Salesmate - Sales CRM

 Salesforce does a nice job of making people think all other CRMs lack functionality. We checked out Zoho and found that not only did it have all of the functionality Salesforce has, but the interface was much more thoughtful and well-designed. Bernard Health's bottom line has improved significantly since switching to Zoho.

 *All prices shown here are in USD. The names and logos for Zoho are trademarks of Zoho Corp. All other trademarks, brand names, or product names belong to their respective holders. Comparison information as of 15th July, 2021.

 If not, don’t fret; you’re not the only one. 22% of salespeople have never heard of a CRM tool. On top of that, 40% still use manual methods, such as spreadsheets and email programs, for customer data storage. Considering that CRM applications can help increase sales by up to 29%, it’s important to understand how to use this technology to nurture buyers down your sales funnel and continue the relationship once the deal has been closed.

 Check out our guide on customer relationship management to learn what CRM is, why it’s important, how to select the best CRM software, and how to make the most of your CRM software.

 At its core, “customer relationship management” is a strategy for managing potential and current customer relationships through collecting and analyzing data. You can select and implement different customer relationship management CRM process to detail how you’re going to approach your relationships with customers.

 Typically, however, “CRM” refers to customer relationship management as a software (which is what we do in this article), not as a strategy. CRM tools are designed to help you efficiently manage customer data to improve relationships. Think of it as a type of intelligent database that’s built around relationships. As you insert customer info into your CRM (e.g., phone calls, emails, contact details), it not only organizes the data but also turns the data into insights.

 For example, according to a Capterra CRM user survey, 47% of respondents cited their CRM as a major factor in customer retention. That same percentage also cited their CRM as helping to increase customer satisfaction. When potential and current customers are happy, they’re likely to not only buy your product but also refer others to your business.

 Customer relationship management systems can be divided into three capability categories of CRM: operational, analytical, and collaborative. Although every CRM should have these capabilities, different companies will lean more towards a specific one depending on their needs.

 Operational CRMs assist with managing the daily activities of company teams. For example, rather than reps having to manually create customer records, the CRM automatically inserts customer contact information into the platform. An operational CRM works well for companies with short sales cycles as these CRMs are extremely efficient.

 Analytical CRMs organize and manage large amounts of data to gain insights on the customer experience. For example, analyze past buying behavior within your CRM to determine what campaigns to roll out for certain customer segments. An analytical CRM is great for companies with heavy competition and multiple customer data points.

 Collaborative CRMs connect communication and data across a company’s sales, marketing, and support departments. This integration makes for a seamless customer experience. For example, when support members can see the conversations that sales reps are having with customers, they can offer better service that matches the reps’ messaging. A collaborative CRM is an excellent option for companies to manage pools of data across departments.

 Beyond capabilities, there are many factors that go into choosing a CRM. Do you want to build your own or use a tool that’s already created? What are the goals of your CRM? How much can you realistically spend on the software? All of these are important considerations as the costs of choosing the wrong CRM are high.

 Customer relationship management software can be used by a number of departments, including sales, marketing, and customer service. Here’s how the tool is typically implemented in each department.

 A sales CRM has become an essential tool for sales departments as customer activities, conversations, and tasks are spread out across sales teams. Use it to manage your sales pipeline, monitor deals, and track customer interactions and progress. Contact management, sales tracking, and CRM reports tools are all in one place with a sales CRM, so you don’t have to implement multiple point solutions.

 A sales CRM is used by both sales reps and sales managers but in different ways. Sales reps use CRMs to communicate directly with customers, while managers use the tool to monitor and assess performance data for their team.

 For example, sales reps can connect with customers by phone or email, manage tasks and appointments, and keep an eye on whether or not they’re going to meet their sales quota. Sales managers can use the CRM to keep tabs on team performance and activities, complete sales forecasting, and create/review reports to see what targets were met and what areas of the pipeline need improvement.

 If you’re with a marketing department, you need to know as much as you can about customer needs. And if you’re with customer service, you need a way to quickly and easily access and answer customer questions. This is where a CRM comes in.

 Marketers use a CRM to learn about leads and customers, so they are able to more effectively target them with campaigns. For example, with a CRM, you can segment customers by geography or industry. The software also allows marketers to track the effectiveness of their campaigns and determine how much revenue their marketing efforts are bringing in.

