Signs that indicate your business is in dire need of a CRM

Regardless of the size of your business or industry, managing leads and customers is basic to every organization. If you are still using paper records, spreadsheets, folders, or emails to keep track of your customer’s activity/ history, you are not only wasting time and energy but also missing out on a valuable opportunity to develop your business. If you are still not convinced that your business needs the right tool or process to tackle the above issues, here are some telltale signs that indicate your business desperately needs a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool.

1. If your Lead database hits 10000 leads/ year

Starting a new business is great but if you are struggling to handle the new influx of leads/customers, it is difficult to nurture them properly. Manual tasks associated with this, such as data entry don’t work when you have several leads coming in, say, for example, 10000 leads in a year. An intelligent CRM can handle all of this groundwork for you in a timely and effective manner, not only to add several thousands of leads whenever you want but also to nurture your leads by automatically sorting and prioritizing them so that your sales team is on top of the high potential leads.

2. If you have a sales team of 5 or more people

The objective of every single organization is to enhance sales. But how can you accomplish this if your sales representatives are filling out sales reports into spreadsheets with incomplete information?

In order to generate an instant sales report, to keep track of your sales team’s activity, to access and manage all leads and customers by your sales team, a CRM is necessary. A CRM helps in assigning roles and responsibilities to each user in the sales team thus enabling you to determine how your sales representatives are spending their time and what actions should be taken to help them win more business.

3. If you generate leads through the website

Website is the prime source of lead generation for an organization. With your website being the core hub of your online marketing campaigns, you will naturally drive qualified traffic to meet your goals. When a potential lead lands on your website, your first objective is to capture his information in order to be able to stay in touch with him and guide him further down the sales funnel.

No matter what category your business belongs to, if you generate leads through a website, you must have a website with a CRM Integrated contact form for better lead engagement and sales conversion

A CRM integrated contact form has enormous benefits for your business. A few of them are, the instant capture of customer data, automated response to leads and customers, lead assignment to your sales team and follow-ups to nurture them, efficient tracking of leads, etc.,

4. If you run Lead generation Ads in Facebook & Instagram

Facebook and Instagram are popular based on their ability to run targeted lead ads. Connecting with leads quickly or even setting an autoresponder is key to speeding up your lead nurturing and conversion process. A CRM with Facebook Lead Ads integration would help you to capture leads automatically and send them personalized auto-response emails/ text messages. Any mobile CRM integrated with WhatsApp can add value to your lead management process. Connecting with leads over WhatsApp takes you closer to the conversion stage.

5. If you get leads from WhatsApp messages or phone calls

Most of the companies, use Phone calls, & WhatsApp as their main communication channel with new leads and existing clients. If your business employs WhatsApp and phone call-based lead generation & management, then you should use a CRM that has the ability to track phone calls, alert on new incoming numbers, prompt calls from existing leads and capture your WhatsApp inquiries as leads automatically.

6. If your sales rep still uses diaries for scheduling appointments

In this digital world, it is tedious to even imagine using diaries for fixing and scheduling appointments manually for prospect communication. It is difficult to carry the diaries wherever we go and tiresome to search when we need specific details.

In order to sort out the above issues, a CRM automates the sales process where you can book meetings by embedding your calendar on your website so prospects can conveniently schedule meetings directly on your website.

7. If your sales rep finds it difficult to connect with leads based on the lead’s physical business card

Despite all the technological advancements in today’s digital world, business cards still retain their significance. It is preferred to share the business card during the conference and some trade events since the paper business cards are easy to share. If you end up adding all the business cards collected by sales reps across different territories each year, the number can easily go up to a thousand or more.

But most of the time, we end up losing the cards of some important people we met, or we may tend to forget the important notes about a particular person. So, organizing the business cards after a meeting is of utmost importance. But that always happens to be a laborious process.

A CRM with a business card scanner comes to our rescue in these situations, helping us in saving time and store the card details instantly. CRM allows you to engage with your leads instantly using automated greeting emails and by sharing digital business cards. CRM extracts information from business cards and categorizes the information into fields such as name, job title, sign, email address, etc. It is very useful while attending events such as trade shows, exhibitions, and product launches.

8. If you are not able to generate an instant sales report

Sales reports pave the way to your business growth. Sales reports help the Directors to gain insights about the business to help make an informed decision.  A CRM helps in generating an instant sales report where you can track revenue, identify trends in the market, map out a business strategy based on the trends and get visibility into the performance of the products, services, and industries.

If you have spotted one or more of these signs, your business needs a CRM system. Digging deeper into the field of CRM will make you realize that it is an extremely powerful tool that doesn’t have a steep learning curve. With businesses under unexplained pressure to provide personalized customer service, CRM software can deliver tangible and quantifiable results.