We all want to harness Benefits of CRM for our businesses.

And why not?

There are so many of them.

So many that we grabbed 101 benefits of CRM for you today.

And some of these are highly recommended to be considered for your business.

You probably already know that CRM is the world’s most in demand enterprise software after ERP.

Fact: CRM’s Market will be $36B by 2017

(Source: http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/predicts/)

…and that CRM is a proven game changer for enterprises.

But the big question is how is it a Game Changer?

What are the benefits of a CRM Implementation?

And how can you take its advantage in your business?

So here we present the list of all the benefits CRM softwares offer you

1. CRM Softwares helps you organise your Customer’s Data.

This is the basic, the main functionality any CRM offers you;

one can say this is the sole reason as to why CRM was required in the first place.

So all your customer’s contact information, and other related information can be stored in one place in an organised way.

2. CRM softwares can increase your Sales.

Yes a CRM just not organises your Customer’s Data, it increase your sales as well.

but how?

Here’s how, the list of 17 unique ways a CRM Software can increase your sales.

Bonus: Download the free checklist of all these ways for you to make sure you increase sales with CRM Softwares.

3. They can increase your overall Productivity.

This is a huge topic in itself,

Some of the ways are in the list in this post itself

For eg:

 

As a CRM software connects all your team to a common platform with real time data updates decreasing  your overall operational time.

We will definitely cover this in our coming posts.

Fact: 53% of top-performing companies are investing in CRM to drive sales productivity.(Source: Brainshark’s Anne Lambert and Forbes Insights

4. Improves your Marketing Strategy.

Marketing is an investment not just a practise,

You spend to earn.

So unless the ROI is good, your efforts pretty much go into waste.

A CRM helps you measure the ROI of your marketing efforts.

which makes you eliminate the obsolete practises and tends you to focus more energy on strategies that work for you.

Fact: According to a recent survey by a CRM pays back $8.71 for every Dollar spent.

5. You get real time Status updates of your Sales Operations.

7. They reduce your Client “close-time” but increase your Client “close-rate”.

8. They also reduce the cost of your Client Handling.

With CRM softwares you can track the Client history, and save their likes and dislikes.

You can thus classify your customers on the basis of different criterias.

You can track your best sales persons and figure out what is working for them.

You then can make strategies that working best for each classification thus made.

Can now train all your sales team members (even those who tend to score less), this can bring up your sales.

And with a workable strategy in hand you can now utilize even cheaper resource to make sales.

9. A CRM software can help you increase your customer’s satisfaction and thus customer retention.

This is true as well,

The more organised your services are, the better your performance will be

you therefore get an edge over your competition and

your clients tend to remain more satisfied with you and want to work more with you.

10. CRM systems can reduce your Customer Acquisition Cost.

11. They make your Prospect Handling process more organised.

With a kanban view in CRMs like the one below, organising your prospects on the basis of their winning % becomes easier.

Managers can monitor and segregate prospects and the efforts required to convert them into sales with breaze.

12. Makes Internal file sharing easy.

Bonus: Download the free checklist containing a step by step CRM/ERP Implementation Process.

13. If you generate sales with Calling a CRM can help you better organize your Sales Call.

Not only can you call from within the CRM if you have a VOIP integrated. (This feature may not be available with all CRMs)

Can also record the important feedbacks

Or the next Action (with reminders) to be taken

Or schedule the Next meeting (in case required).

14. Can assist in elimination of your Clients on the basis of Client History.

This one may sound inappropriate but remember the Pareto’s 80-20 Rule.

20% of the customers create 80% of the revenue

A CRM can help you identify what all are your most profitable customers and also which ones only gives you headaches.

Eliminate some required on the basis of optimum usage of your resources.

15. CRM helps you improve your offerings with customer feedback recording features.

16. Reduces your Customer Churn rates.

17. Eliminates Repeat Calls to same clients.

We all get calls from one or the other company for products and services, we all do calling on some level to generate sales.

Imagine how would your organisation appear to the Client who just recently registered with your services and is still getting sales pitch calls from your office. (Of Course from different sales persons)

With real time information sharing among sales team, a CRM helps you eliminate this.

 18. Improves your Task Management.

19. CRM systems can reduce your customer acquisition cost.

20. Fine tunes your Sales Funnel.

The biggest challenges that companies face in their Sales Funnel Management are

• Maintaining a balance between Lead Generation and Lead Management.
• Lack of a Sales Process.
• Lack of Metrics/Analytics to measure what is working and what is not.

A CRM makes you release these pain points immediately.

21. Predictive Reporting helps making Decisions faster.

One of the best features a CRM brings into your business is real time business reports.

Reports with various visual aids helps you make quick and accurate business decisions.

22. Integrates with your Email.

Bring in all your business emails in your CRM and work in a single platform.

