Does your company use CRM software? Find out three important benefits that will increase client retention and win new business.
I credit much of our success to our focus on customer relationships. I know that I’ve covered the importance of good customer relationships in great detail over the past few weeks, so I’ll leave that to previous posts about effective client communication and customer interaction “do’s and don’ts.”
When dealing with companies that required a subscription, such as DirecTV, I used to wonder how they were able to recall conversations that I’d had with them from nearly two years prior. Of course I knew that they were recording it somehow, but I was unaware that there were specific products entirely dedicated to something like that.
CRM stands for “customer relationship management.” Because of how invaluable good customer relationships are, I’m not at all surprised that there’s an entire industry dedicated to CRM software. Why should CRM be such an important and valuable aspect of your business? I’m so glad you asked.
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Improved and Sustained Client Relationships
For all those who have used CRM software before, this is a no-brainer. The ability to log and track every email or phone call that you’ve made is a big deal for any company that contacts the same customers on a regular basis. At CleanTelligent, we’ve made CRM software a big focus of ours, because it has allowed us to know—at all times—where we’re at with each individual client. I can safely say that our CRM capability is one of the main reasons why our client retention rate is so high, despite not locking customers into long-term contracts or anything of the sort.
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Increased Revenue
Just as important as knowing where you’re at with each customer is knowing how much progress you’ve made with each of your prospects and leads. In the janitorial industry, sales decisions are made after long, painstaking processes that involve multiple decision-makers. Because the lifespan of a lead is typically longer than it would be for, say, choosing between McDonald’s and Wendy’s, keeping track of each interaction with potential customers is all the more valuable. If you are always able to pick up where you left off (rather than starting from scratch half the time, because you can’t remember what you’ve said to whom), it will be far easier to close sales and win new business.
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Deeper Knowledge of Where You Can Improve
One option that is offered by several CRM service providers is the ability to place each contact at a different “stage” in the sales process. For me, as a member of CleanTelligent’s sales and marketing team, this means that I can categorize each contact as a “warm lead,” “cold lead,” or anything in-between. This also means that I can see what stage or point of the sales process is my weakest (“at what point are my leads losing interest?”). We’ve done this at CleanTelligent, and our conversion rates have improved as a result.
To summarize, proper use of CRM software tied into our cleaning company software has helped us improve client retention, win new business and improve the efficiency of our sales team. With the way that it has transformed how we do business at CleanTelligent, I can say with full confidence that any B2B company that puts time and effort into finding the right CRM software will see similar results.