The introduction of CRM has changed the business landscape, and the sales representatives are feeling the biggest impact. It has managed to empower the average sales representative. In fact, it has managed to become the lifeline of many companies. One of the best things about CRM is that it can shorten the sales cycle of the company.
The different ways the sales CRM can help companies reduce the length of their sales cycle. Companies that use sales CRM have found ways through which they can shorten their sales cycle.
Table of Contents
1. Reduce the number of administrative tasks through automation
Companies can reduce the number of administrative functions by identifying the task that is repetitive and uses the CRM to automate them. By doing so, they can reduce the amount of time an average salesman spends doing administrative tasks to 10%. That is from 23%. It means that the sales representative can devote more time and focus on both generating leads as well as converting them into deals, according to POSQuote.com.
2. Contact management is much more efficient
Companies that use CRM have said that they can easily access their contact database. There is also a catch to this feature. Companies can gain no benefit from this feature if they do not continually update the details they have on their clients (both existing and prospective).
3. Open the company to a whole world of new sales opportunities
Collecting the data on visitors to a company’s website is easy. However, this data serves little purpose or no purpose if companies cannot analyze them. This is where CRM comes into the picture. It can help companies to analyze and segment the data allowing them to identify leads that they can make a part of their sales funnel. Besides that, the CRM can tell which part of the sales process the customer is at in real-time.
4. Lead management made better
Identifying leads is not enough. Companies must be able to distinguish the good leads from the bad leads. This is because not all leads give the same result. Sales CRM can help companies reject the bad leads and focus on the leads that have a higher chance of becoming buyers.
5. Tracking the lead can be automated
Companies that hope to turn leads into opportunities and finally buyers must be able to track them. This can be a tedious and time-consuming task if done manually. Those companies which use CRM can use it to automate this process. CRM can track the lead right from the generation stage until the post-sales stage.
6. Have a better idea about who is the ideal buyer
Any company that wishes to close deals must first be able to identify leads that can be converted into buyers. The only way sales representative can understand this is by knowing their success rates against different kinds of companies. CRM can help them identify this and also help them know what patterns they should look for when separating buyers from non-buyers.
7. Personalize and automate the sales representative campaigns and follow-ups
Sales representatives spend much of their time working with the CRM. This is because it is the most important tool they use. However, when companies decide to sync the CRM with the email service their representatives use they can make the representative’s job a lot easier. CRM will help sales representatives personalize and automate the campaigns along with the follow-up messages they send.
8. Research prospect will be easier
The primary task with prospecting for new leads is that the sales representatives have to enter the data manually. That is not the case with CRM. It makes the task of entering data so easy that they can do it for all their contacts. It simplifies the task of prospecting for new leads. Also, it increases the time the representative has to prospect for new leads.
9. Customer mismanagement no longer exists
Maintaining proper communication between the companies and customers is very important. When done manually there are chances that it will be mismanaged. That is not the case when done using a CRM. It will keep track of the communication and help companies analyze the different pain points the customer puts forward. The CRM tells the representatives whenever there is an email from the customer. It does it irrespective of whether the email is an information request or an indication that they are going to buy.
10. Can be accessed through mobile
Before the sales, representatives had either contacted their office by phone or went there to meet the person for doing an update or gather information. Nowadays sales representatives can access CRM using their mobile phones. They need to have an internet connection to do this. For this, they can use the voice to text functionality to transfer data to the CRM. And the best part is that they don’t have to type any word.
Final thoughts
Even though CRM has become a common thing with companies, many of them have not fully unitized it. If these companies wish to shorten the sales cycle process and improve their revenue, they must entirely make use of the features available with Sales CRM.
