6 CRM Benefits that Improve Your Bottom Line
If your organization is thinking of investing in your first CRM or planning to move to a new one, it’s essential to weigh the benefits and the costs before making any final decisions. Below, we outline 6 key benefits you can expect from implementing a CRM system — all of which improve your bottom line.
1. CRM Systems Increase Sales Revenue
We’ll be upfront — CRM systems are a massive investment in terms of both capital and resources. However, after a successful CRM implementation, most organizations report an increase in annual sales revenue of between 5-15% per sales representative. That’s no small number!
What’s the reason for such a significant increase?
Consider all of the processes that can be streamlined, all of the tasks that can be automated, and all of the analytics you get that can help you sell smarter. By having a well-implemented CRM system, sales reps get valuable time back in their day. This time can now be used for calling more prospects and closing more deals.
Providing your sales reps with a well-implemented CRM system is one of the most significant competitive advantages your organization can have. That’s why organizations with CRM software see such a high increase in sales revenue.
2. CRM Platforms Expand Margins
In addition to selling more, CRM systems give sales reps the tools and knowledge they need to sell better.
Having a systematized way to collect data, keep it clean, and use it to inform your decisions makes a massive difference in how sales reps build relationships and serve product/service suggestions.
When sales reps know the ins and outs of their prospects (and their prospect’s organizations), they are less likely to offer discounts. Instead, they focus their sales conversations around the value props that are the most relevant for that prospect, bringing in more money on sales.
Also, when your sales reps are knowledgeable, they have the confidence to drive deals without bringing in additional overhead, saving your organization even more time and money, thus increasing your margins.
3. Sales Reps See Higher Conversion Rates
It should come as no surprise that when your sales reps understand their prospects better, they can achieve higher sales conversion rates. Having a well-implemented CRM system leads to an average sales conversion rate increase of 3-5%.
In addition to better data, CRM systems help organizations develop and cement better sales cycles and ensure that those sales cycles are understood across the entire organization.
Plus, you will arm your reps with critical information that helps them understand where to focus their time. CRM systems help reps identify the most profitable deals and those most likely to close.
4. Customer Support Reps Improve the Customer Experience
This blog has mainly focused on the sales benefits that a CRM provides. But let’s not forget that CRMs have a considerable impact on customer support and service teams too.
With a well-implemented CRM, service-reps gain an essential repository of data about their past interactions with customers. This data is used to improve support ticket resolution time, quickly connect customers with reps who are trained to handle their cases, and help service reps find the answer to common support questions.
CRMs help streamline and automate the support process, and they are an efficient way to track, analyze, and improve CX metrics, such as NPS and customer satisfaction. With better retention comes a better bottom-line.
5. CRM Platforms Reduce Sales, Marketing, and Support Costs
Although CRMs are a large capital investment, they also significantly decrease administration costs across a few different departments.
In fact, a decrease of 5-10% is reasonable for sales, marketing, and support administration costs.
We’ve already outlined how costs are reduced for sales and service teams in the preceding sections. For marketers, prices drop as your team gains the necessary data to better understand your customers’ pain points and needs. This understanding leads to better segmentation and more highly targeted marketing — saving your marketing team both time and money.
6. Informed Product Management
Let’s not forget about your product team. CRM systems help you place your customers at the center of your organizational decisions, including the product management process.
By collecting data on your customers and understanding the common pain points they have with your products or services, you will be equipped with the information necessary to make adjustments and enhancements to your offerings. When you have better products, you get more customers, and you improve your bottom line.
Conclusion
These six benefits of having a CRM system will directly impact your bottom line. You can see why so many organizations rely on a CRM system to improve their business. Simply put, if you don’t have a CRM system, you are putting your business at a competitive disadvantage compared to those that do have a well-implemented CRM system in place.
Interested in a CRM system for your organization? Reach out to our certified experts today to get started!