Did you know that 75% of sales managers say that using a CRM helps to drive and increase sales?

CRM systems improve customer retention by 27%

It’s hard to argue with numbers like that.

At some point, your organization will need to implement a customer contact management system that’s more organized and streamlined than a mass of spreadsheets. And such a migration could be painful if the decision has been put off a few too many months, or even years.

 At its core, a CRM is not just useful to large enterprise companies -- it’s essential for businesses of all sizes.

There are two groups of companies that often see the most benefit:

1. B2B companies that typically need to track leads and customers across long sales cycles and through upgrade paths (e.g., a software company, a recruiting firm)

2. Considered purchase B2C companies (e.g., medical practice, landscaping service, or a realtor.)

A way to understand whether or not a CRM system can help your business is to think about the challenges that CRM systems aim to solve:

• Do you have a need for maintaining a central list of information on your leads and customers? Does this information live in many different places?

• Are your customers regularly interfacing with multiple people on your team? How does everyone keep track of where the conversation with any one customer left off?

• Do you struggle to understand the productivity of your sales team? Does your sales team follow a structured process?

If you answered yes to any one or more of the above questions, chances are your business could benefit from a CRM system. in fact, any company who seeks to maintain a relationship with their customers can benefit from using a CRM system.

Marketing will often use a CRM to ensure that they’re passing the right leads to their sales team -- a key aspect of developing a strong relationship with the sales team.

Salespeople utilize the CRM in a different way. They use it to source prospective customers, communicate with them, and track their interactions over time. Having the entire prospect history in one place increases their efficiency and improves their productivity. For instance, salespeople using a CRM won’t have to hunt through their email to remember where a conversation left off.

There are many things a CRM can do that should get marketers, salespeople, or business owners pretty excited! Here’s how a CRM can make you a more effective marketing and sales machine...

1. Better Lead Intelligence for Both Marketing and Sales

Wouldn’t it be helpful if you knew when a potential customer was looking at your website? Implementing a CRM will allow your sales team to know how many times potential customers have visited your site or if they have ever talked to a member of your sales team.

When a salesperson works within a CRM that integrates with their company’s marketing software, they’re able to access this type of detailed, real-time lead intelligence all from one place.

2. Better Sales and Marketing Alignment

Real-time reporting holds both teams accountable to their goals and helps one another work together toward shared outcomes. (It’s also worth noting that CRMs are used for customers, too, not just leads; so customer service communications and metrics can be easily documented for account managers to reference as well.)

3. Help Sales Prioritize its Pipeline

When sales and marketing set up a CRM, they can identify important criteria and even implement a lead scoring system. Organizational systems like these reduce time spent sifting through leads, and enable salespeople to prioritize the best opportunities.

4. Closed-Loop Reporting Lets Marketers Improve Campaigns

When you integrate marketing software with your CRM, marketing can easily analyze the effectiveness of its campaigns using closed-loop reporting. For example, when a salesperson converts a lead into a paying customer, they can mark it in the CRM, and it will automatically be noted in your marketing software, too.

To learn more about what a customer relationship management system can do for your business, download our free e-book, The Beginner's Guide to CRM and learn about the 9 must-have features that any business that is aiming to organize their systems and improve their efficiency, must have.