Fact:  Marketing Charts found that 6 out of 10 SMB’s are using their CRM software for email marketing.

23. Integrates with your SMS reach.

Send SMSs on automation or manually to clients as and when you require.

24. Automatically follows up your clients for payments.

25. Makes segregation of Clients on the basis of Profits easy.

 

In our previous post we introduced the benefits of segregation of your clients.

Segregate on the basis of Purchase Patterns,

Area they belong,

Profitability,

Products they Purchase (so even in off seasons, you know whom to approach), months they are active.

The only limitation is our out of the box approaches.

 

26. Reduces Data Duplication in your business.

27. Makes Segregation of Zones on the basis of Profits easy.

Not only Customers, you can also segregate Zones where all you provide your services for targeted marketing efforts.

Or

Even for targeted Product/Service Launches.

28. Provides Internal Team Chat Options.

29. Helps you set Business Reminders.

Even today we got an enquiry for CRM Software Implementation where the business requires client visits in 3-4 months for renewal of their services.

Businesses with Annual Maintenance reminders for Clients or Subscription based offline businesses.

All can benefit with reminders in the CRMs.

30. Provides Predictive analysis to judge customer preferences and buying patterns.

This can help you control your inventory investments this way (Like in off seasons.)

31. Reduces manual labour to bring in more accuracy and better results you.

32. With a CRM you can make a proven Sales Process for your business.

Yes, we all know, but how?

Here is how

• With regular usage, a CRM can start showing analytic analysis.
• Analyse which sales persons are good and which one are week.
• Figure out the tactics the best of sales persons use.
• Prepare a proven step by step process for your business based on all practises that turns prospects into sales.
• Start using it.
• Rinse and repeat.

33. Assists you in Contract Renewals.

34. Helps you eliminate your operational pain points.

• Like data losses
• Data Security leaks
• Access rights Issues.
• Commission distributions among sales staff.
• And many more…

35. Reduces Sales Staff’s training time with effectiveness.

 

36. Helps you Up-Sell or Cross-Sell. (on websites or otherwise.)

37. Helps you increase your margin of Profits.

With real time business reports in your hand you can actually realise what is working for you and what is not.

And can measure ROI on your marketing efforts.

to eliminate some of your marketing practises.

This reduces your customer acquisition cost in the long run and hence increases your profit margin.

Also

With a CRM implementation your business becomes more organised in client handling and your services improves which gives you an authority to raise your margins.

Fact: A 2011 study by American Express found that customers are willing to spend up 12% more with a company that delivers an exceptional service.

38. A CRM helps your managers assign clients to the sales staffs in a more organised way.

39. Produces Quotations and Invoices for customers in one click.

40. Improves your Team Work.

With real time information sharing and dashboard status of complete sales funnel on a common platform, the efforts of all the team members are optimised naturally.

41. Makes Electronic Document Signing handy.

42. Setting Sales targets for your Sales team becomes easy.

And can track your sales person’s performances as well.

such as:

• number of calls made,
• number of meetings scheduled;
• number of leads in the pipeline,
• number of deals fixed,
• number of cross sales made,
• number of new clients made,
• number of repeat clients,

43. Can use data from CRM to award outstanding sales performances.

44. Can be used for Mass Mailing.

45. Provides Email Marketing Analytics. (Not available in all CRMs).

Many CRMs like Odoo’s CRM have an integrated Email Marketing functionality which can work similar to mailchimp or Aweber and can provide E-mail Marketing Statistics like How many receivers opened the mail ?, How many of them called to action?

Use this feature to refine you Email Marketing efforts.

46. A CRM software can provide you Sales forecasts.

Some CRM Software claims that their Big data Analysis provides accurate Sales Forecast.

47. Eases up Territory Management for your business.

48. A CRM Brings your Sales and Marketing Closer.

49. Provides Security for your Critical Data.

Many times there are data in your business that you do not want to share with all the staff,

a CRM with a little Access Management,

provides you complete flexibility to provide access to staff on the basis of their job profiles.

50. With a great CRM supporting you, your Business Scalability becomes much easier.

51. Brings in Email Automation features.

All now depends on how effectively you can use this feature CRM softwares offers you.

• Can get Pre drafted Quotations emailed to Clients automatically. (for eg: on Online Purchases.)
• Can get payment follow up reminders for Clients.
• Can have automatic emails to staff regarding their visa renewals.
• Can have Customers automatically Emailed for their Birthdays or other Occasions.

52. Helps you define an Effective workflow from sales to delivery.

• Have a customised CRM Solution follow your workflow.
• This way you can always have all the steps (necessarily) followed for the processes.
• And can track which client is at which Stage.
• This helps assign work easily for staff managers.

53. CRM softwares can also be used for high quality Lead generation purposes.

With a CRM Software you are not just managing your leads but generating them as well.

