Productive CRM For Businesses: What You Need to Know

Saphyte Team

4 min read

Updated: October 25th, 2020

CRM is an increasingly adopted technology these days. It is a must-have, evidenced by its growing use and ever-expanding market. Big companies have started integrating the use of CRM for their sales and marketing processes, and have taken the time to refine their techniques to maximize their outputs.

So what is a CRM and how does it improve work processes? Is it worth it? How long does it last? And what industries are CRMs usually used in?

Explaining the CRM and its use

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an approach to managing potential and existing customer relationships with the goal of improving customer retention and boosting sales. 

A CRM software is designed and developed with tools and features that specialize in achieving the goals of CRM — that is to improve the business relationships with leads and customers. CRMs help businesses shorten the sales cycle by personalizing the interaction with leads, converting them into customers in the shortest possible time. 

The software also improves customer retention — through the use of customer information and (again) personalization — and encourages repeat purchases to improve business sales over time.

The tools and features of a typical CRM include options to make phone calls to potential and potential customers using a single, centralized platform. It can also be used to schedule emails, assess and evaluate leads (using the lead scoring feature), and manage customers’ contact information for data-driven decisions and other important sales and marketing processes.

When a business focuses on making the relationship more meaningful, its customers are more likely to grow loyal to the business. Based on research, customers that are managed using CRM tools are more likely to choose the user’s business over other businesses. This is important as a lot of research says that customer loyalty and retention comprise at least an average of 80% of businesses’ sales revenue. This is why CRM as an approach is getting more popular across industries lately.

Improving work processes

The more your back-end and front-end employees (like your sales rep) know about your customers, the more likely you will serve them better compared to your competitors. Knowledge acquired through data-gathering leads to improved customer service— especially when tools like CRM help with collecting information about your leads and customers’ needs and preferences.

Investing in a digital platform enables you to personalize the digital customer experience, improve customer interaction, and use data to gain a competitive advantage

Sales teams can also accomplish more sales tasks using the CRM because its smart design allows you to perform your workflows with minimal effort. With the help of CRMs, a company’s sales force will be able to engage leads and customers on multiple channels using a single, centralized software. Here, you can promote your business on social media, via email, or even using traditional marketing (such as making a phone call) and communicate with your customers without switching apps from time to time. 

Using the CRM also allows companies to effectively communicate with leads regardless of their numbers. This is one advantage a CRM software can give you. With the software’s contact management system, you can send bulk emails promoting your products and services in just a few clicks. This provides speed and convenience compared to traditional sales and marketing methods.

Good CRMs often have a feature that automatically inputs the data of target customers into its system after they fill out a form (on a website or on social media). But for target customers to be actually interested in filling out your forms and performing other desired actions, your marketing strategy needs to be optimized. You need to learn where to place the forms, encourage website visitors to fill out the forms, and incentivize subscription to newsletters or future promotional content of your company.

Industry applications

CRM systems are widely adopted in several industries. Among these industries are retail and insurance. 

• Retail – One of the biggest challenges in the retail industry is the continuous demand for something new, modern, and relevant – which pushes retail companies to one-up their competition by innovating and also improving their products and services.

Here, data-gathering is important and tools like a CRM can provide actionable insights that can help companies have an edge over the competition. CRMs can also improve retail companies’ reach when used properly. It also helps in ensuring that their customers’ needs are served. Those who refuse to rise up to the challenge are easily left behind.

• Insurance – As uncertainty looms in the global business environment and risks prevail, the insurance industry has experienced a surge in demand for insurance services. The surge in demand stresses the need for companies to be able to systematically gather prospective clients and introduce them to a plan that will guarantee customer satisfaction and customer retention.

This is something that a traditional pen-and-paper cannot accommodate anymore. Or even with the use of online spreadsheets. Hence, a CRM is needed for companies to be able to provide values such as personalization and constant communication. When you are able to deliver the right message at the right time, you may be able to trigger your customers’ purchase behavior and encourage repeat purchases in the future, which helps in sales and business growth.

Is it worth it?

The pricing plan of CRMs is usually subscription-based that can be paid monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Most of the CRMs that adopt this pricing plan are cloud-based, meaning, they can be used by any computer, any device, and anywhere as long as the device is connected to the internet. This is different from on-premise CRM solutions. The latter needs infrastructure to be built to store the database of the CRM.

Cloud-based CRMs are also scalable. Updates and maintenance can be done by the software provider itself while on-premise CRM solutions usually require in-house IT teams (or the company responsible for the software) to make the changes, along with its infrastructure when necessary.

But the greatest reason why CRMs are often worth it is its return on investment. CRMs help businesses focus on the customer, instead of the manual, boring processes which can be automated using the software. Focusing on the customer allows businesses to generate a 20 to 30% uplift in customer satisfaction, 10 to 20% uplift in employee satisfaction, and economic gains ranging from 20 to 50 percent of the cost base addressed in the various journeys.

A CRM software can also boost the effectiveness of a business’s sales techniques and speed up its operations, resulting in an improved sale of products and services.  Thus, the adoption of this technology increases sales and profit at the end of the day. This has been supported by studies that found out that companies that invest in customer experience and earn US$1 billion annually can expect to earn an additional US$700 million within three years.

The case may be different for SMEs, but with the use of best practices and one-to-one consultation with your CRM provider, a case can be made for why its use is imperative for your business growth.

Introducing Saphyte

That’s why Saphyte currently waives all the set-up fees, implementation fees, and customer support fees for its users. It also gives focused, one-to-one consultation with its new clients, helping them and introducing them to the best practices to maximize the use of the technology.

Its unique pricing plan also allows users to be billed only according to usage, making it less expensive for SMEs and startups. This also makes it easier for startups and SMEs to adopt the technology.

Saphyte is dedicated to augmenting tasks related to sales, marketing, and administration. This cloud-based CRM has features and tools built to enhance coordination among teams, allowing teams to smoothly collaborate and perform tasks with the required synergy. It is also designed to upgrade the capacities of the sales and marketing teams. 

Its tools allow you to visualize the sales pipeline, systematically manage deals you have with clients, and capture relevant information related to your client. 

Get Saphyte

Improve your sales process now and get real-time updates about your deals and other business transactions. Whether you are a big company or a small business, Saphyte’s team will be willing to help you. Explore more of Saphyte’s features and discover how this software can revolutionize your business. Contact our experts at Saphyte now.