Modern businesses are constantly in the crosshairs of a sniper who is about to pull the trigger: high competition, insufficient funding, lack of resources, poorly developed logistics, government and taxation pressures. In general, it’s easier to list the problems that small and medium-sized businesses don’t have than to list all the problems that owners of such companies face on a daily basis.
However, let’s not just talk about the negative. After all, we have a very, very positive topic to discuss: a panacea for the vast majority of all these problems!
In this article, we’re going to talk about the main problems that businesses of all sizes face on a daily basis and how a CRM system can help to eliminate them.
Problem 1: Insufficient number of potential customers (leads)
“Life would be a million times easier if there was someone to sell to!”
These are the exclamations you can often hear from sales managers or business owners. After all, it doesn’t matter how experienced you are as a salesperson: you may have the skills to sell sand in the Sahara, but it’s all meaningless if you have no one to sell to.
Lead generation is one of the most common problems among businesses of all sizes. Without a big name and a large number of satisfied customers who recommend your products and services to their friends, your lead generation process is likely to be even slower.
Not only do you need to collect a database of contacts, but you also need to make sure that these contacts are high-quality leads that will eventually turn into paying customers.
How does a CRM system solve this problem?
There are several ways to expand your lead generation capabilities with CRM. Let’s take a look at the most effective ones.
Generate leads via email. Cold emails are still one of the most effective ways to attract customers.
Using CRM functionality and email integration, you can easily set up personalized mass emails. In this article, you will find tips on how to write effective cold emails.
Write a high-quality cold email, create a segment of the relevant audience in your CRM, and send it out.
CRM has email tracking functionality (opens, clicks, replies, unsubscribes, etc.) so you always have access to the statistics of your email campaigns and can adjust the next ones.
Lead generation through feedback forms. Lead generation through forms is the most effective way to collect new contacts for your database from your website. You can automatically create lead cards in CRM and transfer data from the form directly to the card.
Generate leads through calls. Cold calling is probably the most effective sales channel in the Ukrainian markets. Therefore, if you still don’t call potential customers, we suggest you add calls to your sales arsenal today. Moreover, both cold calls and incoming calls work well, because it is much better for leads to discuss everything by voice in a few minutes than to have a long correspondence.
By combining a CRM system with telephony, you can significantly increase call conversion and the quality of customer service in general. After all, when you receive an incoming call, you can immediately see the customer’s name and communication history, which will allow you to quickly resolve their request without hundreds of clarifying questions. You already know everything about the customer, your CRM stores all the details.
Problem 2: inaccurate, incomplete, decentralized data
We have already realized that there are many sources from which you can receive requests. On the one hand, this is great news, because you get more sales opportunities from the start. But on the other hand… A large number of lead sources creates a serious threat of data corruption.
In the early stages of a company’s existence, when you have one employee and up to a dozen clients, this doesn’t seem like a big deal. But as your business grows, you quickly realize that customers can use different communication channels, and these requests can be handled by different managers from your team. This increases the risk of filling your database with duplicates or, worse, missing some important details about deals or customers. This approach to database organization is extremely inefficient.
How does a CRM system solve this problem?
A CRM system is designed to organize and structure your data. It collects data from many sources in one place and records every interaction you have with customers – regardless of the channel – in one system. It doesn’t matter if you received an email from a customer or if they wrote you back in a chat, this interaction will still be added to the customer’s card in CRM.
Moreover, in CRM, you can create mandatory fields, without which the manager simply won’t be able to create a customer card. Thus, all important data will always be added to the system.
Problem 3: chaotic workflows
When you’re working on your own, you have a certain set of steps you follow when working with prospects and customers. However, when you have a team, it becomes difficult to ensure consistency and standardization of workflows.
Without standardizing processes, you risk creating confusion within your team and a mess in your data. If each individual team member doesn’t understand what to do and how to do it, what the sequence of specific tasks is, and how to add data to the system, the likelihood of missing details and decreased productivity will increase dramatically.
How does a CRM system solve this problem?
With a CRM system, you can standardize workflows by automating them. This way, your managers won’t need to remember which email to send to a customer after registration, they’ll never forget to send a second email if they don’t receive a response to the first, and they won’t forget to prepare a contract when the customer moves to a certain stage of the funnel.
CRM users can automate such processes:
Automatically distribute incoming requests between managers to process them as quickly as possible
Set up email chains to nurture leads
Set up the logic for automatically moving leads through the sales funnel
Send automatic notifications when something worthy of managers’ attention happens
Send the necessary information to messengers such as Telegram when you need a quick response from a manager
Automatically create tasks for managers
When employees have a certain sequence of actions and know what to do in each situation, their work will be much more efficient. As a result, the company can enjoy a shorter sales cycle and more closed deals – exactly what you need to grow your small business!
Problem 4: Managers contact the same potential customers
The problem of contacting the same prospects more than once is quite common, especially among large sales teams. There are three serious consequences of not addressing this issue.
First, it’s counterproductive. Every time your salespeople reach out to someone they’re already in discussions with, they’re wasting their time and thus missing out on opportunities to connect with new leads.
Second, it damages your reputation. Personalization of communication is the basis of successful sales. If you reach out to the same person twice, they may feel that they don’t matter and are less likely to work with you in the future. You hardly want to be an inattentive salesperson in the eyes of a potential client.
Third, it can cause discord in your team. This rarely happens, but it’s a factor to consider. If one of your sales representatives is constantly “stealing” leads from a colleague, the latter may be unhappy.
How does a CRM system solve this problem?
CRM’s duplicate prevention feature automatically cleans up your customer base by deleting, merging, or warning you of potential duplicates every time you add new contacts to the system.
In addition, each member of the sales team can apply a filter and view the leads assigned to them and work with this database.
On top of that, managers can apply other filters and save them to a view so that they have quick access to the information they view most often.
Leads that have not been contacted for X days.
Leads that have not been active for X days.
Deals that are due to close this month/this week.
All deals in a specific country/city/region.
To learn more about problems you can solve with the help of CRM system, check our next article!