How to Keep Your Leads Organised
In doing business or working in Australia, you will encounter an overwhelming array of acronyms – ROI, KPI, SLA, SCM, GL, T&A, PP&E, BI, WMS, WBS, EBA just to name a few.
But one particular acronym will make your life easier – CRM.
Why Using a CRM Is Crucial in Efficient Lead Generation Sydney
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.
This is a software that can greatly help you manage your leads and keep track of interactions with your prospects and current customers.
A standard CRM will allow you to store and manage important information about your prospects:
- Name
- Affiliation
- Position
- Phone number
- Other vital details that you are legally allowed to keep
There are CRMs that also allow grouping of multiple contacts from a single company under one account, which is helpful for sales managers.
Aside from contact details, CRMs can help you keep track of customer touchpoints including in-person meetings, voicemails, phone calls, and emails.
Some CRMs will enable you to monitor customer journey too.
It is not surprising that CRM growth is not slowing down.
Types of CRM Solutions for Leads Management
There are four types of CRM Solutions that are commonly used by Australian companies in managing their leads conversion:
Off the Shelf CRM
Off the Shelf CRM is the most affordable leads management solution in the market.
This is ideal for Australian businesses that are just testing the waters.
This basic form of CRM is often a cut-down version of CRM packages and may not provide the flexibility you need.
Most Off the Shelf CRMs are already designed for a specific business such as real estate, insurance, and loan providers.
Outsourced CRM
Outsourced CRMs are web-based lead management solution that is ideal for Australian businesses where the sales team are not yet skilled enough to use system.
This is ideal for small to medium businesses who want their sales team to focus on dealing with clients so they outsource the bulk of lead analytics and management to another organisation.
Customised CRM
Large Australian businesses who have complex sales processes usually choose customised CRM to suit their needs.
This type of CRM can be tailored for the unique processes of an organisation and usually requires software engineers, marketing specialists, and expert consultants.
It also takes time to operate and ensure smooth transition. Hence, this is not something that is easy to install and use.
This type is considered an advanced form of CRM that is often reserved for larger organisations with hundreds of sales people.
Managed CRM
This type of CRM solution is considered a hybrid between a custom and outsourced solution.
A business may choose to rent a custom suite and use it as needed but you may need to make the changes to suit your sales processes.
Once you choose the right type of CRM, a unified system can be a lifesaver if you are struggling with managing your leads.
But is this really worth it?
Yes!
Here are the top five reasons why you need a CRM for your business regardless of your industry, maturity, or size.
Top Five Reasons Why You Need a CRM for Leads Management Australia
1. CRM Will Centralise Your Data Storage
Efficiency is the secret sauce of successful sales management.
It is not business savvy to waste valuable time scrolling down your call history or inbox to get details about your last touchpoint with a prospect.
Relying on your memory is unreliable.
If you miss out an important touchpoint, there is a risk of sending the same email several times, which can be annoying for a customer.
Plus, it shows to your prospect that you are not efficient in managing your sales process.
With a few clicks on a CRM, you can easily and accurately access the record of the entire touchpoint history about a prospect.
There is no need to manually reconstruct the timeline of customer touchpoints again.
Because all customer-related data is now centralised in CRM, it will help your sales team to assess customer needs and even anticipate their problems with the right timing.
This will all increase client satisfaction, ensure loyalty, and boost profit margins.
2. CRM Can Make Your Sales Manager’s Life Easier
A CRM can help you standardise how your salespeople monitor their activities and customer interactions.
This can help you streamline reporting.
In the absence of a CRM, different sales reps will use different ways to track their activities.
This makes it difficult for sales managers to consolidate sales data.
CRM can standardise data entry, so sales managers can easily combine and evaluate data to make sense of the general health of the business.
Ensuring consistency in your sales activity will reduce friction in reassigning a resigned rep’s opportunity pool, changing sales territories, and passing a lead from one sales agent to another.
3. CRM is a Scalable and Sustainable Tool for Growing Businesses in Australia
Maybe you are still using a spreadsheet to manage your customers.
This is manageable if you have less than 10 customers.
But what if you are doing great with your marketing campaigns that your customers suddenly increased to tenfold?
The time you need to spend recording prospect and client information will eventually consume your working days.
Moreover, what if you need to evaluate the activities of salespeople to discover what strategies or sequence of touchpoints works best?
Relying on scattered data from multiple sources can be dragging or compromise your capacity to obtain a more accurate picture.
4. CRM Improves Business Communications
Using a CRM can significantly improve communication within a business.
What if one staff is already working a lead that one agent already spoke to six months ago?
What if you are assigning someone to take over Sydney and only provided a list of prospects with no record of touchpoints and progress on deals?
Moreover, using a CRM can provide transparency to your sales process.
So, it can provide you an unconstrained overview of information to other members of the sales team.
With a CRM, sales reps can easily learn what’s already been done with a particular prospect and what’s the next thing he should do.
There is no need for your agent to send emails to a former colleague to ask about a prospect because the details are already recorded in the CRM.
With the system in place, everyone can view the status of a specific lead without the need to get in touch with the representative who is in charge of the deal.
The unified system in the CRM makes it easy for sales managers to understand, analyse and evaluate the whole sales performance of an organisation in any given time.
5. CRM Can Help You Save Money
Using a CRM to streamline your leads management process is very cost effective.
Some Australian business owners are wondering how is this even possible when a CRM system often carries a high price tag…
It is crucial to look at the price cuts that you can take advantage if you have a unified system handling your sales process.
Without a CRM, your employees might be wasting time every day using traditional methods in recording customer profile.
With a CRM, the business can save time and money because everything can be automated.
The system will centralise all data recording and access so your sales team can focus on making money for the business.
When a CRM system is already in place, you can downsize on your analytical and marketing team, so you will need fewer people.
And if you are just starting your business with an integrated CRM in place, you only need to hire the skeletal force you need, and this can save time and money.
Moreover, a CRM can help you analyse which sales or marketing campaigns are bringing in more money.
Hence, business owners can easily decide when to boost a campaign and when to stop another.
This will help the organisation put their resources where they need it most.
This will save your marketing and sales teams time in creating campaigns, and can help your team understand the true value of their efforts.
Drawbacks of Using a CRM
Using a CRM system can significantly help you grow your business.
But bear in mind that this is just a tool and it still requires efficient use to make it beneficial for the organisation.
A CRM system may not help you a lot if you:
- Don’t have a sales team who is committed to learning how the CRM works.
- Don’t have a sales team who knows how to appreciate data from CRM analytics.
- Don’t personalise the CRM to fit your brand image.
- Don’t have close coordination with your marketing team to align the brand image with the CRM processes.
If you want to grow your business, you should definitely use a CRM.
You can easily convert your leads into actual paying customers if you can reach out to your prospects at the right time and equipped with the right information.
CRM is the right tool for this.
Wealthify is using CRM in managing our lead generation services Australia.
Feel free to contact us on 1300 41 00 81.