Companies (small or big) that succeed with their CRM Strategy, do two things really very well.
First, they recognize the right CRM software implemented exactly for their needs.
Second, they explore more possibilities to scale their business with it.
When it comes to ways to increase sales using CRM, implementation of the right CRM Software is the first of the actionable steps you need to take.
CRM applications increase revenue of up to 41% per sales person.
Source: Benchmark Studies, according to Search CRM
With a well managed Client Data, Automated Followups, Forecast Accuracy and a well overview over sales stats with dynamic reporting features, CRM Softwares have become an invaluable management tool that not only simplifies your business but also boosts your sales and productivity.
From this article we are going to show you 17 Ways to Increase sales using CRM with step by step instructions.
But that’s not all, in a way we will also show you what features you should be looking for while selecting a CRM Software for your organization in order to increase sales using CRM Softwares.
So while reading the article if you find your CRM Software not being able to do all this for you, it’s the time for you to switch and go for a better equipped CRM Software.
Bonus: Download the free checklist of all these ways for you to make sure you increase sales with CRM Softwares.
First Let’s enjoy this beautiful Infographic covering all the 17 ways to Increase your sales using a CRM.
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1. Use your CRM to know your Customers and pitch them better.
According to Marketing Metrics it’s far easier to (about 50% easier) sell to existing customers than to brand new prospects.
So if it is easier to sell to your existing customers
Why not target them first
Here’s How:
Analyse the recorded data.from your CRM Software
Come up with your client’s likes and dislikes, their buying powers and their spending patterns.
Predict their next need for the same/similar product (For recurrent Products).
See if there is something you can can offer that they might also require but are not taking your services for.
Now as you identify their needs, pitch them with your offers at a planned right time.
PS: Big brands do it all the time. Now it’s your turn.
Reward your most loyal Customers.
A 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%!
Source: Bain and Company
So Let’s say you have a possibility to provide some incentives to give away to your customers.
Giving incentives will be most effective only when it is done for your most loyal customers.
Gather data from the CRM Software.
Make a List of all the most loyal and profitable customers you have.
Mail them and let your customers know about the rewards to make them feel special and will further strengthen there relationships with you.
This will not only keep them patronize to your business longer, but their referrals can bring in more business too.
Referral business closes and concerts more than 70% of time, according to Jonathan Farrington.Canada Goose Thompson Jacket
3. Prioritize your Leads for better results.
The main reason a CRM Software was implemented in the first place was to gather and arrange data to work for better results
Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads
Source: The Annuitas Group
So why not do it as old school
Prioritize your existing leads in your CRM Software.
Segregate all the important leads you have.
Use the CRM software to allocate resource as per winning chances on priority basis
Set Meeting Reminders plan follow ups with them
Set immediate Next Activities for your team to take care of.
And achieve optimum Sales Closure.
4. Handle your customers better- Be available whenever they need you.
Weather you notice this or not but your customers are judging you with how you are handling their complaints and issues.
So here’s what you need to do
First of all have your Website linked to your CRM software, this way you can get some data from your site as well.
Then give your website visitors Chat option while they are visiting your site.
Address to their complaints if any, assign tasks to relevant departments using the CRM.
While sometimes it will be some of their complaints/issue they will need you to resolve most of the times it will be an inquiry for a new sale.
Capture the lead there itself and hand over to the sales team.
Bonus: You can also improve on your service using CRM’s real time information sharing while attending complaints on calls.
Customer grievance handling generates you a good name in the market, this will add a long term stability to your business.
5. Build a strategy that works for your industry.
This one is most useful one
Look back for the history of your successful leads.
Gather relevant data from previously converted leads.
Now List out whatever worked for you earlier, chances are that it will still work for you.
Note down there can be a specific few sales persons that are converting way better than some others.
Note down what special are these sales persons doing.
Build a strategy that is working for your business. Train more salesperson to adopt the same strategy that is working in your industry.
55% of people making their lives in sales lack sufficient empathy or ego drive to ever succeed.