 Support reps can also use a CRM to manage all customer interactions on one platform — track tickets, make phone calls, and review customer satisfaction metrics. No matter where customer interactions are coming from (social media, live chat, phone, email, etc.), your CRM should be able to create tickets based off of each interaction, so you can solve customer problems faster and more efficiently. You can also make better solution recommendations after reviewing past interactions.

HubSpot Alternative

 Whether for sales, marketing, or customer support, a CRM is a valuable tool for all activities that involve the customer. Learn how to make the most of your CRM (specifically for sales) with the following resources:

 Customer relationship management is not a sprint — it’s a marathon. It takes time to develop strong customer relationships and requires a focus on improving the customer experience. However, combined with the right strategies and software, you can both efficiently and effectively manage customer relationships.

 Of course, we’d like you to consider choosing Zendesk Sell as your sales CRM software. Beyond managing your customer information, our tool also provides valuable insights to improve your pipeline, sales performance, conversations, and processes.

 Over the past 30 years, the term customer relationship management (CRM) has evolved with the times—what was once seen as a tool designed to provide visibility into a company’s sales pipeline has morphed into something much more powerful.

 At its heart, CRM is about managing current and potential customer relationships by collecting and analyzing data. So while sales teams have long used CRM systems for tracking and evaluating leads, they’re now just one of many organizations that rely on the technology.

 “CRM as the industry thinks of it is a tool that was built for salespeople, but the new world of CRM software is not built for salespeople,” says Jon Aniano, vice president of product for Zendesk. “It’s built for the customer, and it’s built for customer experience.”

 That emphasis on the customer, and specifically a business’s relationship with that customer, has pushed CRM systems from their sales niche to a starring role in the customer journey. CRM’s key strength is its ability to provide a single, unified view of each customer, a direct result of how it can collect data from multiple tools and, critically, provide the kind of insights that can fuel proactive support.

 So while sales teams still benefit from CRM technology, other teams derive just as much benefit from it, including customer service, product development, and marketing. And importantly, a CRM solution can help break down internal silos, enabling teams to collaborate more effectively and serve customers holistically.

 In this guide we’ll examine how CRMs help companies build relationships with customers, how that effort can improve business outcomes and customer satisfaction, as well as some techniques for managing the process.

 Why should you build relationships with your customers? Simply put, if your business doesn’t, your competitors will. One of the driving forces in modern consumerism is the rising expectations of customers, who increasingly demand that companies provide an omnichannel support experience. When they reach out to a business, they want to be able to do it from any channel—phone, messaging, email, chat, etc.—and they want to know that the company serving has a clear picture of who they are.

 By nurturing relationships with their customers, businesses drive engagement and loyalty. This is where the different categories of CRM systems come into play. “We’ve got this exploding world of public social media where basically the customer is in control of the conversation, they’re in control of their own experience, and they have incredible expectations about what having a relationship with a company means,” Aniano says. “We’ve gone to this place where companies know they live or die by the actual long-term relationships they establish with their customers.”

 As a result, Aniano says, the cloud-based CRM has become the place where the entire customer relationship—which is composed of customer interactions, or conversations—lives. Those conversations can come from a host of channels, including social media, email, and more. “It’s a place where those conversations are instrumented, where things are recorded and referenced, where a company can now truly understand what value it’s delivering to customers and how it can best maintain that relationship over time,” Aniano says.

 The understanding gleaned from CRM doesn’t just help large companies manage customer relationships—it can also play to the strengths of small businesses, highlighting their innate advantages in providing personalized service to consumers. “Small businesses today are in a world that is more challenging, more daunting, than it has ever been in the past,” Aniano says. “The opportunity for a small business today is to provide a level of relationship that cannot exist between the business and the customer—that cannot exist with a large company.”

 CRMs are particularly well suited to modern business, Aniano says, because many successful companies have transitioned—or are in the process of making the change—from focusing on simply increasing sales to recurring revenue models, such as with software-as-a-service (SaaS). So when future revenue depends on not only maintaining a relationship with a customer but enhancing the customer experience, having a CRM in place becomes crucial.

 “That initial sale is one of the least important interactions you’ll have with a customer over time,” Aniano says. “So CRM implementations have moved from incentivizing sales and creating sales efficiency to delivering the best customer experience possible and maximizing the long-term relationship with the customer.”

 And the wealth of data that a cloud-based CRM centralizes for companies opens up opportunities for greater sales efficiency, proactive support, and targeted marketing efforts, says Shawna Wolverton, senior vice president of product for Zendesk.