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Today I want to talk to you about 5 ways that a CRM makes your sales process more effective. My name is Rick Whittington, and I work at Whittington Consulting, which is a growth agency that helps companies meet or exceed revenue growth goals.
Your sales people are incredibly busy. They are fielding phone calls, they are responding to emails, they are out and about having meetings, networking, and they might even be at conferences or tradeshows.
I'd say about 75% of the companies I meet with use Excel spreadsheets, a whiteboard, or some other simple technique to track opportunities through their sales process.
And if that's you, I'm willing to bet that many opportunities are falling through the cracks and you're leaving money on the table.
If you're using spreadsheets to track sales opportunities, it's time to ditch the spreadsheet and get a CRM. There's really no reason not to use a CRM, and today I want to give you just a few ways that a CRN can make your sales process more effective and help you close more deals.
First benefit
A CRM can make you more effective is by automating some of your email follow up. You can write email templates and customize these templates for your sales prospects. You can even schedule those emails to go automatically be sent for you so you don’t have to remember. Your email drip sequences can also remind you when it's time to pick up the phone and make a call.
Second benefit
A CRM can schedule your meetings for you. Imagine how much more efficient you'd be if you didn't have to trade two or three emails with every prospect trying to find a day and time to meet. Just send them a customized link and they can see your schedule in real time and find a time that works for them.
Third benefit
keeping meeting and call notes in your CRM for each of your contacts helps you keep a running timeline of conversations you're having and research you're doing during the sale. As you're preparing for meetings or phone calls, you can refer to the timeline for the history of your conversations with your prospects.
Fourth benefit
The fourth benefit of a CRM is lead scoring. Some companies we talk to have more leads than your sales person can reasonably handle, and having software to score those leads based on their interactions with your company... like website visits or email opens, or even the number of meetings or calls you conduct, will help your sales reps prioritize their opportunities.
Final benefit
The final benefit I’ll mention is more for the sales manager or executive. Using a CRM can help you maintain a dashboard that allows you to measure your pipeline. And that’s going to help you project revenue and also provide an indicator for when you need to ratchet up your marketing. A CRM can show you activity by sales person, how many opportunities you have in your pipeline at each stage, and even can show you what percent of opportunities advance from stage to stage in your sales process. I probably don't have to tell you that this will help you identify opportunities for improvement in your sales process.
So think about this. How could measuring your pipeline help you create sales projections and improve your sales process? How could automating some follow up and scheduling meetings make your sales reps more efficient? Thanks, have a great day, and I’ll see you soon.
