Power your sales management with a CRM software

Sales play a major role in making a business profitable and successful. However, selling a product has never been easy. Smart planning, resources, skills, and technology is needed for increasing sales and ensuring steady cash flow. Even great companies stumble without proper sales management.

Action is the foundation key to all success- Pablo Picasso

It is pivotal to gain control over all aspects of sales for keeping the revenue high and delivering the best value to the customers.

But how to manage sales successfully?

Well, a smart tool like a CRM can come to your aid. Before we find out how can a CRM be beneficial in sales management, let’s ponder over the basics first.

Sales management- what is it and why is it important?

No matter whether the company is small or big, all have an agenda to increase their business sales. Every department of any company indirectly focuses on this agenda.

The concept of sales management applies to the segment of a business that directly interacts with prospects for converting them into paying customers. There are many things the sales professionals need to do for increasing this sales conversion like plan new strategies, organize processes, track opportunities, nurture relationships, evaluate sales performance, etc.

A well-planned sales management process helps in –

• Shortening the sales cycle
• Closing deals at a faster pace
• Generating more revenue
• Boosting profit margin
• Decreasing churn
• Building lasting customer relationship

Sales managers are often on the driving seat entrusted with the responsibility of handling the sales management process. They need to meet the expectations, keep their team on track as well as achieve their own sales targets. This is why a smart tool like CRM is required to make their work easier.

CRM- a preferred tool for effective sales management

By fusing your sales management process with the best CRM software, you can drive your sales efforts in a profitable direction. CRM system fits perfectly in every sales scenario and helps to excel in every area. CRM is the perfect software for sales management.

Let’s find out how CRM solution helps in sales management.

Better deal and pipeline management

Scenario 1:

You have leads in the pipeline, but the majority of the information regarding each lead is missing. Some don’t have an email address while others don’t have company information.

Scenario 2:

Most of the deals are stalled for long at one stage.

Scenario 3:

The high-value deals that appeared close to the end weren’t converted.

Scenario 4:

There is a lot of clutter. You can’t find the deals needed and see their status.

Scenario 5:

No visibility into the sales cycle.

How can CRM software for sales management help?

A CRM offers an organized environment where all the deals are streamlined in a centralized dashboard. It adds discipline to your sales cycle. Easily find out if there are enough deals in the pipeline and what’s the status of each deal.

Through profile enrichment feature in a CRM, you can instantly get the information required for each lead.

• You or your team don’t need to spend the precious selling hours in searching for the missing data for new customer profiles.
• A CRM automatically fetches contact information, website URLs, social profiles, and many other information in seconds.

Get real-time insights about each deal and their related activities.

• See which deals are moving forward in the sales pipeline CRM and which are stuck in one place for a long time.
• Know when your sales reps have last contacted the prospect (made a call, sent an email or scheduled a meeting).
• See if there are any notes attached to the deals.

CRM gives you the flexibility to set win probability for the deal.

• Know which deals are about to close.
• Prioritize and give attention to high-value deals at the right time to ensure they don’t slip through the cracks and save time by prioritizing critical deals.
• You can avoid unnecessary speculations by manually setting win probability.
• With drag and drop functionality in CRM, the stage of the deal can easily be changed.

In CRM the deals can be tagged.

• Group companies with similar interests together using tags.
• Organize deals by categories.
• Sort and find the information you need in minutes.

You can create multiple sales pipelines for different sales processes.

• With sales pipeline view, know which deals are being approached and given attention by the sales reps.
• Easily see which deals have overdue activities.
• See at which stage your reps are losing maximum deals.
• A sales pipeline can be customized as per your business requirements in a CRM.
• You can add your own stages.
• You get the flexibility to add, edit or rename as many deals as required.

Better analysis and feedback

Scenario 1:

Your sales reps claim they had made many calls, but you cannot see the results.

Scenario 2:

The deals are moving in the sales pipeline, but you don’t know at what pace.

Scenario 3:

You have no clue which marketing channel is working in your favor.

Scenario 4:

The prospects say your sales reps had made a certain commitment, but your sales reps are denying it.

How can CRM software for sales management help?

Sales performance evaluation is crucial for spotting the improvement areas. CRM allows you to create insightful reports for measuring various sales metrics.

Monitor your sales reps’ performance with the data collected through a CRM.

• Know how many calls were made and emails were sent by your sales reps.
• Easily see the outcomes of the activities to address false claims made by the sales reps.
• See which of your sales reps are closing the maximum deals.

Measure everything from initial contact to final sales in a CRM.

• You can visualize how deals are moving through different stages of the sales pipeline.
• Know how much time does it take for a deal to move from one stage to another.
• Find out how much time do your sales reps take to nurture the deals. Companies excelling at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost.

You have been putting cent percent efforts on promoting your product through the various marketing channels. But which amongst them is bringing the maximum sales? Well, you can find that out through a CRM software.

• Dissect your sales outcomes by channels.
• With insights garnered through a CRM know which channels are helping in generating maximum leads.
• See on which channels the prospects are most active.

Most of the advanced CRM comes with a built-in virtual phone system that allows you to record the sales calls.

• You can listen to the recorded sales calls to see how the sales reps are communicating with the clients.
• The recorded calls can be used to provide feedback and optimize sales calls.
• You can guide the sales reps and help them in addressing challenging situations.
• Recorded calls of the top reps can be used to train the new reps.

Email tracking, collaboration, and sales automation

Scenario 1:

The sales reps are experimenting with their email campaigns and targeting multiple prospects. But they are not getting the expected response rate.

Scenario 2:

Sales reps are spending too much time drafting the same emails.

Scenario 3:

Most of the prospects aren’t followed up by the sales reps, which is why several deals do not convert into sales.

Scenario 4:

Many infuriated clients are leaving and switching to the competitors as their queries aren’t resolved. They aren’t getting the replies on time.

How can CRM software for sales management help?

Email is an important medium to communicate in sales. Extra attention needs to be given to the email outreach. CRM helps you in doing that.

You can track all your outbound emails in CRM and measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

• CRM gives you the click and open rates to see which prospects are reading and which are ignoring your emails.
• You can see which subject lines are working and what do you need to change to increase your response rate.

You don’t need to waste your precious time in drafting the same emails repeatedly.

• You can create email templates and save them in the CRM.
• These email templates can be tracked to measure the performance.
• You make amendments in real-time with email tracking reports.

The best thing about a CRM is that you can put most of your activities on autopilot

• You can easily automate your emails.
• You can set reminders while drafting an email and never miss a follow-up.
• Just by setting intelligent workflows you can send automated emails on specific date and time and automatically send greetings on prospects’ birthdays and anniversaries to nurture the relationship.

Through shared team inbox in a CRM, your sales team can collaborate and respond quickly to the client queries.

• CRM helps in creating a shared email environment for offering better assistance to the clients.
• All the communication is streamlined in one place. So, anyone can refer to communication and solve the client’s queries in the absence of the other sales rep.
• Your sales reps can easily involve you or their teammates in an important email conversation.

Wrapping up

An effective sales management process is crucial for achieving your company’s revenue goals. The best CRM can be of great help in managing your sales. Salesmate CRM is one name that has been trusted by most companies for sales management. It is an all-in-one sales CRM software that helps you in managing each area of sales with perfection.

You can track your deals, see your sales history, find out how are your sales reps performing, automatically log activities. Moreover, it even allows you to add your products to the deals for tracking and maintaining everything you sell in one place. Try Salesmate for free to see how it can help you in your sales management.