How a CRM system helps you win more customers. How to win new customers is perhaps the most recurrent question among entrepreneurs. Increasing the customer database is undoubtedly a challenge for any company, but especially for companies that are just becoming known in the market. When implementing strategies to get new customers, it is important to have a lot of patience and a good CRM system that allows you to work effectively when managing customer relationships. Those who have read about CRM system, know that it is a technological tool that allows to have a global vision of the data and all the basic activities for customer relationship management (CRM).

To better understand all this CRM stuff, it is best to clarify it with a practical example that explains how a CRM system can help in the acquisition of new customers and how SMEs and entrepreneurs can get the most out of this CRM tool. One of the most common strategies implemented by companies to obtain new customers is cold calling, which involves addressing a totally unknown audience to convince them to purchase the services and products offered by the company. Something that is not at all easy to do, and also, if the right measures are not taken, it will only be a waste of time and money.

Cold customer acquisition is a science in itself. In addition to answering these questions, it is necessary to have prior knowledge of the person we are calling, and to know how to persuade and negotiate. The success of cold calling will depend on the previous study of the public you decide to call on the phone, since calling a simple list of contacts is not a good idea. It is much more practical, to check before the call if we see a potential customer within this list and the relevance of each of the contacts for our company.

Cold customer acquisition

Perhaps this makes the process of acquiring new customers a bit longer and time-consuming in this first step. However, if we want to be successful in selling, we need to be patient. Thus, when talking to the customer, we will be able to address them in a much more personalized way. So we must have a CRM system at hand that allows us to store contact information and identify the right approach to address each customer.

The 4 phases of operation of a CRM

Knowing what a CRM is, the essence of the operation of any CRM can be summarized in 4 phases:

• Initiate the sale.
• Closing the sale.
• After-sales service.
• Centralize all the information.

Initiate the sale

Whether with email marketing campaigns carried out from the tool itself, cold calls from salespeople or personalized contact with someone with whom we have made an introduction, the first step with a CRM is to initiate the sale. The only requirement for this is to have the contact data of the leads included in the tool. Whether the first approach is a personalized email campaign, a cold call or a sales visit will depend on the type of business, the type of sale and the type of CRM.

Closing the sale

The second common step in any CRM is to allow a correct follow-up to the sale to ensure the closing. With a CRM you can follow up to infinity without being tiresome, and that translates into more sales.

After-sales service

Another big reason why companies lose money is that, although getting a new customer costs up to 7 times more than retaining a current one, most companies insist on attracting more business instead of taking care of the one they already have.

With a simple CRM, anyone who comes into contact with a customer can see at a glance all the conversations, work done and pending and, in short, all the information about that contact that the company has.

This allows a much more personalized service with much better results. And this increases customer satisfaction.

Centralize all information

The last common factor in the operation of all CRMs is that it is a tool that centralizes all the information about your customers and prospects, but also all the information about the performance of your salespeople, your marketing campaigns and your customer service.

This allows with a few clicks to generate detailed reports that allow you to better understand your ideal customer, how the after-sales service is going or how is the performance of the sales department in general and of each salesperson in particular; to give a few examples.

How a CRM system helps to win customers

Improves collaborative work and allows teleworking (home office).

It doesn’t matter where in the world our partner is located or if we are working from home. Cloud-based systems allow access to data and activities from any device with internet access. We will always have access to the information and share it in real-time with other colleagues.

All customer-related activities in one place, How a CRM system helps you win more customers

Are you one of those who create excel databases to store customer data, load an agenda in your wallet to take note of what the customer wants, and then write an e-mail to your colleagues about the tasks, appointments and pending activities. This is not only ineffective, but also a total waste of time and time is money.

The idea of acquiring a CRM system is that we find all the main data and activities related to the customer in one place, without the need to search for the customer’s phone number among hundreds of excel cells, and then look for the date of the next appointment within an agenda, which perhaps, has not been updated for a long time.

Audience classification

A CRM software allows you to create tags to classify and group people and contact companies as best suits your needs, either by sector, area or city. Target audience segmentation is vital to successfully implement all the specific marketing and sales strategies that will allow us to build customer loyalty and increase sales.

Data protection, How a CRM system helps you win more customers

In the past, CRM software could only be installed within a company, requiring personnel with IT knowledge. Today, thanks to technological advances, we can access a CRM system as if we were accessing streaming platforms.

Improved sales process

Let’s look at it this way: by knowing our customers better, by working better as a team, and by being more effective in day-to-day activities, there will be nothing to stop us from making a successful sale. A CRM system will give us an overview of our real situation and allow us to better implement loyalty strategies and decrease sales times for more effective customer contact.

Conclusion, How a CRM system helps you win more customers

Implementing a CRM system in our business will allow us to have a better knowledge of our customers to improve customer loyalty and therefore obtain more benefits with less effort.