Granted that writing on this matter makes me seem bias to what I do as I am a co-founder of a CRM consulting services company, however I have come across too many prospects and customers in my entire CRM selling experience where the users and management view CRM as more of a management tool rather than a tool to increase sales. So here is why you should really reconsider that line of thinking.

Reason #1 : A Personal Assistant Which Constantly Reminds You Of Important Matters

Let’s face it, as much as we would like to have a fantastic memory which recalls every single thing about our existing and potential customers, we do miss out on a couple of them. The truth is the only ones that will grab your attention are the deals which will be closing soon, or provides you with enormous profits (or maybe even those which you are making a loss at).

Whether it’s going to be accomplished through workflow email notifications which have been setup, a list or a report on the dashboard that just pops up in your face every time you log into the system, you can’t deny the value of a system which constantly reminds you of what needs to be followed-up.

I have encountered so many instances that if not for me putting a mandate that the salesperson must be using a CRM, they would have forgotten all the leads which were assigned to them and those which they needed to follow-up after a long period of time. In fact most customers always comment that we follow-up promptly even if they ask us to call us 6 months later down the road.

Think of it more of a personal assistant which is reminding you to follow-up with the little chat to find out how the deal is going about (minus the good-looking personal assistant of course, if you are lucky to have one then it might be a downside J). Now wouldn’t this alone be worth it? Still not convinced? Fine, let’s proceed.

Reason #2 : Finding Out Effortlessly If Your Marketing Efforts Are More Like A Bottomless Cash Pit Or Hopefully A Cash Spitting Machine

You run some glitzy marketing campaign through print, online ads, radio or events, whichever works best for you and it all works out at the end of the day when you’ve generated sales but do you actually know how much of those sales was attributed to a specific marketing campaign? The problem becomes worse when your sales cycle is an inherently lengthy and time-consuming one. If you don’t know the following information for your marketing campaigns, it’s really time to beef up your sales processes:-

• Lead to Opportunity conversion ratio
• Opportunity closure percentage
• Cost per closed sale
• Opportunity Revenue and Closed Revenue for campaign

Chances are you would say ‘Yeah of course, are you kidding me? We track all of those for our marketing campaigns. I just have to compile the data and report on it’. And therein lies the problem! In most situation, someone is compiling and collating all this information into a report that is easily readable by the management, if a metric changes or you want the report to be viewed differently then it has to be reworked again. Why not just settle for a CRM system which already has all this reports pre-built and accessible with just a single click for all real-time up to date information? That’s how a CRM saves you time! Still not convinced to use a CRM, okay you’re really one tough nut to crack.

Reason #3 : Automatically Nurturing and Building Relationships With Your Potential Customers

Sounds quite impossible isn’t it? That’s true if you are thinking of the CRM systems of the past where they provide you at most an integrated email marketing tool for you to perform the occasional email campaigns whenever you need it but today’s CRM system and email marketing add-ons to CRM tool provides the ability to setup automatic workflows and processes which can treat each potential customer differently until the point where they are ready to be engaged in their buying process.

If you don’t get what I’m saying. Picture the following scenario which occurs quite often in any sales organization:-

1. Marketing generates a lead
2. The lead enquires about more information on a product
3. Salesperson gets in touch and provides required information to the potential customer
4. Potential customer says ‘sorry I’m just doing some research currently’
5. Salesperson qualifies the lead as probably a bad quality one because no sale can be generated

However, what you really don’t know is whether this prospect’s research might actually lead to a sale in the future or not and although everyone acknowledges that it is important to stay in touch with this potential customer, truth is no one would have the time to do it and neither will it be treated as a priority.

Here’s where a good CRM with good marketing functionality will help.  The strategy is called ‘drip marketing’, wherein there is a follow-up process which gets executed automatically by the system in a step-by-step process based on the salesperson’s input and the potential customer’s behavior. So at the end of the day the process turns out to be something like the following instead:-

1. Marketing generates a lead
2. The lead enquires about more information on a product
3. Salesperson gets in touch and provides required information to the potential customer
4. Potential customer says ‘sorry I’m just doing some research currently’
5. Salesperson qualifies the lead as probably a bad quality one because no sale can be generated
6. System picks up that the lead is to be nurtured over a period of time, and enrolls the lead into an email campaign targeted for the specific product which the lead was interested in
7. System sends newsletters, PDF, whitepapers, case studies, etc. whichever that is relevant automatically
8. Any actions resulting from the lead (i.e. a download of a PDF or registering for another event) will automatically trigger a notification to the assigned salesperson

Those additional steps are just an example, and think of how much revenue could be generated if the nurturing process is highly targeted. The emails can be made to appear coming from the sales person putting that extra personal touch, so when the potential customer is ready to buy, there is a relationship in place and not just an initial touch point contact.

I was actually planning to write up more reasons but felt perhaps as a start, these are usually the ones which most people are familiar with. If you find it insightful and would like more, just drop me a comment below.