Will CRM Improve My Productivity?

According to Nucleus Research, CRM has an average ROI of $8.71 for every dollar spent. CRM increases sales by up to 29%, improves productivity levels by up to 34% and increases sales revenue by up to 41% per salesperson (Salesforce).

The embedded abilities of CRMs to streamline the administrative part of sales and automating various work processes gives salespeople the ability to spend more time doing the strategic part of sales, increasing the likelihood of closing new deals.

1. CRM Pipeline

Some of the biggest struggles met by salespeople include keeping track of the progress of the deals in their deal pipeline, finding a steady flow of new customers, or getting an accurate and detailed view of projected revenue within a specific period of time.

CRMs provide an easy way for sales teams to track and organise customer interactions and manage their pipelines without losing efficiency. 

CRMs provide easily accessible and valuable deal closing probability and numbers such as: 

• • Appointment scheduled
  • Prospects qualified to buy
  • Presentation scheduled 
  • Decision-maker bought-in 
  • Contracts sent
  • Sales activity levels
  • Meeting to closed deal hit rates 

CRM pipeline benefits can help your business improve the efficiency of sales management, close deals more speedily, efficiently organise leads, give top-level statistics and reporting, and offer wide customisation capabilities. 

Sales Pipeline Metrics

To get the most out of the CRM deals pipeline, it is important to understand the various metrics one needs to look at in order to gauge the health of your sales pipeline and any other aspect of the business.

Some of the most important metrics to look at are:

• How many deals in the pipeline are qualified?
• What is the average value of the deals in the pipeline?
• What is the total value of every qualified opportunity in the deals pipeline?
• How long does a lead stay in the pipeline from prospecting to closing a deal?
• Which deals are stalled and need extra attention?

2. Maximising the Value of Time Spent 

In this age where professionals charge per hour and have so much to do in even less time; eliminating time-wasting efforts and processes in an attempt to find new ways of driving higher productivity levels should be at the top of the agenda for any business serious about growth and scalability.

Thanks to CRM automation features, businesses no longer have to worry about redundant and fruitless efforts such as:

• Logging into various software to get work done.
• Having to manually respond to most internal emails.
• Setting reminders in order to get various tasks done.
• Gathering data from various sources in order to generate reports.

Amongst many other things, CRM’s automation features and ability to provide “single source of truth” for all client information and interactions helps a great deal in eliminating endless email loops and phone tags; giving salespeople more time to do what they are most qualified to do, selling.

CRMs such as HubSpot are efficient in saving its users time by offering features such as:

• Email Templates: Enjoy the efficiency of email templates by using stored email responses to speedily engage with website visitors who fill out a pop-up form, or automatically populate emails and personalise the content (first name, company, signature, etc).
• HubSpot Snippets: Answer frequently asked queries with these short, personalised, and reusable text blocks. You can use snippets either in email, live chats, or even call scripts.
• HubSpot Sequences: Send a specific set of automated and perfectly timed emails to clients and leads based on the various pages, forms, or downloads they have interacted with your website
• Tasks: Automatically create tasks and set reminders depending on the various stages leads have progressed to within the deal pipeline.
• Meetings Link: Use the easily shareable link to eliminate back and forth messages whenever you’d like to secure a meeting with prospects by simply connecting your calendar and customising your meeting preferences.

Being cloud-based, CRM systems can generally sync to mobile devices, giving all parties instant access to vital information from wherever they are, ensuring that everyone on the team is on the same page at any given time.

3. Greater Company Intelligence and Data Insights

The advancements and applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in CRM systems do a great job of performing tasks that would otherwise require manual labour. 

Artificial Intelligence technology imbedded in CRM systems makes it possible to:

• Automate repetitive and unproductive tasks.
• Reduce reaction times to customer requests.
• Improve the flow of information between all parties involved in the customer care process.
• Generate reports on the go and in real-time.
• Improve the way feedback is managed.
• Personalise and customise your customer service.

The power of AI in CRMs can be seen in the efficiency with which data is automatically collected and made available, easy to understand, and easy to source relevant insights from.

Whether it’s sales, finance, marketing, or data from any source or division of the company, AI-powered by cloud technology makes it possible to do things such as predicting sales, understand clients better - why they converted, the challenges and pain points they have, their unique characteristics and preferences, and their level of confidence or satisfaction with your brand.

CRMs use a lot of machine learning in their processes, and through this technology, they are able to better understand the data stored in the CRM database and give you just the right kind of content predictions and make just the right kind of suggestions at the right time during any stage of the buying cycle. 

AI also makes it possible for CRM ‘Predictive Lead Scoring’ tool to collect invaluable data about possible customers, and over time, the technology reduces the time it takes to close a deal.

Final Thoughts

Most people fear that technologies such as AI and Machine Learning are designed to replace human function, but nothing could be further from the truth. Where CRMs are concerned, AI does a greater job at enabling and enhancing human interactions and capabilities on many levels.

CRMs are excellent at speeding up and personalising customer interactions, enhancing customer service, improving customer interactions, automating workflows, and increasing business efficiency and productivity output amongst many other things. 

If your company is considering adopting a new CRM or just curious about how it can specifically improve your business bottom line, do not hesitate to contact MO Agency for more information.