In each organization and role, relationship management can be viewed with different lenses. As a sales leader, when you say customer relationship management, you usually mean a sales CRM tool that is used for sales and revenue forecasting, analytics, and reports.

Sales managers look at it as a system to monitor the sales activities and make sure that their salespeople meet the targets, while salespeople use it for data dumping. 

But, in reality, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a process, practice, and technology that, when combined together does much more than track, monitor, and record. It can

  • Align different functions and teams in your organization
  • Find the right buyers
  • Win you customers-for-life
  • And propel your sales and business growth

But you may wonder, while a CRM software could be vital for growth, does it really create that impact on your business?

Let’s begin by rephrasing your question—what happens when you don’t have a sales CRM system? 

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A world without sales CRM

 

Your sales teams work hard on every single lead to keep your sales pipeline flowing. They have to

  • Use prospecting tools to actively engage in social media platforms and spread the word about your business
  • Spend dedicated hours on the phone making cold calls
  • Send out cold emails using an email automation tool
  • Constantly follow up with prospects
  • Thread through spreadsheets and notes to get insights on the prospect
  • Chase multiple deals to closure

And all the information they need in order to carry out their work effectively is fragmented across desks and tools. Even to get a quick update on a deal or prospect, they have to shift between different sales prospecting tools and spreadsheets.

Between one jump and the next, valuable time and prospects are lost. On the other hand, 

  • You get very little visibility into the day-to-day sales activities
  • You shift between various analytical tools everytime you need to pull reports on the sales and business performance.
  • And constantly depend on your salespeople for steady updates on prospects and deals.

This makes it difficult to forecast sales and revenue, work on a business plan, strategize sales growth, and leaves you wondering how effective your current sales process is. 

At the end of the day, even startups need access to robust CRM systems for startups to gather the necessary information needed to make data-backed decisions that would propel their business forward.

Well, that is exactly where a sales CRM can help you. 

 

When implemented properly, a sales CRM

  • Brings you and your salespeople into the same platform, and acts as a single source of truth.
  • Empowers your salespeople to sell more to the right prospects at the right time, rather than spending half their time chasing the wrong leads and shifting between tools.
  • Gives you accurate reports based on these sales activities, allowing you to measure your business performance and make smart decisions.

This ultimately impacts your sales and business growth. Let’s dig deep into how a sales CRM software helps you achieve this. 

Benefits of a sales CRM

Refer to a single source of truth

A Sales CRM with marketing automation helps sales teams gain better context about their prospects from a single view. It enables sales reps to personalize their interactions, provide better solutions, and close deals faster than ever.

With a sales CRM integrated with marketing automation, you 

  • Get a quick summary of all the essential information such as name, company, contact information, salesperson assigned, and more.
  • Surface status such as open deals, active marketing lists, meeting notes, etc.
  • Identify open support tickets, a timeline of engagements across different channels
  • Pages visited on your website such as pricing and case studies
  • Notes and upcoming appointments
  • Real-time email open and click notifications

And more information that will allow your salespeople to have contextual and personalized conversations with your buyers and drive deals to closure.

Find out more on how a sales CRM can unify your contacts' information

 

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Get high-quality leads in the pipeline

Whether you’re a growing business or have numerous leads, in order to scale sales quickly, you need to differentiate the piping hot leads from the ice-cold ones.

Otherwise, it's not only time and energy that's wasted, but also viable opportunities that go unnoticed because the leads weren't prioritized.

An intelligent sales CRM analyzes the historical data and engagement with prospects and leads to assign a score for each of them. It also ranks the contacts based on the score so you can instantly identify leads who are more interested and prioritize them.

 

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Focus on the right deals

An AI-powered sales CRM can give visual clarity on the deals in your pipelines based on deal size, so you can 

  • Track the progress on each deal throughout the sales pipeline
  • Gain a quick understanding of the status of deals
  • Focus on the deals that will bring you the most profit
  • Identify and resolve bottlenecks in the pipeline

Freshsales, with its intelligent assistant Freddy, tags each deal with “Likely to close”, “At-risk”, “Trending”, and “Gone cold”. Freddy also suggests the next best action to drive it to closure. This helps you jumpstart your day with deals and prospects that need the most attention. 

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Forecast sales accurately

The key advantage of a sales CRM is the ability to forecast sales accurately. It helps you achieve this with a powerful pipeline and deal management. 

One of the ways is using a weighted pipeline. A deal in the negotiation stage is more likely to close than a new deal in the follow-up stage. By setting a value of probability to each stage of the deal pipeline, you can estimate the revenue realistically.

