6 Ways CRM Can Boost IT Firms’ Revenue

CRM gives salespeople a single view of customers, records all interactions, and allows you to track prospects through the sales funnel, right?

Yes, but it can do so much more. IT firms that are currently struggling to see the expected return on investment in CRM need to look again at its capabilities and ask themselves if they’re using the platform to its full potential.

Here are 6 ways you could be doing more with your CRM.

1. Aligning sales and marketing

Today’s IT buyers don’t follow the traditional path through the demand funnel. They’re researching online and are typically 60% through the process before they even engage with sales. It’s now more of a buying process than a sales cycle.

As a result, IT firms have to align sales and marketing. Everyone involved in the demand funnel needs a shared, single view of where prospects are in that process, operating as a single, fluid team. Your CRM can enable this alignment, providing end to end visibility across your entire demand funnel.

2. Marketers learning from salespeople

The right CRM platform should allow your marketers to get insight from salespeople. It can offer vital information which helps define the exact customer persona, so that the organisation can target its marketing activities more precisely. Deliver ever more relevant content through ever more ideal channels and you will drive ever greater revenues.

3. Simpler, quicker quoting

Use your CRM platform in the right way and it should significantly reduce the administration burden on your salespeople. It should allow them to quote at the click of a button with any discounts and multiple versions preset into the system. This frees them up to spend time building relationships with customers.

4. Deep insight into performance

Over time your CRM platform should deliver deep insight into your pipeline, forecasting, KPIs, ROI, conversion at each stage, and so on. You should be able to track the performance of individual sales reps and channels. Armed with all this information you can work to improve performance and deliver greater revenues.

5. Spot at risk customers

Winning customers is important; keeping them is even more important. Your CRM platform should give you a simple view of customers who are at risk. This might be as simple as highlighting those who have a renewal coming up or those that have not bought from you for a while or those that have reduced spending. Or it could be a Red, Amber, Green traffic light system based on a set of criteria you have defined. Whatever your definition of at risk, you can implement such process in CRM. Correctly identify the customers you might be about to lose, and you can take steps to keep them.

6. Maximise Marketing Automation

Both your CRM and Marketing Automation platforms become far more effective when integrated with each other. Marketing Automation and CRM are complementary tools that only reach their full potential when paired together and tightly integrated, but very few IT firms are using them in this way.

CRM is far, far more than a simple sales tool, and the IT firms that recognise this and extend the ways they use CRM, are discovering all the opportunities it can present and reaping the benefits. Surely, it’s time to join them?

To learn more about how CRM can help you to boost revenue, read our white paper CRM Software for IT Companies or contact one of our team on: +44 118 3030 100 

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