CRM is short for ”Customer Relationship Management” and is a structured system or tool that allows a company to manage relationships, activity and communication with its customers. A CRM software solution typically uses in-house servers (“on-premise”) or online software (“in the cloud”). CRMs that are hosted and managed on-premise are typically managed by the company’s IT department, while CRMs that are “in the cloud” (also referred to as SaaS – Software as a Service) require no maintenance by an internal IT department. MagHub is this type of solution.
Most CRMs contain modules that focus on certain parts of the business such as sales, lead management, and marketing. In some cases, more advanced CRMs may even contain modules for sales order management, finance, and project management. A key purpose of a CRM sales module is to help your sales managers structure and monitor their sales teams’ activity. This will allow them to evaluate whether leads and opportunities are worthy of follow-up and qualify them accordingly.
The CRM allows your sales teams to capture key customer activity such as calls, meetings, emails, etc. These give the sales managers valuable data that they can use to process and compare sales quotas against actual sales. CRMs can automatically alert sales people as well as sales assistants with recommended courses of action and provide standardized communication templates, which can decrease administration and sales ramp time. The notification process is also known as “automated workflow” and can be customized to match your company’s internal and external sales policies.
Tracking opportunities is critical for a sales organization. An organized pipeline that contains valuable potential sales and revenue estimates becomes the lifeline of your sales team. This relevant opportunity information is usually kept in one central database and it helps managers by giving a real-time window into sales status. Most often this information can be displayed for quick access by using eye-catching graphics and charts from a dashboard.
Marketing strategies and campaigns can be entered and tracked in a CRM. Information such as budgets, targets, and campaign-related tasks can also be stored. Campaigns can vary in size and be specific to company size, location, products, or even type of campaign. These campaign types might take form in many different ways: TV and radio ads, trade shows, magazines, etc., and may target many different potential customers. It is important to gather these leads and enter them into the CRM to give you an accurate measurement of the success of each marketing campaign.
A well thought-out and strategically implemented CRM solution can greatly improve your business processes and provide visibility into critical business intelligence, making your sales team more efficient and effective.
POSTED BY Tom Bellen, to contact click here.
