Each time a customer engages with your business, data gets created and logged in the modern CRM tools you’ve chosen to simplify how each relationship is managed. Aside from being useful for moment-to-moment admin purposes, this info has huge potential to determine what your organization does next.
The trick is to know what to do with the data available to you so that insights can be gleaned and informed action taken. There are all manner of options to consider, so here’s the scoop on how to turn your CRM into a decision-making oracle rather than just using it to track transactions and send post-sale follow-ups.
The Behavioral Analysis Factor
The top-level talking point regarding CRM tools and their data-driven capabilities relates to how cleverly they can monitor and interpret customer behavior.
Specifically, modern platforms can:
- Keep tabs on what customers buy, giving you a way to unpack their preferences for future purchases without having to ask them directly
- Stay on top of customer interactions in every context, whether they take place over the phone, on social media, or via good old-fashioned email, so that no juicy datapoint goes unnoticed
- Group customers into categories according to the interactions they’ve had with your company in the past, as well as the broader demographic categories they occupy, so your marketing can be even more targeted
General-purpose CRMs dominate the market on the back of these behavioral analysis abilities, although it’s worth pointing out that they’re also present and correct in niche-specific solutions pitched at particular industries or use cases.
For example, the Briostack smart pest-control CRM is well equipped to empower workers when they’re out in the field, giving them insights into the history of the business’ relationship with each client. In addition to enabling them to work more efficiently on the job at hand, this data also presents opportunities for them to promote new products to their customers.
In short, understanding how customers have behaved in the past makes it relatively easy to provide a better experience in the future, while simultaneously driving sales growth and satisfaction. And of course, all of this takes place automatically, so sifting through the numbers to find salient nuggets of information by hand is no longer necessary.
The Power of Predictive Analytics
The customer-focused forecasting powers of modern CRMs is only the beginning of what they can do. Their ability to predict what could happen next through the thorough analysis of data gathered in the past provides all sorts of associated benefits.
For example:
- CRMs are great at pinpointing sales leads that have the highest chance of converting to paying customers
- Analytics allows customer churn rates to be projected so that preventive action can be taken before existing clients up sticks and head elsewhere
- Personalized product and service recommendations are provided automatically, with the options filtered according to customer interests rather than generic suggestions or top-level demographic guesswork
These tools are also perfectly suited to the task of predicting when the peaks and troughs of seasonal activity will occur, again allowing for decisions to be made so businesses are prepared for what’s to come. The prospect of being caught off guard by an unexpected surge in demand for a specific product during a brief window will no longer keep you up at night or hurt your bottom line. Given all this, it’s no surprise that the CRM market is worth almost $100 billion.
The Marketing Angle
We’ve already touched on a number of ways CRM tools allow for marketing optimization, and it’s worth refining your understanding of exactly how powerful they are in this context. Since the collective spend on marketing now exceeds $1 trillion annually, anything that can trim the fat is worth considering.
In terms of building campaigns that hit home with the right people, there’s no better way to go about this than using data derived from CRM interactions.
This can help with:
- Audience segmentation so that the messaging you use in campaigns has the best opportunity to click with the needs and expectations of groups you target
- Campaign performance analysis, which in turn shows you whether your marketing materials are succeeding, or if refinement is necessary to enhance their impact further
- Highlighting the marketing channels that bring in the most sales, giving you a picture of where your audience is most accessible, and where they prefer to receive marketing messages from your business
Let’s say you use your CRM to track interactions across email and social media. You could find that older groups prefer engaging via the former method, while Gen Z is more interested in the latter approach. This is a broad example, but the point is that when you’ve got oceans of info on customer interactions at your disposal, you can fine-tune this to an incredible degree, and get stellar results.
The Sales Streamlining Aspect
Your sales funnel must be slippery and obstacle-free so that any prospect that teeters on the top of it is nigh-on certain to be pulled all the way through to the other side with as little hassle for them or your team.
The customer data collected by your CRM is once again a trusty companion in this context, enabling you to streamline sales processes significantly. It’s an important part of mapping the customer journey to iron out kinks, for which there is a separate category of dedicated tool that is also worth exploring.
For example:
- Being able to easily rank leads according to their likelihood of converting prevents you from wasting time pursuing prospects that simply aren’t the right fit for your business
- Having a comprehensive history of past interactions with existing customers makes the job of sales team members simpler when they attempt to re-engage and achieve a subsequent conversion, rather than effectively starting from scratch
- Eliminating the need to repeatedly carry out important but mind-numbing sales tasks, such as entering customer data into the system and sending out follow-up messages, with the help of automation is seriously convenient as well as being a morale-booster for employees
Consider the example of a customer who has received two or three sales emails but has not subsequently got in touch. This will be flagged in the CRM, and moreover, you will have access to an analysis of why they might be so reticent, and whether it is a good idea to contact them in a more direct manner to push things forward, or if their value as a prospect is not actually sufficient to warrant any more time and energy.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, modern CRM tools are eminently, almost endlessly useful to the businesses that adopt them. In addition to being brilliant for data harvesting, they are set up to actually convert this information into the kinds of insights that will have members of your sales and marketing team jumping for joy.
Automation is the name of the game here, and industry-specific tools are also worth shouting about if you have specific requirements not met by other CRMs.
The process of integrating CRM insights into workflows will take time and training to complete seamlessly, but the long-term advantages more than make up for any teething troubles you encounter.
