By now, you’ve probably heard a good CRM system is vital to successful marketing campaigns, sales cycles, and brand identity. For businesses that have happily used spreadsheets to fulfill most of their customer relationship management needs, it’s fair to ask, “Why do I need a CRM when our current system does the job?” That depends an awful lot on what is meant by “doing the job.”

Whether you’re looking to grow your saturated customer base or need a fresh approach to improving the customer experience, cost-effective CRM software can help.

How a CRM Keeps Customers Coming Back

It’s easy to see why CRM software is currently the fastest-growing enterprise application software category. If you want to make the most of your sales pipeline, CRM software offers the simplest way to monitor customer interactions and deal progress and analyze sales performance. Other benefits include the ability to:

  • Segment customers. Sales teams can build a strong pipeline of prospects, leads, and contacts, but it’s understanding and personalizing marketing to those potential customers that converts them. When you eliminate customer data silos and store customer information in a centralized database, you improve your chances of selling to these customers again and again.
  • Scale the sales process. If you want to grow, you need to set up the right processes for your sales team. When they have one place to track leads, prospects, and customers, they can use the data to identify patterns, determine which approaches are working, and which methods are falling short.
  • Achieve sales goals far above those who don’t use a CRM. For instance, a CRM helps you carry out more efficient email outreach by tracking a customer’s history with your brand. It also helps boosts sales by analyzing and even anticipating customer needs and problems so you can contact them at the precise time they need your product or service most.

Most of all, a CRM helps improve customer satisfaction by documenting all touchpoints with potential and existing customers. Your sales and support teams have easy access to the “whole picture,” enabling them to provide more flexible, responsive, and personalized service. Ideally, this translates into more enjoyable customer experiences, better reviews, and increased customer retention.

CRM as Part of Your Overall Business Strategy

No matter what size your business, the fundamentals of adopting a CRM are the same. An in-depth analysis of your industry, competitors, customer segments, and economic environment should all be used in formulating your sales strategy. What happens next might surprise you, as companies often discover their self-perception differs significantly from how potential and existing customers perceive them.

Successful business growth isn’t only about getting and keeping customers. It’s also about knowing what works and, perhaps more crucially, what doesn’t. While a CRM can’t make sales reps sell more or reduce customer churn if your product or services are fundamentally flawed, it can help you see where internal changes might reposition your brand and drive sales growth.

If you need one more reason to invest in CRM software, here it is: Your competition is likely already using it. Implementing your own CRM keeps you competitive and responsive to change while providing higher levels of personalized customer care.

OnCourse CRM

Sold on the idea of how valuable a CRM solution can be for your business but have no idea where or how to get started? OnCourse is a custom CRM designed to meet your unique customer relationship needs. Budget-friendly and easy to integrate into your existing business framework, it’s the ideal solution for increasing sales and maximizing revenue.

To learn more about what OnCourse can help you achieve, request a sales demo today.