So, you are a CMO with a strong zest for implementing CRM into your marketing initiatives. You recognize that automating social media and drilling deep into your client data for targeted email campaign management would result in better lead management. You also recognize that CRM software will help you leverage a new efficiency in creating a customer experience that builds brand loyalists – and keeps customers buying. Wait...perhaps you are a sales director, responsible for your company’s sales pipeline and focused solely on lead management and lead retention – especially qualifying the right leads. You, like your CMO colleague, may also see a requirement for Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
Whether your motivation to advocate CRM at your enterprise comes from your love of marketing, love of sales or love of streamlined, automated operational management, ultimately it all comes down to one driving motivator – love of growing a strong, thriving business!
Next steps? You need to build a business case with the CEO, and possibly your CFO and CIO, for the CRM platform and solution you feel best suits your marketing and sales development goals. You need to validate your drive to leverage CRM software to better communicate with clients and prospects – on sales and marketing levels. You need to sell your company on the CRM value that awaits them – everything from email marketing to social CRM to data analytics for better lead qualification to drive your sales pipeline.
Here’s 6 ways to quantify the value of CRM to your CEO, CFO, CIO – and every team member in between!
- CRM improves customer communications. Clear communication leads to fewer passes through the funding process as everyone understands the goals and benefits of the project. CRM provides a uniform platform for diving deep into analytics for sales and marketing teams – not to mention customer service teams.
- CRM increases marketing and sales success. When everyone knows the reasons, goals, and bounds of an initiative, project success improves. CRM provides a quantifiable platform for reviewing marketing campaigns – email, social and more – as well as drive lead generation activities based on real-time analytics of your customer interactions and buying patterns.
- CRM helps you social media socialize – with your buyers! CRM is a new frontier in customer-centric sales and marketing which is reinventing the customer relationship and creating a real-time landscape for enterprises of all sizes to connect with existing and future customers – leveraging Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and more. Social CRM solutions automate the social media process for marketing teams and drive home to sales teams the lead generation and customer tracking that social sharing can deliver. As data pours in from social shares, tweets and connections, marketing and sales team can analyze client social behaviors to adjust CRM tactics and fine tune marketing campaigns.
- CRM helps you manage your customers – better! CRM solutions help businesses manage their customer and business relationships by providing one central location to gather present and historical information, automate manual business process, and communicate with prospective and current clients in a timely fashion.
- CRM helps you to be a mobile enterprise: Mobile working is changing the face of business as we know it. By 2016, two-thirds of the workforce will own a smartphone, and 40 percent of the workforce will be mobile (Gartner). The demand for mobile working is increasing and mobile CRM is now becoming a must-have for many small and medium sized companies. CRM solutions, including Sage CRM, give businesses access to critical customer information in real-time, on any device regardless of their location. Sales and customer service teams can view and update contacts, opportunities, leads and cases when on the road or at customer sites – helping today’s mobile workforce to be more productive and customer supportive.
- CRM helps you analyze, nurture – and qualify – better leads: With a centralized location to collect and create personalized nurture campaigns, and analyze results, CRM equips businesses today with the tools needed to generate more qualified leads. What does this mean for your business? Increased business productivity from stronger sales thanks to leveraging CRM as a communication tool – driving lead tracking and business growth.