Following up our last blog post, we’re going to talk about the benefits of a CRM for B2B organizations. Some people might think that B2Bs specifically have less need for CRMs considering they often deal with fewer clients on average than most B2Cs. But even if the end users are fewer, the volume and value of transactions is usually much higher - and the need to stay organized and track the communication and sales process, on a per customer basis, is so important.
There are many things a good CRM can do that should get marketers, salespeople, or business owners pretty excited!
Here’s how a CRM can make your Inbound Sales more effective and guide you to become a better sales machine.
1 | Better Lead Intelligence for Both Marketing and Sales
Wouldn’t it be helpful if you knew when a potential client was looking at your website?
If you have a CRM that integrates with your company’s marketing software, your sales team will know how many times potential clients have visited your site. If they’re able to access this type of detailed, real-time lead intelligence all from one place, salespeople will have better insight into the prospect before they talk to them.
And this isn’t just beneficial to sales; it’s beneficial to marketing as well. A CRM will allow your marketing team to see which leads turn into clients. More specifically, you can see what brought them to your website and what pages they looked at before becoming a client. When a marketer works in a marketing platform that is integrated with a CRM, they're able to figure out which of their efforts are working best.
2 | Better Sales and Marketing (SMarketing) Alignment
Sales and marketing both have numbers they need to hit each month, and when both teams have visibility into one another metrics they can easily assess each team’s progress and identify and remedy problems early on in the month. To read more about steps you can take to close the sales/marketing gap, read one of our previous blog posts here.
Real-time reporting holds both teams accountable to their goals and helps one another work together toward shared outcomes. (It’s also worth noting that CRMs are used for clients too, not just leads; so client service communications and metrics can be easily documented for account managers to reference as well.
3 | Helps Sales Prioritize its Pipeline
A CRM not only gives complete visibility into the sales pipeline, but it also helps sales people prioritize who to call first so they don’t miss important opportunities. When sales and marketing set up a CRM, they can identify important criteria and even implement a lead scoring system. Organizational systems like these reduce time spent sifting through leads, and enable salespeople to prioritize the best opportunities.
4 | Closed-Loop Reporting Lets Marketers Improve Campaigns
When you integrate marketing software with your CRM, marketing can easily analyze the effectiveness of its campaigns using closed-loop reporting. For example, when a salesperson converts a lead into a paying client, he or she can mark it in the CRM, and it will automatically be noted in your marketing software, too. This allows marketing to do two important things. First, marketing can automatically remove this lead for their nurturing sequences, and instead send it client-focused information. Secondly, marketing is now able to attribute this new client to a specific campaign and channel. Mapping marketing activities to sales events is critical for marketing to improve future campaigns.
When you have more streamlined processes, and a more connected sales and marketing team - lead nurturing comes naturally, and you avoid issues stemming from disorganization - such as missed sales opportunities.
To reap the full benefits of a CRM and Inbound Sales, you have to choose one with the features that are right for your business today, and that can grow with you as your business evolves. In our next blog post, we will discuss several must-have features that your business should look for when choosing a CRM.
THE BRIT AGENCY is a B2B Inbound Marketing Agency providing Inbound Marketing, Inbound Website Design and Inbound Sales services to companies around the world. We're focused on growing website traffic, qualified leads and sales, using the Inbound lead generation and marketing automation process.
THE BRIT AGENCY is a certified Gold Tier Hubspot Partner, a HubSpot COS certified Inbound Website Design Agency, a Shopify eCommerce Partner, and a certified "Google Badged Agency Partner". We have offices in Toronto and Barrie, Canada, and Salisbury, UK.
