CRM platforms are renowned for improving sales, marketing, and services. But, once you’ve implemented your new system and set up users, automations, and integrations – how do you get started?
We’ve put together a comprehensive guide on how to increase sales with CRM – and once you’ve used this to boost your business’ revenue, keep an eye out for our marketing and services guide too.
Create a 360-degree view of each lead
This may sound like a very daunting first step. But, with the right platform, you can let the CRM do the work.
SugarCRM enters lead data for you with as little as an email address. Using tools like Hint, it can crawl the Internet for information on company size, description, location and industry, job title, phone number, and more. Not only does this save your team’s time, but it also finds information that you may not have had before, and therefore gives a better overview of the lead. This gives you a better chance of converting, as your communication can be more personalised and relevant.
Manage your lead data within your CRM
In most CRM platforms, this will be in a Leads module. Enter as much data as you have about the lead; for example, name, contact details, what product or service they are interested in, lead source, and more.
You should ensure that all of your communication with leads is logged effectively. You can do this by choosing a CRM with strong relationship capabilities, such as SugarCRM. Meetings, emails, calls, events, website page views, and other key interactions are linked automatically to the lead under clear sub-panels, allowing for easy filtering and organisation. It also gives you actionable insights into how likely conversion is with Sugar’s revolutionary AI tool, SugarPredict.
Having all of this information available at a glance helps the salesperson see the previous, ongoing and future conversations with the lead. It also allows management and executive teams to report on sales performance more efficiently.
With SugarCRM, the platform does the work for you – so your team has more time to convert and sell.
Decide on an automated sales process
Taking advantage of your CRM’s automation capabilities is key. You can use these to save time on manual tasks during the sales process.
Your CRM system should cover the whole sales process, from prospecting to onboarding. For example, SugarCRM can automatically push details submitted to a form on your website into your CRM – logging where the lead came from, what they are enquiring about, and assigning it to the relevant person.
With a seamless VoIP integration, your sales team can use the CRM to log and track their calls. It gives them a centralised place to store their data and any follow-up emails or meetings from the calls will be automatically linked.
You can even automate your invoicing. SugarCRM can create and send out invoices without any manual interference, saving your finance team a huge amount of time every day.
Learn how – book a free CRM consultation.
Track, monitor and report on your deals
SugarCRM offers a Kanban-style view that allows you to drag and drop your opportunities into different stages, giving you a visual way to see your deals and their statuses. These stages are easily configurable to whatever terminology suits your business.
Tracking and monitoring your opportunities means that you’re always one step ahead. You can plan your communication and quickly identify which deals you should be prioritising.
Reporting allows you to identify any areas which need improvement. You should choose a CRM that has different reporting styles to allow for a customised view – showing exactly what you want to see, not what the CRM is limited to.
SugarCRM offers a range of different report types:
- Rows and columns – create a tabular report that contains the values of selected display fields for records matching the specified criteria.
- Summation – tabular reports that provide computed data for records matching the specified criteria. The data can also be represented within a chart.
- Summation with detail – this is a summation report that displays additional data related to the records in the results.
- Matrix – this is a summation report that displays results in a grid format and is grouped by a maximum of three fields.
- Advanced – these are based on SQL queries that you create which allows more control over the data that will be provided into the report, like the ability to use sub-queries.
Watch your CRM increase sales in quality, quantity, and velocity
If your CRM isn’t boosting your sales, we are here to help. Our no-obligation CRM consultation allows you to see what can work for you compared to other products on the market.
Or, if you’d like to get started with the CRM we’ve mentioned above as an example:
