Top 4 Ways CRM Can Shorten Your Sales Cycle

Three out of four consumers say they spent more money with a company because of a positive customer experience. When it comes to customer service and support, CRM systems are an effective tool that keeps businesses organized and their clients happy. A CRM is a customer relationship management tool that various companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data.

Actually, CRM is the fastest growing type of business software used. The goal of a CRM is to improve business relationships with customers, help business to improve customer service, and drive sales. To learn more about how your business can benefit from a CRM click here. Visit our blog to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM.  CRM software allows your sales cycles to be faster- which means more sales with a higher revenue. We have identified four of the top ways that CRM can shorten your sales cycle and accelerate your sales.

1 – Effective Management of contacts, leads, and accounts

Maintaining good records is vital to good business. It can help you quickly identify and meet the needs of your prospects – and make the most of every prospect interaction.

You and your team can not only keep track of your prospects’ and clients contact details, but also their known needs, buying preferences, issues, and decisions. Other important data to track includes the date and time of contact, how the contact was made, correspondences and activities- as well as results of the actions. The amount of information that can be collected about your contacts, leads, and accounts is endless!

Because of the data accessibility for salespeople shortens their sales cycles by 8-14%. Having all this data at our fingertips at all times, allows salespeople to move prospects through the sales funnel faster.

As your relationship with a prospect or client evolves, it becomes more and more imperative for you to have detailed records to rely on. By keeping thorough records from the get-go, it is easier and less time-consuming to update profiles as the relationship grows.

2- More follow-ups…means more sales.

The information mentioned in the previous section can be used to schedule future contacts and help you target your follow-ups and secure sales. It is much easier to follow up with a prospect if you have detailed records to pull from. it is much easier to progress through the selling cycle or to strengthen an existing relationship.

80% of sales require five follow-ups after the initial contact. A functionality that many of our clients look for in a CRM system is the ability of automatic reminders when a specific action/follow-up is required. With Microsoft Dynamics 365, you can set up workflows to manage this process.

3 – Spend more time targeting the most productive leads.

50% of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting.  Instead of spending precious time and energy on qualifying opportunities and leads that may never go anywhere, focus more on likely buyers. A company spends lots of resources developing leads. Ensure that you are making the most of those efforts by making sure your marketing and sales teams align. For most companies, the job of the marketer is to generate leads, and and the job of the salesperson is to turn those leads into clients. So, it would only stand to reason that the two functions should work together toward a common goal. For best practices in unifying your sales and marketing teams click here.

With lead Scoring through ClickDimensions and Dynamics 365, your salespeople save valuable time and effort by targeting your most interested leads. Here’s how it works- each visitor to your website is tracked and assigned a score by ClickDimensions based on his or her visits, page views and more. Scoring is based on values set by you. This means that you can score certain activities or page views higher or lower based on their importance in showing visitor intent. To learn more about lead scoring with ClickDimensions and Microsoft Dynamics 365 click here.  All leads are not created equal.

A critical step in lead generation is identifying “sales-ready” leads. Leads that are not sales-ready right now should be nurtured and cultivated to be sales-ready in the future.

Understanding your customer and where they are at in the customer buying journey allows you to make the best possible decisions on how to proceed with an opportunity or lead. Unfortunately, that’s not always possible when you’re using manual methods like spreadsheets. With CRM, you can easily automate that process. It becomes simple to streamline the pipeline and finish what could take hours manually in just a few seconds – from qualifying leads to identifying opportunities for lead generation to determining when it’s the right time to market to a qualified lead.   To learn more about the six stages of the customer buying journey, how to properly assess where your customer is, and how a CRM helps at each stage, visit our blog or infographic.

Lead tracking is one of the most important aspects to your sales pipeline. It, unfortunately, can be one of the most time consuming aspects if you don’t have good CRM to work with.

4 – Optimize how you currently use your CRM

There have been many changes over the years to the way people sell. Nothing has made a greater impact on selling than CRM software. An effective CRM fosters efficient selling, but unfortunately, because there are so many great features, it is can be easy to get overwhelmed. Many companies are not using their CRM software to it’s full potential. If adopted and used correctly, CRM is going to boost the performance of any sales team.

CRM software helps standardize your sales cycle and move leads and opportunities quickly through your sales funnel. An effective CRM provides your sales team with easily accessible information in a centralized location – enabling your salespeople to fully prepare for every customer interaction and help move the sales process along.

One thing you might want to consider is having a CRM administrator. The goal of a CRM is to improve business relationships with customers, help business to improve customer service, and drive sales.  If a salesperson isn’t able to easily utilize CRM, then how useful is it? Some companies chose to have someone internally as their CRM administrator, while others choose to outsource it to a professional consulting firm, such as enCloud9. For tips on this subject, read our blog entry titled Does Your Company Need a CRM Administrator? 

Have you inherited a dysfunctional Dynamics CRM system and know that it is capable of so much more? Well, enCloud9 has worked with dozens of companies that face the same predicament. We can take your Dynamics 365 system and work with your team to align it with your goals. some of our recent Rescue and Repair projects have included:

• Migrating from Dynamics CRM 2011 to cloud-based Dynamics 365
• Resolving chronic data duplication issues
• Optimizing forms and views for more efficient data entry and analysis
• Integrating Business Processes with Dynamics sales entities
• Integrating Dynamics 365 with customer portals and ERP

Sales Accelerator from enCloud9

Another way that enCloud9 can help you accelerate your sales and speed up your sales cycles is through their Sales Accelerator. enCloud9’s Sales Accelerator package is designed to provide businesses with a simple user experience and to speed up adoption. 

Deploying Dynamics 365 for your sales team doesn’t have to take several months and cost a lot of money! The Sales Accelerator from enCloud9 will get you and your team up and running quickly on Dynamics 365’s easy to use yet powerful CRM system. For more information visit www.encloud9.com/sales-accelerator and contact the experiences Dynamics 365 Implementation partners at enCloud9. We would love to come up with a Dynamics 365 implementation project plan customized to how you sell. Start accelerating your business today!