I have been visiting lots of business these days for the purpose of coaching them on sales tools and strategies. In my career, as a sales and business coach, very frequently I have found that most of the Small and Medium enterprises do not use any CRM for tracking their business activity.
Most of the business owners are inquisitive about the use of CRM. They want to know, what CRM can do for their company? Is it worth spending their funds on CRM? How fast will be the ROI for CRM investment?
There is lots of confusion about the use of CRM these days and today I am going to address some important questions about the CRM. Let us understand what all problems your business may be experiencing in the absence of CRM.
All businesses run on data. But most of the small and medium enterprises have a very highly unorganized database. Many of them are still using the paper registers for recording and maintaining the data and others have migrated to the multiple Excel sheets. But the data is still unorganized and decision making on facts is a distant practice, as a result, most of the decisions are being taken on a hunch. No wonder the quality of decision making suffers badly.
The customer address book remains completely unorganized and any communication becomes a challenge every time. Sometimes there is a need for sending automatic follow up emails and other communication but in the absence of CRM, all this is not possible.
An email campaign is a very common tool these days for marketing but in the absence of an organized address book, The campaigns cannot be effectively created and implemented.
Again and again, I have found that salespeople do not follow their leads effectively. In fact in the absence of CRM they cannot follow up, as a result, there is a loss of business and loss of productivity of salespeople. Studies have found that 79{2facf265810d5c64deca339a00197305ceb917dadef902f2426694cb75f36e2b} of leads pursued without a CRM never convert. In the absence of CRM a sales leads can cost a fortune these days.
Salesforce is a very costly resource in the organization. Most of the time they are on the move and working from out of office. Reporting of salespeople is a very critical aspect of sales management. In the absence of CRM, the reporting will always be wrong, and the company will suffer from loss of productivity. In the absence of CRM you can not track them and you can not hold them accountable. You can imagine the problem it will create in your business.
Forecasting is an important step in sales management however in the absence of CRM, the company cannot analyze and manage the sales funnel effectively therefore the sales forecasting cannot be done with accuracy. This creates a big performance problem. You cannot see what is there in your sales pipeline and you cannot be sure for next month’s sales results.
Sales managers always want to know the stage of a particular prospect on the Sales cycle so that they can accordingly take actions to speed up the sales closer but analyzing and managing the prospect wise sales journey without CRM is almost impossible as a result the sales result will suffer.
A customer complaint is a common phenomenon for any business. Every complainant customer wants their response to be given maximum within 2 hours. In the absence of CRM this cannot be monitored, and the customer cannot be satisfied.
We have been visiting lots of businesses and found that most of the small and medium enterprises are suffering from the above problems. We have advised many of our clients and helped them to implement CRM in their business.
Also, Read – How to Build a Scalable Enterprise
Till now we have discussed the problems which are being faced on may be faced by the organization in the absence of CRM. Now we’ll discuss what all is possible with the help of CRM Technology.
Benefits of CRM implementation:
Improvement in productivity is most commonly experienced benefit of CRM. Studies have found that mobile-accessible CRM improves productivity by at least 15{2facf265810d5c64deca339a00197305ceb917dadef902f2426694cb75f36e2b}, for certain companies the data goes up to 20{2facf265810d5c64deca339a00197305ceb917dadef902f2426694cb75f36e2b}. The CRM implementation improves leads conversion which results to reduction of lead cost by around 23{2facf265810d5c64deca339a00197305ceb917dadef902f2426694cb75f36e2b}.
The companies have reported an increase in revenue post-CRM implementation by up to 41{2facf265810d5c64deca339a00197305ceb917dadef902f2426694cb75f36e2b}. How does this happen? The CRM actually leads to better and faster conversion, better reporting and drastic reduction in the loss of productivity. This results in an increase in revenue enhancement of the business.
We have seen frequently that lots of leads are lost due to lack of systematic follow-up. But CRM gives you support in leads follow up. Leads can be nurtured properly and conversion rate can easily go up to 47{2facf265810d5c64deca339a00197305ceb917dadef902f2426694cb75f36e2b}. Average companies have reported an increase in conversion rate up to 300{2facf265810d5c64deca339a00197305ceb917dadef902f2426694cb75f36e2b} when CRM is effectively implemented.
CRM has other positive effects as well. It makes communication faster, timely and more professional. It improves the negotiation power of any organization. This results in improvement in the average purchase value. Certain companies have reported an increase in purchase value up to 40{2facf265810d5c64deca339a00197305ceb917dadef902f2426694cb75f36e2b}.
CRM implementation gives you the power to be in touch with customers on a timely basis. Therefore, you are able to improve your quality of communication and frequency of communication. Event management and auto emails and greetings are common features of CRM, therefore, being in touch with the customer at the right time becomes very easy, leading to better relations with the customers.
CRM implementation takes lots of time and investment. Many companies we have seen which started on the journey of CRM implementation but could not implement due to various reasons. One of the biggest reasons for the failure is the lack of proper planning and training of employees. The business leader’s lack of clarity on WHY of CRM is also a major reason for the failure of implementation of CRM.
We support small and medium organizations for the selection of the right technology for their company and help them implement CRM in the company. Do call us for any support you need.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rakesh Sharma— Founder of Prime Performance Solutions.
He is a Sales and Business Coach and Business Growth Architect. He has been recommended by many as the best Business Coach in India.
