How CRM Can Benefit Your Business

by Paiton McDuffie | Mar 28, 2023

CRM software, or Customer Relationship Management software, is an essential tool for any business regardless of industry or target audience. But what is CRM and what are the benefits of leveraging this software within your own company?

At its core, CRM software is simply a place to house and organize your prospect or client data. As prospective customers demand more personalized engagement and the number of touches needed to engage a prospect has increased, CRM software providers have added a plethora of features and functionality to their tools to help marketers and sales teams alike. 

Increased Sales

Many CRM software providers have a sales pipeline feature. This is a streamlined and organized way to view open “deals” or sales opportunities and track their progress as your prospects move through the buying journey. Automation can come into play here as well, with daily or repetitive tasks being managed by workflows that take tedious and manual work off the sales team’s shoulders.

Having a sales pipeline set up in your CRM is a great way to ensure that all members of your team are using a repeatable process that captures all necessary information at each stage (estimated revenue, estimated time to close, the main point of contact, etc.) This also makes creating reports a breeze, so you have clear visibility into past and future performance.

Clean and Organized Data

Having CRM software in place in your business eliminates the need for various spreadsheets, multiple email inboxes, or other sources of customer or prospect data. A centralized location to store and organize all your data allows for cleaner and more data that ultimately allows you to better serve your clients and tailor your marketing efforts to your target audience.

Most CRM software tracks contact activity (web page visits, form submissions, email communications, etc.) and should be used to indicate what services or products your current clients have. Having this information handy is a great way to cross-sell, up-sell, and increase lifetime value.

Lead Nurturing and Automation

Automating sales team-related tasks and notifications has been mentioned as one benefit of having CRM software, but automation can be used for so much more. Setting up automated nurture campaigns, re-engagement campaigns, or even NPS surveys are great ways to sprinkle touches and gather more information throughout your customer and prospect lifecycles without the manual work. Here are more ideas on ways automation can be implemented with your CRM.

These are just a few of the advantages of leveraging CRM software but there are many more. Depending on your business’s needs, many of the CRM software providers have various tiers with different functionality and can be more or less customized for your team and company size. Using a tool like G2 can be a great way to compare various platforms to ensure you’re getting exactly what you need and read reviews from actual users.