Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. However, businesses are often so focused on attracting new clients that they fail to capitalize on opportunities with existing customers. Increasing sales by developing stronger relationships with your current customers is much easier. With the right tools, you can increase your profit per customer and create such a positive experience that word of mouth will bring new clients to your company too! CRM Software is at the core of this approach.
How Can CRM Software Help You Make More Sales?
Understanding CRM
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, a marketing and sales approach that has proven to be wildly successful. Rather than focus on the individual products or services that you sell to a given customer, CRM encourages you to see each customer as having a relationship with your business. Managing that relationship means thinking about how you communicate with and treat your customers.
Consider how you handle your personal relationships. You keep in touch with those you hold dearest. You look for thoughtful holiday and birthday gifts. You provide support when someone is going through hard times. Why should your business relationships be any different? When you see your customers as you would your friends or family, CRM becomes very easy to understand. It’s no wonder why it’s successful. Who doesn’t like to feel cared about?
The Key to Managing Customer Relationships
If CRM is so great, why don’t more companies use it? The problem is that many small businesses lack the proper tools for CRM. After all, it’s difficult enough to keep track of everyone’s birthday in your family; how are you going to handle hundreds of clients? CRM platforms make it possible by centralizing client data into a single portal. When you can readily access information about your clients, it’s easy to give them personalized attention in every interaction.
CRM software works on two levels: Individual and organizational. On the individual level, you’ll have detailed information about each client and their history with your company. On the organizational level, you’ll be able to analyze the big picture and see trends or patterns across your entire client base. Combined with automation and data analytics, CRM tools make it easy to provide better service that actually targets customers’ needs, which will lead to increased sales.
Relationship History
The key to selling more with the same clients is to record your interactions accurately. What products or services has the client purchased from you? How often do they visit or interact with your staff? The longer your history, the more opportunities you can find.
You can pull up your entire history with any given client in seconds with CRM tools. The effect this has on your operations cannot be understated. If one of your customers calls your office, your staff can immediately respond in a more personalized way. Perhaps they ask about the client’s most recent experience or how they like the product they bought last time. Attention to detail is key. CRM programs make it easy.
Identify Individual Opportunities
Take the example of a barbershop using CRM tools. You have an accurate record of your client’s history with the business. You know that Joe usually comes in every four weeks for a trim. It’s been five weeks, and he hasn’t come in. Most businesses would just shrug their shoulders. Yours has CRM tools, so your CRM system sent Joe a personalized message this week to let him know that he has 10% off his next visit.
Your system also knows that Joe has referred several of his friends to the barbershop. To say thanks for all the referrals, your receptionist gets a notification to offer Joe and his friends a discount on a shave party. These are just a couple of examples of how CRM tools can help you give individual customers personalized offers that increase sales and improve customer retention. There are even more opportunities at the macro, and organizational levels.
Discover Trends
The more customers you have, the easier it is for your software to spot trends and help you find better ways to upsell. Although you likely have defined a target demographic for your marketing and sales teams to pursue, reality often clashes with what you hope for. CRM programs can give you an accurate understanding of who is actually hiring your company or buying your products. With that data, you can come up with some clever ideas for upsells.
For example, if most of your clients are males in their early 40s, consider what bands are most popular with that age group in your area. Check out upcoming concerts and grab a few tickets to give away to customers or raffle off when they make a purchase. Meaningful rewards like these encourage repeat business and show that you have your finger on the pulse. And when your customer invites a friend to that concert, you’re getting a reference.
Direct Personalized Marketing
CRM platforms let you make email templates for specific offers. You can automatically configure trigger conditions to send one of these emails to a given client. Their personal information is dynamically linked to the template, so your customer receives a personalized message with their information woven into the body of the message. Even though this is a simple method, it’s highly effective.
Frequent generic emails end up in the trash. Occasional personalized emails grab the reader’s attention and stand out in the inbox. Avoid falling into a routine of regular emails with CRM automation and personalization features. You can even craft custom social media posts straight from your CRM data to target your customers on a wider scale. Communication is the basis of every relationship. With CRM tools, your communication will create better relationships with your customers.
Support Your Sales Staff
Every small business hopes to scale up. However, you can’t lose that personal touch that makes working with a small business such a pleasure. Contact Anthem Software today to learn more about our CRM software and how it can help you build lasting relationships with your customers.
