How to Maximize Your Online Sales Team Management CRM

Published on November 28, 2020
4 min read
Sales
Icon Saphyte Team
4 min read
Updated:

Online sales team management CRMs are used to mobilize sales teams even with the ongoing lockdowns. This technology is used by companies to help their sales teams manage customer information, coordinate with other departments, and collaborate to convert leads into customers. 

CRMs provide centralized access to a secure database. They can also perform automation functions such as automated email marketing, migration of contact information from websites, landing pages, and social media pages into the CRM, and automated analytics that gets updated in real-time upon the entry of new data into the system.

The use of CRMs has become popular. In 2019, a report stated that overall CRM usage of CRMs has increased from 56% to 74%. Around 91% of businesses with over 11 employees also report to have used or continue to use CRM. Usage is comparatively low for businesses with 10 employees or fewer as only around 50% report to have used and/or continue to use CRMs. 

Reasons Why Businesses Have No CRMs Yet

There are many reasons why a lot of businesses have not used CRMs yet despite its popularity. Among these are resistance to change, lack of resources to facilitate the training required for its use, lack of resources to spend for the expenses involved in setting it up, and the perception that the technology will not contribute, in any way, to the improvement of the processes involved in the company. Some companies even claim that they have not even heard of the technology yet.

CRMs Help in Customer Acquisition, Retention

But CRMs have a lot of proven use cases in several industries. Not only were they helpful in customer acquisition, but they are most useful in customer retention. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are designed with customer retention in mind. They are systems developed to help users manage customer relationships, make them more meaningful, and foster them so they will last.

The importance of customer retention in businesses is often overlooked. Customer retention has been observed to contribute to majority of a business’s sales revenue. As how experts would put it, “80% of the sales revenue of a business can come from only 20% of its customers.” This is consistent with the Pareto Principle which states that 80% of the consequences can be attributed to 20% of the causes.

In the business world, this has been proven to work. This principle was also applied outside the business world: 80% of the crimes are caused by 20% of criminals, 80% of healthcare resources only go to 20% of healthcare patients, or 80% of the time and energy consumed by workers only go to 20% of the development of a project.

What’s more, 80% of your profit can be attributed to only 20% of your investments, such as your CRM system. So how do you ensure your CRM is working for you?

Here’s how to maximize your sales CRM:

How to Maximize your Sales CRM

There are several proven ways to maximize your sales CRM for your sales team who are working remotely:

1. Look for a CRM provider that will train you how to use the CRM efficiently

The reason why this goes first is because CRMs are virtually useless if your team does not know how to use and maximize it. So looking for a CRM provider that will assist you in the adoption of the technology cannot be stressed enough.

Some CRM providers, like Saphyte, will go out of their way to provide you local, one-to-one support so you can get the best features of the product and integrate them into your day-to-day work processes. This exceptional support is provided by the team for free, unlike others who will charge you for the extra support (which is understandable since manpower and other training-related costs can be expensive).

The system is also user-friendly, which means it’s less likely that there’s going to be employee resistance in adopting the technology, which is a modern work challenge. So again, look for a CRM provider that will provide local support, if necessary.

2. Track Your Lead Generation Results

After securing a CRM solution that will help you understand its features and maximize them, the next step to make the most out of your CRM is to monitor your results.

CRMs are often used in three major stages: lead generation, conversion, and after-sales support.

Lead generation is the first step in acquiring new customers. There are techniques to generate leads which include putting lead magnets on your websites, social media pages, and other marketing channels. These lead magnets are designed to encourage leads to provide their contact information such as their names, contact number, and email addresses in exchange for free PDFs, industry reports, research, and other things that leads may be interested in.

During conversion and after-sales support, CRMs can perform drip email marketing which can be used to improve the conversion rates as well as sales revenue of a business. Drip email marketing refers to the sending of emails based on schedules, stages of a customer, criteria of a customer, and sending them personalized content — information that a target customer can relate to.

CRMs are helpful in doing all these. Not only do they provide data and analytics which help users determine which campaign is working or not, but they also provide convenience since everything is centralized. With the customer database, users can perform all these functions without switching applications. CRMs can also track the results of these campaigns and allow you to create reports from the data and analytics the CRMs generated.

3. Let your team collaborate using your CRM

The last tip to maximize your sales CRM is to use its features for collaboration. This is even becoming more important as sales teams now work remotely due to the restrictions brought about by the pandemic. 

Sales teams face a lot of challenges because of the physical limitations of the crisis: they cannot travel around, conduct face-to-face sales pitches, and quickly negotiate with leads to close deals. But with an online, cloud-based CRM like Saphyte, your sales team can collaborate with each other whenever, wherever they are.

They can write notes, make reminders, sync the system with Google or iCloud Calendar, and access restricted parts of the system that only they are permitted to access. CRMs like Saphyte are designed to provide spaces for teams to be dynamic — collaborating with each other (with role-based access) while not compromising data security.

Because of the centralized customer database the CRM provides, sales teams can remove redundant processes (such as asking customers about their previous transactions or purchases) since the system can record all of these. 

And since different company departments have a single access to this database, all of these departments can move forward and entertain the needs and preferences of a customer without repeating a task or process that can annoy customers. This will result in an overall improved customer experience, which may encourage future purchases from the said customer.

Conclusion

Online sales CRMs can make your processes quicker and more efficient. With the centralized database, your teams can make phone calls, perform email marketing, and other sales processes without the risk of being redundant. 

CRM software can also serve as your contact management tool that will help your sales managers improve their customer interaction with potential customers, as well as existing ones. CRM tools provide management tools that allow your sales reps and other team members to manage marketing campaigns and perform their roles so that customer satisfaction can be achieved. 

Whether you’re a small business or not, CRMs can help you improve your business outputs.

Undergo digital transformation now with Saphyte. Contact our support team for a free and exceptional one-on-one support.

January 24, 2021