What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? The term “Customer relationship management” has been widely used in our business reality lately. What is it?

The abbreviation CRM means Customer Relationship Management and is literally translated as “managing relationships with customers”. Unfortunately, the definition does not make the term clearer. Let us first make it clear what the intention and the functionality of this term are, what the implementation results are and then grasp the essence of this term and the efficiency secret of using the CRM system.

What is the intended purpose of the CRM system?

As the analysis of the system implementation shows, it gives the average annual increase in sales of 20%. Though for entrepreneurs in the beginning stage of their businesses this increase is insufficient, for a solid business this percentage can be a great growth index of floating assets. A growing business can be recommended to implement some innovative sales techniques that will forge returns on money invested in the CRM system.

What is the system of Customer Relationship Management?

The CRM system is a software product which not only allows tracking all contacts with customers, it also allows managing the sales process. To answer whether you need the CRM system, analyze how many employees are engaged in the sales process and whether you are satisfied with their efficiency. How can you solve the problem if you are dissatisfied with the results? Let us note that the attainment of additional sales managers does not always bring directly proportional increase in the sales volume. It is rather the opposite way, an increase in staff leads to a decrease in average sales per one employee, and you can only succeed by delegating responsibilities among manages. Growth in this case can be achieved by minimizing the time expenditures on negotiating contracts. How to boost sales? You need to know that the implementation of CRM is only sensible when more than two employees are engaged in the sales process. The reasons for this are diverse: it is more difficult to control a larger number of employees, it is simple to teach a couple of employees the art of sales on all stages, and an increase in the number of employees leads to difficulties both connected with time and money. Thus, it is reasonable to implement the CRM system for the sake of control and economy since it helps increase sales and therefore profits. The automatic system will provide you with an analysis of quantitative results which can be used to optimize the planning and managing processes in your Small Business.

The concept of the CRM system:

In this case by the term “concept” we understand a set of methods and approaches with the help of which a relationship with a customer is being built. Principles of Customer Relationship Management are your priority methods of establishing a connection with a consumer of your products or services. The CRM system helps track and timely make adjustments to a process of interaction with a customer. Of course, every businessman is interested in the exact facts due to which the CRM system enables the process of increasing sales and therefore an increase in profits.

Methods and approaches:

Many CRM programs allow increasing the managers’ operation efficiency by almost a quarter by means of compact display of the information on the client company, thus, a manager receives the most detailed information and saves a lot of time. Besides, most software products of this kind have the automatic scheduling function. Normally, the employee schedule includes contacts planned on a certain date and those that the communication failed with earlier. Obviously, the risk of missing or failing a necessary contact with a client decreases. Some CRM systems allow arranging the order of priority of calls to clients from “hot” to “cold” on the basis of the existing data (a contract, made payments, quantities of the purchased products). Most CRM systems help align the chain of customer communication of different managers on different stages of the sales process, thus the risk of failure of the whole process in case of losing one branch (the absence or dismissal of one of the sales managers) is excluded.

Fast growth of sales is possible!

Most managers consider an increase in sales a difficult task, and sometimes an impossible one. The standard approaches are hiring new sales managers, reconfigurement, and a shift in responsibilities. Sounds familiar? Unfortunately, these actions do not guarantee a success, even though an increase in sales is not a super task. Which methods are the most effective in terms of increasing sales?

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Determine the stage of the sales process. You need to configure the so-called assembly line of tasks that will improve the sales managers’ efficiency by half.

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Carry out the audit of the tele algorithm. Using the experience work out the universal effective script of a cold call, this helps even middle class managers achieve great results.

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Implement the CRM system in 3 days. You will probably not trust this statement, but believe this, it is absolutely possible to set up the system with operating customer records in 3 days. Particularly that most internet resources as Simple soft, for instance, give users clear and accurate instructions on how to install and setup the software of this kind.

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Create the scheduling algorithm. If you need to step aside the standard customer interaction process, create optional schedules. The use of them will help save time and thus improve the manager’s working efficiency.

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Develop the orders and scenarios to work with different client categories. Sometimes this measure helps free up to 50% of employees’ working time.

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Listen to 1% of calls. Even one percent is enough to understand the flaws of the sales department operation and will help control the quality of customer service.

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Organize the employee training. Such events ensure the exchange of experience and, as a consequence, a significant improvement in the quality of operation.

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Engage in cross marketing and rearrange the interaction with your agents. Undoubtedly, all of the abovementioned pieces of advice can be put into practice without the implementation of CRM. However, the automatic Customer Relationship Management system facilitates this task helping to significantly save time of salespeople as well as the manager. The CRM system provides undeniable benefits in customer training and exploitation, providing the clarity of the sales process and significant savings in time resources of a company.