CRM Migration Strategy: Turn Data Into Sales Opportunities

Published on November 29, 2020
4 min read
Sales
Icon Saphyte Team
4 min read
Updated:

The customer data that your CRM has collected can be turned into sales opportunities— and your CRM can do this with a migration strategy.

What is a CRM Migration Strategy?

A CRM migration strategy is a plan of action in which data that you have collected in various sources (such as your marketing channels: websites, social media pages, etc) will be transferred into your CRM for a centralized database. The benefit of centralizing it is making sure that all your leads and customers are taken care of, whatever touchpoint they may come from.

Centralization also lets you perform other functions that your CRM enables you to do— such as email marketing, lead scoring, or even as simple as pulling up customer data for a personalized service — to all of your prospective and existing customers.

You can also perform the converse: exporting all the data that your system has collected for whatever purpose: transferring them into another system, creating a report for other departments in your company, among other things.

How Can You Perform a Migration Strategy?

There are several things that you must take into account when performing a CRM migration strategy. Among these are:

1. Identify the needed data

When migrating contact information from other sources into the CRM system, you need to identify what data is needed for your business to grow. Some of the data needed are: names, mobile phone numbers, email addresses, among others.

2. Consult with your provider

To avoid making irreparable mistakes, consult with your CRM provider when migrating data. Transferring data from one location into the software should not be difficult to do, but it is better to be safe than sorry. Your provider should be able to help you with this.

Moreover, when consulting with the provider, you may be able to get information about the best practices in using their software. You can also ask from them information to help you maximize your CRM and make it adapt to your unique business needs.

3. Create a Backup for Data

Just to be sure, creating a data backup allows you to transfer your files and data confidently, without fear of losing important data. Cloud storage is also advised here.

4. Map Your Data

Data mapping is the process of making sure your data is organized into their proper places, from different sources of data into the central database. Always check if your CRM is getting the right data.

5. Run Tests

Before making a finalized move of migrating data, run a few tests first to ensure that the migration will go smoothly and as planned. Running a few tests helps you avoid glitches that may affect the integrity of your data or even ruin your central database. Duplicates and missing data should be identified early on. It is also useful to have a CRM, like Saphyte, that can detect duplicate data.

6. Train Your Employees To Use the Platform

Your employees should be able to adapt to using the new CRM platform to make sure that new data entered into the database in the future are accurate and “clean.” The CRM provider should be able to provide “local support” which means the assistance should be one-to-one.

If possible, this support should be free and included as a perk of being a new client. If you are looking for a CRM provider that provides local support for free, get Saphyte.

Benefits of Migrating Data into the CRM

Here are some of the benefits of migrating data into the CRM:

1. Seamless collaboration

When your CRM provides centralized access to the other members of your team, it helps them be always in the loop and get updated with new data and analytics that may empower them to make decisions that could contribute to the company. 

Centralized access also helps them collaborate seamlessly with the other members of the team or department as they are given the same set of data to work with.

Functions such as notes, reminders, calendars may even provide information to sales reps about customers and update them where in the buyer’s journey these customers are, so that their interaction is direct, straightforward and helpful. 

Their interactions will no longer be redundant— a factor in customer service which affects customer satisfaction.

2. Less Manual Work

CRMs are designed to provide automation— tasks that the CRM software can do without human intervention, which eliminates manual work. Here, users can, for example, send emails automatically through the CRM and on schedules or conditions set by the CRM user. 

For example, a “welcome” email may be sent by the system when a new client is registered in the CRM. Or promotional messages may be sent to “cold leads” every Friday of the week. Or email attaching vouchers or discounts may be sent to customers after their first purchases.

3. Better performance

CRMs are designed to keep businesses updated with data and information so the sales team can adjust their performance accordingly. These software often have dashboards that are designed to provide data and analytics that they are particularly interested in. 

For example, sales teams that are interested with the sales pipeline can display the pipeline on the dashboard. If they are concerned with sales performance, they can display the. current deals, successfully-closed deals, data about the numbers of leads and customers on the dashboard. 

According to research, access to data can improve sales performance and shorten sales cycles by 8-14%.

It is important that your CRM allows customization of the dashboard, so that your team can adjust the displayed data according to what they need and what they prefer.

4. Improved customer retention

CRMs have been proven to boost businesses’ customer retention. The word comes from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) itself, which is an approach focusing on building meaningful relationships with prospective customers and existing ones too. 

CRM tools help foster the relationships using features that improve the conversion of leads who have zero knowledge of your business into loyal, paying customers.

Customer retention has been studied to bring a lot of sales into a business. According to studies, around 80% of the sales come from only 20% of customers — which is why customer retention is an important aspect of business that companies should focus on. In fact, customer retention is much cheaper to do than customer acquisition.

According to KPMG, around 52% of businesses believe that customer retention drives retail revenue the most.

Many businesses have also become “customer retention-conscious,” making sure that the leads that they have generated are converted into paying customers. Efforts are also made to ensure that their customers are “retained” over time. 

Open communication and improved customer experience are encouraged and purchase behavior are triggered using promotional messages that are directly targeted to the interests, needs, and preferences of the customer.

Conduct CRM Data Migration with Saphyte Now

Saphyte is a CRM solution that helps your teams manage their day-to-day sales process. It is a contact management tool that allows you to build your relationships meaningfully with potential customers and sustain your relationships with the existing ones.

Saphyte is a cloud-based CRM that lets your team make phone calls, send emails, and manage the marketing campaign of your business easily. It is proven to improve your customer interaction, which helps you offer only relevant products and services to target customers and gain more sales in the future.

Whether you’re a small business or not, Saphyte will really help you grow. Get world-class, one-on-one local support from the Saphyte team now. Book a FREE demo below.

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