In addition to the weighted pipelines, you can also factor in the commitments from your sales team. Salespeople can categorize each of their deals into

  • Committed deals: Deals they are confident about closing
  • Best case deals: Deals they are optimistic about, but cannot commit yet.

This enables you to gauge the potential of deals and project accurate and best-case revenue for a given month/quarter.

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Make data-backed decisions

If you can’t measure performance, you cannot improve it. So how you use the data stored in the CRM is more important than the data itself. 

With an analytical sales CRM, such as Freshsales (formerly Freshworks CRM), you can measure your sales and business performance using reports on 

  • Sales targets versus achieved
  • Individual salesperson performance
  • Lead sources that contribute to maximum growth
  • Marketing campaign performances
  • Sales activities such as calls logged, email open and click rates
  • Deals in the pipeline

And more! Find out what insights you get with a sales CRM 

 

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If you don’t have the time to create sales reports each time, a sales CRM comes with inbuilt templates that you can recreate for yourself. It also allows you to 

Automate and Schedule Reports

Create and automate your sales reports. You can also schedule them to be sent to your inbox at regular intervals.

Export or Share Reports

Verify the data and see how it is represented in the report. Then export it or share it with different teams from within the CRM.

Stay on top of every sales activity 

A sales CRM helps your sales teams do away with the mundane task of data entry and can automatically

  • Capture lead details directly into the CRM
  • Assign leads to salespeople and reduce lead response time
  • Set reminders if a prospect does not attend your call
  • Segment contact lists based on geography and behaviour
  • Schedule outreach to send automated, yet personalized follow-ups to your prospects at the right time
  • Change the status of deals, for example, from “Negotiation” to “Won.”
  • Send welcome emails to new leads or renewal reminder emails to customers
  • Qualify leads and update contacts’ status

See what else you can automate with a sales CRM

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Engage across multiple channels

Powerful sales CRMs, such as Freshsales, enable your teams to engage with leads, prospects, and customers across various channels from within the CRM itself.

 

Phone

With an inbuilt phone, place calls with a click, automatically log calls, map the recording to the respective contacts, and send voicemails.

Email

2-way email sync with your sales CRM enables you to read, send, and track your emails from your email client as well as the CRM.

SMS

SMS is faster than an email and yet less intrusive than a phone call. Freshsales allows you to send SMS to your buyers from within the CRM.

Chat

Integrate with your website, deliver intuitive and personalized messages at the right time and increase website conversions.

WhatsApp

The WhatsApp business integration allows you to read and respond to WhatsApp messages from within the CRM.

iMessage

The chat widget in the CRM allows you to receive and respond to iMessages without leaving the CRM.

Sell from anywhere, anytime

Most sales CRM vendors understand that your salespeople cannot be tied to their desks throughout the day. CRMs, such as Freshsales, come with a mobile app for Android and iOS. This allows you and your salespeople to 

  • Know the prospects to focus on right from your intuitive dashboard
  • Create, manage, and track the progress of deals using a visual sales pipeline
  • Send and read emails
  • Check-in at meetings to confirm presence and keep the team in loop
  • Add voice notes, and create tasks and appointments
  • Navigate to your meeting location or book an Uber right from the mobile app.

Freshsales allows you to stay updated with no gap in data as the mobile app seamlessly syncs with the desktop version, making it an ideal small or enterprise CRM solution.

Know more about the mobile app for CRM

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Choosing the right sales CRM

Business use case

Assess your company size and requirements from the CRM. While choosing a CRM, make sure it fits right into your business ecosystem and solves all your sales challenges.

Budget

Once you understand your business requirement, determine the pricing structure that’ll suit you best. Watch out for hidden costs in terms of support, maintenance and implementation.

Scalability

When your business grows, so do your requirements. An advanced sales CRM with pay-as-you-grow pricing should support your business needs as it scales. 

Ease of use

You need a CRM that makes your life easier. So choose a sales CRM that is simple and intuitive. It shouldn’t make you roam around the software to get work done.

Customer reviews

As you narrow down your list of ideal CRMs, make sure to check trusted review websites, such as G2 and Capterra, to get first-hand reviews from the existing customer base.

Looking for a CRM?

Try Freshsales (formerly Freshworks CRM ), a cloud-based CRM for your sales and marketing teams. Freshsales CRM benefits businesses scale faster and puts refreshing business software in the hands of small businesses, as well as enterprises.

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, ready-to-use CRM (plus a 21-day free trial to start off with), we’re here.

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