By now, all of us have heard about “Customer Relationship Management” (CRM). But not everyone understands what CRM software does or what it means for your business.

So let’s go back to basics and explain what CRM is exactly.

The Definition

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It encompasses both a philosophy and an approach to managing all interactions with your current and prospective customers. While CRM is about MORE than just technology, it typically involves using CRM software to organize and automate your sales, marketing, customer service, and support activities.

The Function

The most common and critical functions of any good CRM system typically include:

  • Contact & Communications Management – one of the most important functions of CRM is to store information about all your contacts in a single database (like ERP stores all your operational data). Contact numbers, meeting notes, email communication, transaction history, and other critical sales and customer data is in one location rather than spread across stand-alone laptops or disconnected spreadsheets.
  • Lead/Opportunity Management – because all contacts and communication are stored in one place, your sales team can leverage the tools and features in CRM software to track and manage leads from the first contact to customer acquisition.
  • SalesForce Automation – automate day-to-day sales process activities like follow-up tasks, reminders, and meetings which result in more time interacting with prospects and less time with spreadsheets and administration.
  • Reports and Insight – CRM provides meaningful reports to help you make sense of all the data you’re collecting. KPIs and dashboards allow you to track leads, manage your pipeline, and measure sales performance. You can monitor and analyze sales activities across your company so you can focus on opportunities that have the best chance to close.

CRM Is Not Just For Sales

Sage CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a comprehensive program that brings all your sales information together to help you make the most of every opportunity.

It will help you with allocating leads, coordinating calendars, giving you all the information you need in one easy to use screen.  Sage CRM reduces administrative time for sales people, leaving them free to do what they need to do, sell.  While Sage CRM was designed to help in the sales portion of your business, it has evolved to be an effective tool in your marketing campaigns and in customer sales and support.

Better information resources from across the business help marketers get a better target for their campaigns, leading to higher quality prospects. In addition to better targeting capabilities, Sage CRM can help marketers increase the flow of leads, carry out meaningful campaign analysis, track the success of their campaigns, keep up with their activities, and generate accurate return on investment calculations.

The customer service and support aspect of Sage CRM has been enhanced to help you manage your customer relationships with ease.  Your employees will be able to communicate with their customers more effectively, allowing them to maximize customer satisfaction which will increase customer loyalty in the long run.

Keep Track of Prospects and Customers With Ease

Keeping tabs on lead opportunities and sales figures is important. Sales teams come up with all sorts of ways to keep track of customer data, their own leads, and their own sales figures.  How do you know when sales are up to par or below satisfactory?

You can rely on each of your sales representatives to provide you with a periodic update in the form of a weekly meeting or email report, but that would be inefficient and time-consuming for all parties involved.  Instead, use an affordable and efficient customer relationship management (CRM) solution, such as Sage CRM, to keep tabs on your team and all of your marketing and sales opportunities.  Using a powerful CRM solution, instead of fancy spreadsheets or hand-written notes, lets your sales team focus on prospects and customers, while you focus on the success of the marketing and sales activities.

Sage CRM manages all of the important marketing and sales functions – from lead management to sales forecasting.  You can have all of your important sales data in one spot and access real-time data at your convenience, instead of waiting for the weekly meeting. Use the customized, interactive dashboard to monitor key metrics, such as regional sales data or sales figures by department or person.  Know how each territory is doing or which sales representative is leading in sales.  Whatever you are looking for, you can find quickly and easily in Sage CRM.

Your team can organize marketing campaigns and use built-in mail merge features to create personalized letters. After the campaigns are sent out, you can analyze the rate of leads and sales that result.  Learn what is working, as well as what doesn’t so you can fine-tune your campaigns and generate better leads and more sales. You and your team can use the case-tracking and workflow features to automate prospect and customer follow-up.  Touch base when product replenishments are needed,  send out a customer survey or thank you letter, or use your own workflows to improve customer service and satisfaction.

Having each of your sales team send you periodic updates on their activities leaves you with a stack of information that you need to validate and analyze.  Save yourself some time and trouble by using a more organized and powerful CRM solution.

The Benefits

At the end of the day, CRM software helps your sales and service teams become more efficient and effective. They’re spending less time managing routine administrative tasks and more time closing deals and generating revenue. And because all sales and contact data is stored in one place, your interaction with customers is more accurate and consistent. In addition to eliminating duplicate data and spreadsheets, management has a full picture of customer performance across all departments to help make critical decisions.

It’s also important to recognize that as a Sage 100 customer, you get the added benefit of real-time integration with Sage CRM. That means data entered or edited in either system automatically updates the other.

Now That You Know …
Now that you know what CRM is and how it benefits your business, feel free to contact us if you’d like to learn more about how Sage CRM works hand-in-hand with Sage 100.