Global EXPERT

Live
HELP

  Latest News
 : : CRM    
 

Customer relationship management (CRM) provides organizations with technologies, business applications, and best practices that help them sell, market, and service their products and services.
Global Expert CRM provides a unified view of customer information and interactions through integrated sales, marketing, and customer service features. This approach enables organizations to share information, accelerate sales, identify new revenue opportunities, and deliver more consistent customer service.

The right CRM technology investments help small businesses to sell more to existing customers, acquire new customers faster, and better manage the business. CRM solutions pay for themselves by capturing the business that would have otherwise been lost.

 

Three areas critical to sales success

The solution each of the companies turned to helps users succeed in three areas that are critical to sales success: 

1. Monitoring and management of entire sales process.

Account management: View past and current account activity, including contact information, communications, open quotes, pending orders, invoices, credit limits, and payment history.

Lead tracking and routing:
Track prospective customers and then convert them into qualified leads, which are automatically routed to the correct salespeople or teams for follow-up.

Opportunity management:
Capture important sales information to uncover new business opportunity. Use Microsoft CRM sales pipeline analysis reports to create precise sales forecasts.


Customer communications:
Use e-mail templates to communicate with targeted prospects and customers. Create print materials and then send to prospects via Microsoft Office Word Mail Merge.

Quote generation:
Create quotes and track their conversion to orders; modify and save orders until they are ready for submission.

2. Sales team management.

Sales quotas: Measure employee sales performance against goals. As opportunities are closed in Microsoft CRM, they are credited against the assigned quota.

Lead Management

3. Accessing decision-driving information.

Reports:
View, sort, and filter a wide range of reports to identify trends, measure and forecast sales activity, track sales processes, and evaluate business performance. 

What Is the Cost of Leads Lost?

If you think CRM is expensive then think again.

Every lead is precious, yet interviews with small businesses conducted by AMR Research reveal that small businesses do not follow up on up to 70 percent of all leads, representing as much as 14–22 percent of annual revenue. This is because there is often no centralized place to track customer, account, and contact information. Technology can help solve these issues. In fact, the revenue gained from following up on three of those previously lost leads often covers the cost of a contact, lead, account, and case management system.

The Benefits of CRM Technology

The functionality required to address lead leakage falls into the category of Customer Relationship Management, or CRM. Unfortunately, CRM has developed a reputation as making for large, often unwieldy software solutions for large companies that often do not deliver real business benefits.

The truth is that CRM technology has been specifically designed for small businesses. There are elements of CRM systems, such as contact, lead, account, order, and case management, that are fundamental to small businesses and deliver tangible business value.

The benefits of CRM technology stem from increased revenue and decreased costs. Increased revenue primarily comes from more satisfied customers, the ability to upsell and cross-sell, and higher acceptance rates on marketing campaigns. Reduced costs are attained through a reduction in administrative time used to track down information, improved reporting, and quicker issue resolution.

Choosing the Right Functionality

Successful CRM projects address an acute pain felt by salespeople, customer service agents, or marketers. Functionality should be purchased in priority order to address the highest pain points. Small successes are then built on to keep momentum going. 

The top 10 small business pain points are:  

#

Pain Points

Functionality

1. 

Leads are lost or are not followed up on by sales

Lead management with follow-up workflow

2. 

Marketers do not know what products and services to sell to prospects

Campaign management

3. 

Salespeople and sales managers do not know the status or next steps required for an opportunity or case

Opportunity management, workflow, and case management

4. 

Customer information is not available in one centralized place

Case management and contact management

5. 

Employees do not know what products or services customers have purchased

Account management

6. 

Employees do not know who to contact when a customer issue arises

Contact management

7. 

Customer issues are not resolved in a timely manner

Case management with follow-up workflow

8. 

Reports are not available that tell employees how the business is performing

Analytics and forecasting

9. 

Orders are often taken on paper or by fax

Order management

10. Lack of inter-department coordination Work flow management