Fact: 80% of marketing automation users saw their number of leads increase, and 77% saw the number of conversions increase. (Source: VB Insight)

54. You can connect CRM to Accounting Software to get your accounting done automatically.

Can get a range of features doing this read this article.

55. Some CRMs offers integration with all kinds of functionalities from within the CRM itself.

Again for more details please read this article.

Odoo is one such great example; in layman’s terms you can connect our CRM to Odoo’s Purchase Management, Inventory Management, Accounting, Website Builder ect.

Which provides you an all in one Business Management Solution. (also known as an ERP Software.)

Bonus: Download the free checklist containing a step by step CRM/ERP Implementation Process.

56. Calculation of Sales Commissions becomes automatic as well.

57. Enables Effective Time Management in your operations.

With real time data sharing, alerts on actions, notifications and reminders working all together, a CRM prepares you to manage your time more effectively.

58. Eliminates inefficient practises from your business.

Bonus: Download the free checklist containing a step by step CRM/ERP Implementation Process.

59. Integrating Gamification with CRM can work wonders as well.

Integrating gamification features tends to improve involvement of the sales staff into the crm activities.

Rewarding with incentives further boosts their productivity.

60. Automated Product Offers to customers via Mails or SMSs.

This feature  is not present in any CRM, but in customised CRM this functionality can be explored to generate some automatic sales.

61. With cloud CRMs available on Mobiles as well, your business data remains in your pocket to be use anywhere, anytime.

Fact: The study by Innoppl Technologies claims that that 65% of sales reps who have used Mobile CRM achieved their sales quotas, and a staggering 78% of those who didn’t use CRM did not achieve their targets.

62. Shortens your Sales Cycle.

63. Improves your customer grievance redressal rates.

64. Can be connected to Social Media profiles to become a Social CRM.

Benefits of this point are so many that a separate blog post can be provided.

For instance:

The most common pitfall of technological advancements that companies face is that is to connect to their customers on social media and address to their grievances.

The very benefit of connecting your CRM to social media is to streamlines the process of how you connect with your customers online.

It also allows you get to understand the behaviour of your end customer.

Another great reason is that it becomes a great lead generation tool for you.

One more is to establish a better, more profound brand image.

Fact: A Nucleus Research Study found “an average productivity gain of 14.6% from mobile capabilities and 11.8% from social.” (Source:Insightly)

65. Improves your Staff’s Satisfaction and reduces their stress.

Fact: 47% of polled CRM users said customer satisfaction was significantly impacted by their CRM in 2015 (Source: Capterra’s CRM Infographic)

66. Reduces your Client Attrition rate.

As you become more professional service provider your client attrition rate gradually decreases.

67. Helps Administration track Customer Interactions from every department all at one place.

With features like

• Automatic Emails. (as discussed above)
• Pre designed sales procedure.
• Automated SMSes.

True automation can be achieved, based on how well you can use them.

68. With a CRM, remote teams can work together with breaze.

69. Makes Appointments becomes easy and organised.

70. Assists you in achieving Sales Automation for your business.

71. Reduces Sales training Costs.

72. Integrate it with a VOIP software and run your own Call Center.

73. Improves your Support Services performances.

74. Makes discovering new Customers easier.

Analyze your existing customers.

Notice if there is a repentance in kind of customers you are addressing.

This can be anything based on your business, for eg, a product usually appeals to a particular type of clients only or a mobile subscription plan might be more popular with youth than with other section.

So now we know who to market, this reduces effort and helps you make a more targeted marketing campaign

75. Your Sales Staff can work remotely with a robust CRM supporting you.

In businesses where the sales staffs need to travel for making sales, cloud CRMs can be made available on their mobile devices anywhere.

This lets them have real time inventory Status,

Real status update of Payment Statuses of clients.

Helps make accurate decisions.

76. A CRM software is also your potential Corporate Archive.

Holds in all the client’s interactions with you and their sale-payment records for references later.

77. Can act as your automatic Lead Management tool.

• Connect your Website to your CRM.
• Populate your Website with various lead capturing forms at various places on your website.
• As the site visitor fills the form you can get an automatic entry in your CRM as a new lead to process upon.

78. Provides Real Time Overview of your Next Activities.

79. Increases % of Lead Conversions.

80. Reduce Sales Administrative overheads.

81. Increase Customer Retention.

Fact: The widely-cited study by The Rockefeller Corporation shows exactly why customers leave – 82% of customers will leave because they think you do not care about them.

82. Improves Customer Lifetime Value.

83. Reduces Time spent on Sales Administrative tasks.

84. Provides greater ability to work with lesser staff.

Bonus: Download the free checklist containing a step by step CRM/ERP Implementation Process.

85. Helps you keep your Inventory intact.

You sales team can see requirements in sales funnel and can be prepared for it inventory wise.

