CRM for business development is very important. But how do you make this growth sustainable? Only about 4% of companies ever reach $1 billion in revenue. Firstly, you will have to truly understand the power of what does CRM stand for in business. Because when you use customer relationship management correctly, it can rapidly grow your business. Let me explain how.
POWER FACTS: Simple Steps to Big Growth
1. P: Preserve All Customer Information Together
IBM Research shows that poor data quality has been responsible for a staggering $3.1 trillion in lost revenue each year for U.S. businesses alone. The main purpose of CRM for business is to keep all customer data together in one place. CRM software stores:
– Contact information like names, emails, phones
– Leads or potential customers you are working on
– Sales opportunities and deals you are trying to close
– Every interaction history like emails, calls, meetings
Having this single source of customer truth is critical. Why? It stops miscommunication that frustrates customers and loss of sales. Companies with CRM integration see up to 65% quota attainment rates.
Imagine one employee emails a potential customer about your product. But they forget to log that email in the CRM software. Later, a different employee calls that same person without knowing about the previous email. The potential customer feels annoyed that your company does not know their full story.
With CRM software, every employee can instantly see all past touchpoints and conversation notes about each customer. No one repeats efforts or upsets the customer by being uninformed. Keeping one unified customer view is the #1 job of CRM for business.
2. O: Oversee the Entire Customer Journey
Beyond just storing customer data, CRM manages every stage of the customer journey from beginning to end:
1. When a new lead comes in from your website, ads, events, etc. it gets logged in the CRM software automatically.
2. CRM can then check if that lead matches what you want based on the rules you set. For example, the right company size, industry, or budget. Bad fit leads get flagged.
3. Good fit leads get assigned to a sales rep for fast follow-up based on automated tasks created.
4. All emails, calls, and meetings get tracked in the CRM as the rep works on the sales opportunity.
5. If the deal is won and becomes a new customer, CRM monitors their product usage, customer satisfaction , and customer retention status.
6. If there are risk signs the customer may cancel, alerts remind the rep to check in and resolve issues.
7. When renewal time comes, CRM prioritizes which customers need to upsell conversations versus renewal.
This full customer journey view is extremely valuable. You can visualize risks, upsell chances, and health at every step. Nothing falls through the cracks.
According to research by CSO Insights – “Sales Process Excellence”, maintaining structured processes like these results in a 28% higher cross-sell and upsell revenue optimization. An optimized CRM for business development workflow catches every revenue opportunity at each stage.
3. W: Weld Your Customer Teams
Many teams interact with customers, like sales, marketing, and customer support. Without CRM, these teams operate separately without coordination:
– Marketing feels sales ignores their generated leads
– Sales feels marketing sends poor-quality leads
– Support feels stuck dealing with unhappy customers without context
But with CRM, every team uses the same centralized customer timeline and notes. Marketing sees how sales engage their leads and what happens after. Sales gets full visibility into marketing campaigns driving new leads. Support understands the full pre-sales conversations.
This shared system stops teams from arguing. Everyone follows one playbook for providing excellent customer engagement.
4. E: Evaluate Marketing Performance Tracking
Marketing drives new leads and demand into your sales process. But measuring marketing performance, ROI and revenue attribution is very difficult. This is evident because over 60% of CMOs struggle to quantify and attribute precise ROI impact.
CRM for business solves this by tracking all your marketing automation campaigns across Google, Facebook, LinkedIn ads, and more. You can clearly see which campaigns generate:
– The highest volumes of new leads
– The highest quality sales-ready leads
– The fastest sales cycles and conversion rates
– The most overall influenced revenue
With this data in CRM, you never have to guess marketing’s impact. You can shift budgets towards the best-performing channels.
5. R: Receive Artificial Intelligence Help
Modern CRM systems provide artificial intelligence (AI) that makes selling far easier and smarter. The AI assists reps in valuable ways like:
– Analyzing emails to suggest response templates
– Identifying cross-sell and upsell opportunities for each customer
– Providing customized sales talk tracks based on the customer’s needs
– Predicting the likelihood of deals closing based on risks
– Prioritizing the most valuable deals for reps to focus on
This AI guidance multiplies sales management productivity and success. Reps get in-the-moment advice on positioning, offerings, and tactics to maximize revenue.
6. F: Forecast Revenue Accurately
AI in CRM also enables accurate revenue optimization forecasting. Machine learning can detect patterns in your data that humans can’t easily see, like:
– Which deals are most likely to stall based on buyer signals
– Which existing customers are at risks for canceling based on usage
– What lead sources, industries, and deal stages have the fastest cycles
– How to distribute territories and quotas based on rep performance
This foresight allows you to prioritize, mitigate risks, and adapt your strategy proactively. It’s like having radar to see opportunities and obstacles ahead.
7. A: Automate Manual Processes
Growing efficiently requires automating repetitive tasks. You want employees focused on building relationships and selling instead of manual work. Did you know that business productivity drops by as much as 68% due to repetitive digital work tasks?
CRM automates many routine processes for you, like:
– Enrolling new qualified leads into automated email nurture campaigns
– Scheduling calls/tasks for sales reps to follow up on hot leads quickly
– Automatically updating contact details from other data sources
– Notifying managers when qualified leads meet your criteria
– Requesting product/service provisioning for newly closed customers
These automated CRM workflows save huge amounts of time. Work happens automatically based on your pre-set rules. Employees concentrate solely on selling and customer satisfaction.
8. C: Continuously Improve
To sustain business growth over time, you must continually enhance processes and execution based on results. CRM is invaluable for:
– Testing different sales email templates, call techniques, etc.
– Experimenting with new contract terms, pricing, or business models
– Re-engaging old leads or customers who canceled
– Analyzing “good” versus “bad” deal cycles to improve lead management
– Coaching reps based on granular performance metrics
These iterations and refinements compound over time to strengthen your revenue engine. Growth becomes an ongoing, perpetual habit.
9. T: Take Action on Insights
Having forecasts and insights is useless unless you can quickly take action on them. This is where CRM excels by suggesting specific next steps:
For example, if a valued customer shows less customer engagement, CRM creates a task for their rep. It prompts them to reach out urgently to understand and resolve any issues preventing cancellation.
Or if an important deal stalls in negotiations, CRM flags it as high-risk. The sales manager gets alerted to get directly involved, unblock hurdles, and offer discounts if needed.
This direct path from insight to prompted action is how CRM helps teams rapidly adapt. You can capitalize on revenue opportunities before losing them.
10. S: Synchronize Business Operations
The final way CRM for business accelerates growth is by synchronizing all departments like one system:
– Manufacturing gets automatic alerts when new orders require more capacity
– Hiring plans adjust when sales forecasts spike or dip
– Inventory orders get triggered when the sales pipeline expands
– Product roadmaps match the most requested customer features
– Pricing and discounts optimized based on real-time supply metrics
All operations become precisely orchestrated to deliver revenue. Marketing, sales, and customer service operate seamlessly together for improved business efficiency.
Start Planning Now
As you can see, CRM for business is vital for consistently driving business growth. When implemented well, it supercharges your revenue by:
– Centralizing customer data so no efforts get duplicated or lost
– Automating routine tasks so teams can focus on selling
– Surfacing real-time forecasts that reveal risks and opportunities
– Providing AI guidance so reps take ideal actions every time
– Enabling constant improvement through testing and refinement
– Unifying all customer operations across the entire company
Don’t delay getting a CRM implementation strategy that catalyzes your growth engine. Define your requirements, select the right CRM integration, and begin implementing it immediately. The sooner you effectively link CRM to your business, the faster you’ll accelerate business growth and lasting success.
