. (all facilities are not available with the standard CRM but it is thereby Intech’s ISV CRM which contains all Microsoft D365 CRM facilities as well as customized functionalities to suit your business). All these functionalities are directly tracked to the dashboards and other reports such as:
- sales person-wise performance report
- lead closing percentage
- Industry-wise report
- Month/Quarter-wise performance management
- Average lead closing time
- Conversion rate %
- and so on
With the help of such tools, you can surely check which of your salesperson is good at which industry? Where your salesperson is performing well. On which location he has a stronghold and so on!
As per the baseline research, ROI on CRM is 5 USD to every 1 USD invested! And even more surprising is according to Trackvia “Revenue growth can be around 41% by using effective CRM!”
Time Management
In such a fast-paced and continually evolving environment, the number of responsibilities and processes can easily overwhelm it to follow, track and manage. Managing the meeting schedules and to align your processes accordingly is very significant.
As we shared earlier that CRM tools such as Microsoft D365 not just helps you in tracking your sales but also ease your processes, it is proven to be a very effective way of managing your time and optimizing your resources.
With ISV solution of Intech, it has functionalities such as Alerts, Enquiry, Design tracking, Service calls, Agreements, and many more are all attached to the dashboard. This delivers this as an effective tool for time management since it saves time for correlating everything in a single dashboard, tracking them, and helps in taking proper actions. Interestingly, according to Cloudswave research, the lead cost can be reduced by up to 23% by using CRM.
Aligning with the Marketing team
Usually, your marketing team is responsible for creating and communicating the business plans, campaign ideas and sales team is responsible for execution. If there is any discrepancy in the communication between both team it can result in an unfavorable campaign result.
For instance, a Chinese whisper, from A to B to C to D to E level, the crux of the communication may get blown and lower or rejected execution may take place. This could further lead to the failure of a campaign or opportunity losses.
With tools such as Microsoft D365 CRM, we can easily track campaigns and manage them effectively. For example, let’s say we are doing a campaign for the product which is effective to be sold in companies of manufacturing industry and it is likely to be sold in SMB companies (<50 crores turn over).
So with CRM with every lead we can track what kind of leads, of what industry are approached by the salespeople, what kind of response we are getting we can track them with the help of comments, at what stage the leads are getting stuck, how we can push them, how extra offers or push we can do to get the maximum benefits from the campaign. As per Cloudswave research conversion rate can be improved by 300 % by proper and effective utilization of the CRM.
Account management post-sales
Account management is one of the significant aspects of customer relationship management. It does not just assist you in maintaining the relationship healthy but also helps you in cross-selling, up-selling and understanding the customer’s requirement in a more reliable way. Hence, helping in building the trust which is essential in long term business relationship.
How to do proper account management?
- Understand Portfolio Vs Profit (Identifying and analyzing key accounts using various factors)
- Understanding Customer’s need
- Design a blueprint for further action and pitch
- Take pro-active and reactive actions
- Resource Planning
For instance, assume you are into manufacturing business of plastic bags. So, per the purchase trend, let’s say in August their sales get 50% spike. And, If you offer them some special discount around July they may consider it and purchase in bulk from you. This gives you a higher chance of converting the account into the higher purchase.
As per the Sales Metrics, the possibility of the new prospect to purchase is 5-20% where your existing customer will have a probability of buying from you is 60-70%. As per Harward Business Review, around 52% of the High performer employees have identified themselves as the regular user of CRM such as Microsoft D365 CRM.
Customer management and retention
In today’s competitive world, just great products are not enough. You must make sure your services are also up-to-the customer expectations. Here the account management plays an essential role.
Here are some of the reasons why deals get missed:
- Longer decision making – here, prospect engagement, process synchronization, lead nurturing becomes a necessity. Microsoft D365 CRM kind of solutions are built based on such bases!
- Pricing – To win more customers one must track all your competitions, their offerings, and pricing. All these factors are important to compare and then actions are taken accordingly.
- Service management – Service Management is an important aspect of the customer relationship. It is essential not just in the service industry but also in the manufacturing industry. With features such as Equipment Management, Service agreement management, Service call management, Service call dashboards, etc., available in ISV CRM developed by Intech Systems, it makes it even easier for every Industry to make customer management and retention more enjoyable and more comfortable.
As per the Software Advice research, 74% of businesses using CRM report better customer relationships. According to Defaqto Research, 52% of customers are willing to pay more for better customer experience. And, moreover, according to Harvard Business Review, 5% reduction in your customer defection can help you to increase your profits by 85%!
‘You’ vs Competition
Too many competitors? How will you differentiate? What is the best possible way for that? How will you deliver more value to win your prospect? This is critical, right? Well, we have a solution for that as well.
- Improve the quality of your customer interaction: How? Well, maintain small details of your prospect’s needs, smaller remarks, budget comparisons, competitions’ previous offering, comparisons, etc. All these are available in Microsoft D365 CRM! I hope that’s a relief for you.
- Improve collaboration between Sales and Marketing: What, when and how to convey the right message or offer is very critical. If you can maintain the record of what is being offered to the prospect, the marketing team can easily identify the gaps and help in enhancing your communication. It is all about synchronization of your processes and maintaining the database properly. Moreover, it is also about linking your database properly and analyzing it. These are standard features of Microsoft D365 CRM.
- Create integrated social media campaigns: Social media plays an extremely important role in today’s age. I would say it has become a new pillar of your business. If you can manage it properly, with the help of your Microsoft D365 CRM, it can do wonders for you.
- Keeping your sales team motivated
The sale is a game. A team Game. Only working as a team, it will help you in building some innovative solutions. Effective sales are not just about creative individuals, but it is about how synchronized they are, how well prepared they are, how much knowledge is shared between them and how effectively they make its use!
Conclusion:
Boosting your sales is a tricky task. Proper understanding of the business, its processes, how to synchronize them and when to start what to sell. All these if done properly with Microsoft D365 CRM or custom-developed ISV CRM by Intech systems can do wonders for the business. For more detail, you can contact us on sales@intech-systems.com
