Slice of life as an entrepreneur – Sales

 

That’s what scared me the most when I started Cofinia: selling.

I had never made a sale. Neither near nor far.

I found myself very funny when, in the fall of 2016, I created a CRM account to manage my 4 clients and my 3 opportunities.

Did I need a CRM? Not really.

But I was convinced that it would be useful to me one day, so why not start on the right foot!

I finally killed two birds with one stone, since it was Zoho’s CRM that introduced me to Zoho Books and developed our expertise on more than 15 Zoho applications.

Then, now, I don’t see CRM as a system only to generate sales, but also as a daily work tool that allows us to be much more efficient.

Here’s why.

 What is a CRM?

Customer relationship management (or customer relationship management CRM) can be defined as the strategy of identifying, understanding, managing and meeting the needs of potential customers and existing customers. The objective of having a CRM is to centralize all data and activities related to prospects and customers in order to:

1. To help document all required information to provide a 360 degree view of customer needs and preferences.
2. To provide various functions to automate and manage sales and marketing processes as well as interact and engage with customers on a regular basis.

A CRM helps a company manage its sales process, turn prospects into customers, and establish and strengthen long-term relationships with them.

Why do businesses need a CRM?

Three out of four customers say they have spent more money with a product or service provider because of a positive customer experience.

47% of companies using a CRM say their CRM has a “significant impact” on customer satisfaction (Source: Capterra).

CRMs are known to improve customer retention by up to 27% more.

Sales teams gain up to 34% efficiency gains.

CRM tends to reduce the sales cycle by 10%.

As simple as that, a CRM helps increase sales!

Benefits of having a CRM system

Anytime access to customer data

A CRM allows you to record customer data in an organized way. So your customer information is securely stored on a cloud-based platform and your teams can connect with customer information anywhere in real time.

Assign roles and responsibilities in your teams

Another benefit of having centralized data in a CRM is that it can be shared among team members. You can create or automate the creation of tasks and assign them to managers according to territory or department criteria, for example. This will ensure that each employee works in much the same way, according to a defined and evolving process that can be analyzed and improved by monitoring performance indicators.

Streamline the different processes

The CRM comes with a wide range of features that can help increase the sales team’s ability to close more deals, help the marketing team in acquiring more leads, make it easier for support teams how to respond to customer requests faster, all at the same time.

Quantify potential sales

A well-configured CRM will help you get a view of your sales pipeline. By knowing your potential sales by date and probability, you will be in a better position to plan the resources required to meet your customers’ needs. Whether it is with the planning of your human resources or your inventories, you will be able to see the strong periods and the troughs of the waves coming.

Make smart decisions

The CRM contains a host of reports on leads, customers, sales, and a host of other metrics. We only improve what we measure. We can make decisions based on intuition, but we can also corroborate this intuition with numbers! With a CRM, it is possible to make the right decisions at the right time. In addition to the sales pipeline, we can measure a lot of information, the average time of a sales cycle, the performance of a salesperson, sales by customers and also, in many cases, survey customer satisfaction.

Why Choose Zoho CRM

 Zoho’s CRM is one of the best CRMs out there.

https://www.zoho.com/crm/blog/april-2019-gartner-peer-insights-customers-choice-for-sfa.html

In addition to its many features, it is part of an ecosystem of 40 connected applications to cover a large part of a company’s needs for its management tools ( Zoho One).

Key Features in Zoho CRM

Customize your CRM

Once you’ve adopted CRM for your business, it’s ideal to modify it to suit your needs and not the other way around. Zoho CRM is flexible enough to adapt to your business process. You can add/remove fields, add modules, build reports and dashboards according to your needs.

Let the CRM do some of the work for you

The CRM makes it possible to automate some of these repetitive tasks and thus save time for other important activities. For example, use blueprints to determine a chain of actions to do in specific cases, integrate contact acquisition forms with your website to avoid double entry.

Connect, Communicate, Collaborate

Communicating with customers is getting more and more sophisticated and with Zoho CRM, you can put it all in one place. Be it emails, phone calls, live messaging (chat) or social media like Facebook or Twitter, all your interactions can be viewed from the CRM.

Integrate CRM with other applications

Zoho CRM integrates with a host of apps like Zoho Books, Zoho Project, Zoho MarketingHub, or other third-party apps like Quickbooks, Mailchimp, Google, and Microsoft. Synchronization is already planned. You may be using software solutions to perform specific functions in your business. Be aware that it is possible to develop a connection with the CRM in order to manage the customer relationship in one place.

A CRM is practically a must-have for businesses, especially for SMEs that have limited resources. It allows you to simplify your life and increase your sales, but above all to make the sales process more efficient.

 

Stay tuned and don’t miss any of our new publications

 

Access our Tools

We provide you with completely free tools to help you familiarize yourself with the management tools

Make an appointment!

Make a telephone appointment with us to learn more about what we offer as a service and how we can help you.

Follow us

Follow us on our social networks to learn more about our company, our values ​​and our services. facebooktwitteryoutube