Source: Caliper Corp
Repeat and Rinse.
6. Segment your customer base.
Not all customers are alike, even if they are buying the same Product/Service.
So for different type of customers, you might need different approach
So here is one of the things you can do
Collect data from your CRM and Segment your customers based on their budgets, tastes or preferences.
The idea is to target them with your offers specific to their preferences.
So get to know what works for them and do exactly that.
Be dynamic and personalised in your approach.
7. Renew your Dead Opportunities.
There are a large % of leads that we are not able to crack, so these leads are either qualified with some other suppliers/service providers or there is a chance that they must have sore unripened due to some reasons.
Collect data from your Opportunities.
Identify Prospects that are Dead.
Re-approach them in a casual way.
Find out if their lead was furbished with some other vendor.
Find out if they are satisfied with this new vendor’s services or not.
If not offer them your service again.
There is a 50% Chance that you will crack the lead this time.
Or this time the lead will pop out the reason for not going with your services the last time.
Either way a win win situation for you.
Act accordingly, even if you don’t land the deal, you can improve on the genuine feedback you get from these clients.
8. Be in Constant Touch
Go beyond the Official Approach to reach your clients. Going casual works better sometimes.
Use the CRM Automation Facilities and set Client’s Birthday Reminders or important dates for Social Messages.
CRM Softwares can set automatic Customised Messages to Clients.
Tip: Give a Personal Touch in the Messages you sent.
You can even give dynamic data in the automated mails for these to look personalised.
This will help you build relationship with your customers beyond the business and will set your priority higher in their list of vendors. (if you are already not on the Top.)
You might land more referrals as well.
9. Closing More Deals with the help of your CRM.
Use your CRM Software to identify your potential leads in your pipeline
Create Winning Sales Pitch Templates (Yes have more than One.)
Focus on reducing the Conversion Time.
Use the Power of Calendar Integration to Set Meetings
Use the Power of Wise Resource Allocation to optimise the free resources.
Use the Reminders and Notification Messages to Staff.
Set Targets for Resources
Track deadlines for Resources.
Reduce the BottleNecks and improve the Conversion Rates.
10. Connect CRM to your Site to extract Fresh Leads (Basic Approach)
With advancements in technology, now you can have your existing website (wordpress, magento or shopify) Synchronize your Website with your CRM.
Or there are CRM Softwares (Like Odoo) with which you can have a website seamlessly integrated to your CRM.
Generate Lead Capturing Forms at your websites like we have on ours.
Provide these Lead Capturing Forms at potential places in your Site.
The Synchronization will fetch the data of the visitors interested to your CRM.
In some businesses your clients are just in the initial phase of making decision.
Pace up the decision making process with your optimised approach.
35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first (in consideration of lead management)
Source: Insidesales.com
Approach them via Call, or E-mails.
Assign them resources if they are genuine lead.
And steal the deal.
11. Connect CRM to your Site and Derive Fresh Leads (Advanced Approach)
In the Above step.
If the client is way too early in their buying process.
And is still making up their mind.
They will not straight away buy from you.
Since there is a lot of competition out there
If you do not remain in touch with them they might not come back to you either.
So here’s what you can do at this time.
Blog about your industry and spread the knowledge you have.
57% of marketers acquired customers from blogging
Source:State of Inbound Marketing, Hubspot, March 2012
As you get the Client’s Email or Social Contact.
Reach them on Social Media become friends.
See if you get to mail them Resourceful Information. (More than once, please do not Spam, as it will only ruin your impression than doing any good.)
For eg:.
Take the easy road here.
If they find your free resources useful and they genuinely learn something from you, chances are they will now remember you and will surely approach you back or visit your site again, when they are in the buying mode.
12. Optimise your Call Performance.
40% of established salespeople experienced serious unwillingness to make calls
Source:Behavioral Sciences Research Press.
If you are into a business where in you makes sales on Calls.
Take benefit of the Voip Software integration with your CRM Software.
