CRM software has been around since the mid-1990s, but it has really russian email address list into its own in the last decade. CRM platforms are powerful systems that connect all your sales lead and customer data in one place. A CRM records and analyzes all your calls, emails, and meetings, helping you provide customer service, generate sales, and increase revenue.
You can speak to your customers and leads as if you were speaking to them in person on a large scale, delighting each of them with personalized messages. With a CRM, you can track, segment, and slice data to make your sales and marketing smarter, more powerful, and more efficient.
Customer relationship management is literally the description of what CRM does, but those three words don’t tell the whole story.
Without software to keep you aware of all the details, you may be left stumped and not knowing what to do.
Now that you know what CRM is, let's talk about what it actually does.
2 – What does a CRM System do?
Large-scale contact management is the core function of any customer information system, whether it’s a cloud-based CRM or a CRM on your own server. It stores and manages data on all types of contacts, from leads to business partners.
Many small businesses that do digital marketing and others still struggle with spreadsheets , inboxes, (or post-its) to keep track of these types of relationships. But at some point these systems will not be enough.
All these fields can be customized according to the needs of the moment.
With Excel , for example, you can track:
Name
Cell phone number
Website
Address
Client Type
Purchase Date
With a CRM you can monitor all of this plus:
Generate more leads using triggers
Company size
Multiple contacts within a company
The title of the contact
Note history
The part of the sales funnel that the lead is in
A complete report
and more!
Just have a customer’s name and address? That’s enough to start using a CRM, which is really just a contact management system. A good CRM lets you add activities you’ve planned or completed, like follow-ups with new prospects, and also track what types of responses work (or don’t). Voila: you have a valuable strategic task manager.
Add notes about who makes the decisions at each company you sell to, and you’ll have a head start on your data-driven sales strategy. Add industry data and company size, and you can segment customers by channel.
A good CRM shows you right away how hot or cold a lead is. The more data you give your CRM, the more it will give you in return.
3 – How does a CRM Platform work?
What is CRM if not its efficiency? As a company generates qualified leads, a CRM tracks the actions of a potential consumer across social media, email and website channels. The system absorbs as much information as possible about leads before guiding them, or helping you guide them, through a planned journey that hits all the critical points.
For example, suppose a homeowner is looking for someone to paint his house. He hires a company to paint his house, asking for the reasons for painting, the estimated budget, and the location of the job. All of this information goes into the company's CRM.
If a prospect provides a specific timeframe or reason for the painting job and also mentions that their home needs painting, the company will see this as a sales opportunity. This could trigger a series of events, from an automated email with copywriting triggers and a video showcasing the company’s work to a follow-up call scheduled for 48 hours later. If the CRM shows that the person visited the company’s website, it may be time to reach out to them.