86. Provides Performance indicators.

These can help know where the business is going in lightning fast speed.

87. CRM gives you control over your expenses.

With reduction in various leak holes in data security, improved sales, better efficiencies and more accurate business reports gives you a the ability to control your expenses.

88. Provides you a single platform to manage all, your customers, your staff, your sales and your performances.

89. Reduces the Rework Costs.

90. Improves your After Sales Service.

One of the most critical aspects of any business is its After sales service

With all the data organised a good CRM automatically improves your after sales service.

91. Helps you gain Competitive Advantage.

It is 2016 but still much business does not make a proper use of technological advancements like a CRM in their business

or even if they do ,

they have a very obsolete CRM of primitive age.

Implementing a CRM can also give you advantage over your completion and can make you stand out of the heard.

Fact: One of the findings in a recent survey by DiscoverOrg, titled “CRM & Marketing Automation Systems Report,” says that as many as 23.8% of respondents to a recent survey are still not using a CRM system, but are tracking sales with Microsoft Excel.

92. CRM plays a significant factor to assist sales reps achieve their targets.

93. CRM not only helps your sales team but benefits your entire organization.

Fact: In 2012, Tech News World surveyed more than 500 organizations and found that the benefits of CRM technology can benefit almost any business and in several different areas. In fact, it’s difficult to think of any other business-related technology that is as versatile as CRM that has as many direct benefits.

94. Integrates with GPS to boost your outreach.

A GPS enabled CRM can lead the sales staff to client’s door steps in case your business requires client visits.

Can track locations of your sale as staff, all day long, if at all required.

95. Helps identify the bottlenecks in your sales funnels.

96. Provides Smart Dashboard Reports for quick view on daily activities.

97. As Social CRM, it improves your Brand Image.

98. Tracks down all the conversations on client interaction for you.

99. Integrates with your Ecommerce to give deeper Analytics.

Magento, Woo-Commerce or shopify are great platforms no doubt, but they do not provide you with enough analytical analysis of your visitors or online conversions which an Integrated CRM can.

100. A Social CRM also lets you maintain deeper relationship with your customers.

It helps you create new marketing communications and develop smart relationship with your existing customers.

It helps you generate applicable content for your market that produces results from your online communities.

Fact: Despite the growth of Social CRM people still want more, and the most desired CRM features were social media monitoring capabilities (25%) and the ability to pull in prospect information from social media (24%).(Source: Capterra’s CRM Industry Report)

101. At last it gives you peace of mind in running your business.

Fact: Therefore 65% of businesses adopt a CRM within their first 5 years. (Source:Capterra’s CRM Infographic)

Bonus for you two more benefits of CRM softwares for your business.

102. A CRM Improve your Products.

Using a CRM you can easily churn out which products tend to get returned more often than others.

Work out on them, either Improve or Eliminate.

103. Gives you greater Access to your customer’s data.

 Fact: 74% of polled respondents to a CRM user survey indicated that their CRM software allowed them to have greater access to customer data.

Here’s the Next Step

I hope you enjoyed the post and can benefit from some of the points mentioned here.

Looking forward to some more useful benefits of CRM in the comments section.

Are you ready to tap in the benefits of your CRM software for your business as well?

If so, then I recommend grabbing the free checklist I made just for you to be able to implement CRM into your business.

The checklist holds you by the hand all steps involved in implementing a CRM/ERP into your business.

Bonus: Download the free checklist containing a step by step CRM/ERP Implementation Process.

PS: You can also reach us for better implementation solutions on how CRM Softwares can benefit your business. We can provide a detailed analysis on your requirements and provide a viable implementation tailored for your business.

References:

1. Freeman, P. and P.B. Seddon, BENEFITS FROM CRM-BASED WORK SYSTEMS, in Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), 2005 – csrc.lse.ac.uk. 2005.
2. Darshana Sedera and W. Wang, Towards a CRM and SCM Benefits Measurement Model, in International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) at AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). 2009.
3. Hsing-Ping Kuo, W.-Y. Wu, and Y.-L. Peng, A study of the relationship between customer relationship management contents and benefits in hospitals: An application of fuzzy set theory. African Journal of Business Management, 2012. 6(14).
4. Wang, W., D. Sedera, and F.T.C. Tan, Measuring CRM and SCM benefits: a preliminary measurement model, in Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems. 2009.
5. Swift, R.S., Accelerating Customer Relationships: Using Crm and Relationship Technologies. 2001.
6. Corie. The Top 5 Time-Saving Benefits of CRM. 2011; Available from: http://www.articlesbase.com/smallbusiness-articles/the-top-5-time-savingbenefits-of-crm-4068287.html.
7. http://blog.capterra.com/10-surprising-crm-stats-for-2016/
8. http://www.ijera.com/papers/Vol2_issue6/IC2615781586.pdf