Sales Leadership
What is the secret to accelerating sales growth? While people and process usually precede systems, sales is somewhat of an exception. The right customer relationship management system (CRM) can actually help empower people and define process. A tight bond between marketing automation and CRM enables sales reps to layer context onto their outreach. And this, in turn, helps their emails and calls to stand out amidst a sea of bland, generic pitches.
Which companies use a CRM?
The short answer is that any company who seeks to maintain a relationship with their customers can benefit from using a CRM system. To get a little bit more specific, there are two groups of companies that often see the most benefit:
- B2B companies that typically need to track leads and customers across long sales cycles and through upgrade paths (e.g., a software company, a recruiting firm)
- Considered purchase B2C companies (e.g., a jeweler, a landscaping service, or a )
That being said, there are a lot of companies who don’t fit the above two profiles, but still find value in using a CRM system. Another way to understand whether or not a CRM system can help your business is to think about the challenges that CRM systems aim to solve:
- Do you have a need for maintaining a central list of information on your leads and customers? Does this information live in many different places?
- Are your customers regularly interfacing with multiple people on your team? How does everyone keep track of where the conversation with any one customer left off?
- Do you struggle to understand the productivity of your sales team? Does your sales team follow a structured process?
If you answered yes to any one or more of the above questions, chances are your business could benefit from a CRM system.