There are a bunch of Open-source good Softwares like Asterisk or ViciDial.
Use the integration to attend calls from your CRM software itself.
Note down the Minutes of Meetings on the Spot with this.
Save time and Data Duplication.
And set next your Activities to for the Lead immediately in the CRM.
13. Generate Fresh Leads on Automation
Place Lead Capturing Forms discussed above on your site at most potential places.
Additionally track your site visitors.
Offer something Useful to the visitors for them whom you are targeting.
Gather their Email Ids in your CRM.
Set your Email Marketing Campaigns.
Send Automated Series of Mails Specially been generated for Leads like these using your CRM Software
14. Reduce Data Duplication and Increase Sales Efforts.
Data Duplication is a major problem in business, they reduces your efficiency, generates mistakes, wastes your productive time.
Use your CRM Software to eliminate data Duplication.
Here’s How
Make user logins for your sales team, give them appropriate Access rights in the Software.
Get your Sales team connected to each other.
So the Sales Managers can also have access to the Sales Representative’s Data.
Have Department Heads, the access to managers Data.
This way nobody have to send data to any department, So no Data Duplication at all.
Share the Leads or Opportunity Data with your team
This saves your Sales reps to to replicate the information to higher authorities.
Saves Lead Execution time and improves performances.
15. Use CRM Softwares to the See BIG Picture.
Make use of the Reports and Analysis section of your CRM Software
Allow Sales Analysis Access to your Sales Managers as well
Build a Strategy for Managers to track your Pipelines.
Divide your Sales opportunity Pipeline into number of definable Stages like below.
Set your managers to keep a check on each Stage.
Get a Hold on your complete Sales Process.
You can also analyse what customers are loyal, which one are profitable, which are the customers which of these are better prospects for your marketing efforts.
See where sales can be improved.
And most importantly implement those measures in your approach.
16. Strengthen your Sales Team.
The CRM System’s data analysis in previous steps can also highlight if you need more sales persons in your business or not.
It can also reveal if you need more staff in your other departments or not.
Continuous investments in training and reinforcement results in over 50% higher net sales per employee, nearly 40% higher gross profits per employee and a 20% higher ration in market-to-book value.
Source: Sales-alliance.com (A study of 540 companies conducted by the American Society for Training and Development)
Generate Sales targets for your Sales Team.
Use any CRM Software to set individual Targets for each Sales Rep as well.
Allow Sales Incentives and set Commissions on sales in your CRM Software.
Increase Sales using CRM: Commission Distribution
Track Sales records individually.
Provide your staff with their Monthly Performance Report
Analyse and recognise areas of Improvement.
17. Automate Processes.
Create a Sales Cycle for your business if you haven’t already.
Make Sure it is implemented in your CRM Software as well.(Again if you haven’t already)
Have as much automated workflows as possible.
Have automated follow ups (Make sure to hold on the frequency as you don’t want to irritate you customer.) for payments for eg.
Have automated reminders set for team members.
Automation on the best strategy that works in your industry will give you a definite edge over your competition, when you can appoint a CRM Software for this why leave it anyway.
Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months.
Source: Gartner Research.
Here’s the Next Step
Are you ready to use the one or more of the 17 unique ways to increase sales using CRM Software?
If so, then I recommend grabbing the free checklist I made just for this blog post.
The checklist holds you by the hand and show you how to use all 17 of the strategies listed here…
Also there is a bonus in there for you.
Now as you have seen some of the ways to increase sales using CRM Softwares for your business, ask yourself one question, Can you do all this with your existing CRM Software? If not you should definitely look for a new one.
We analysed the top 5 Cloud Based Open-source CRM Softwares to see what features from the above list do these softwares provide to you, Download the List to see which CRM Suits you.
Bonus: Download the free checklist of all these ways for you to make sure you increase sales with CRM Software.
PS: You can also reach us for better solutions on how to increase sales with CRM Softwares. We can provide a detailed analysis on your requirements and provide a viable implementation solution using the softwares on the list.
