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Ambition brings you this guest post - profiling the important benefits that Customer Relationship Management software brings to eCommerce business development.
A business can only survive when there are sales. And the secret behind a successful business is its ability to attract new customers and generate repeat business and referrals through them. The problem is, it is not easy to find new leads, build a customer base that’s loyal and manage post-sales support. Most e-commerce business fail to understand that increasing the number of customers in your database isn't enough. If you want to stay ahead in the game, you need to increase conversions. But conversions are difficult.
According to a research, forty-two percent of marketing professionals find it difficult to convert leads into customers, and twenty-five percent are not even familiar with their lead conversion rate. Without implementing the right strategy, you can waste a lot of precious resources trying to pursue useless opportunities. This is when an effective customer relationship management (CRM) software can become the biggest asset of your organization.
The job of a CRM system is to gather all your customers' data in a central location. Once this is done, the data can be manipulated and used for analysis and prediction of sales trends. With the help of this information, you can keep your customers engaged with the kind of content they want to see.
Hence, resulting in an improved overall customer experience and an increase in your conversion rate. A CRM software can help you to maximize your customer data efficiently and act as a boosting platform for your sales staff. The importance of a CRM can be recognized with the fact that ninety-one percent of companies with more than 11 employees are using a CRM.
According to another study by Annuitas Group, businesses witnessed a 451 percent increase in qualified leads when using marketing automation to follow leads, and purchases are 47 percent larger if leads are nurtured.
This is why if you want to improve leads to customer ratio for your e-commerce business, you need to understand how CRM software can help you:
1. A CRM Enhances Lead Visibility.
Your marketing campaigns can be much more effective if you understand your leads thoroughly. A CRM can help you in this regard. With the help of a CRM system, your sales team has access to all the vital information of a lead, such as which company does the lead belong to, are they using similar solutions and identification of web behavior. This data can help your sales team understand the lead in a better way, hence helping them to alter their sales pitch accordingly.
2. A CRM Enhances Lead Quality.
There is nothing more demotivating than moving up an unqualified lead that results in zero purchase. And ironically, many marketing professionals and sales team make this mistake. A CRM makes it easier to identify qualified leads through the identification of certain parameters.
Leads can be scored by analyzing their activity on the pricing page, email, links and other downloadable content. Based on these scores, the marketing team can easily qualify potential leads and forward it to the sales team, resulting in guaranteed purchases.
3. A CRM Maintains a Structured Workflow.
A CRM can help your business in many other ways apart from managing sales. It allows you to have organized and structured communication without any loopholes and allows you to keep track of tasks like follow-ups, demo call reminders, making notes during sales pitches and updating data after each call. You can also create email campaigns to nurture leads effectively. In short, CRM works as an all-rounder.
4. A CRM Helps with Conversion Rates.
Having a CRM solution can help you identify the actual number of leads that converted into customers by generating accurate sales reports. You can use this sales report to compare conversion rates. By analyzing these reports, you can spot the underlying problems or weakness in a team that may be affecting overall sales. A good system offers a clear view of your CRM pipeline management, thus helping you plan your next marketing campaign.
5. A CRM Offers Instant Collaboration.
Gone are the days when sales professionals were chained to their desks from 9 to 5. This is the era of cloud computing, that makes it possible for sales professionals to access their CRM data from anywhere and from any device with an internet connection. A mobile CRM app makes it easier for the sales team to have access to real-time data on their own devices. Productivity increases by 15% on average when sales reps have mobile access to CRM applications.
Conclusion:
As you can observe, CRM is no longer a tool that is only used to collect customer data. It is a complete process that can help your e-commerce business generate revenues by allowing you to interact with your prospects in a very effective way.
Gone are the days when the sales staff would spend hours on endless excel sheets, trying to gather qualified leads. A CRM system can enhance your sales process by leaps and bounds by making it easier for your sales team to differentiate between leads and prospects. According to a prediction by a leading IT research company, Gartner, the market for CRM will reach $36.5 billion by 2017.
“Gartner’s latest forecasts show that enterprises are realizing the most valuable assets they have are solid, long-term customer relationships. Trust really is the new currency, as my friend Michael Krigsman often says.” – Louis Columbus, Forbes.
So, if you are looking to improve leads to customer ratio for your e-commerce business, it is time to get your hands on an all-integrated and cloud based CRM software, that will help your sales and marketing team understand your target audience better than ever before.
About the Author
Erica Silva is a blogger by choice. She loves to discover the world around her. She likes to share her discoveries, experiences and express herself through her blogs. Find her on Twitter: @ericadsilva1.
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