What is a CRM in sales?
Contents Index:
Definition of CRM
How CRM technology improves sales processes
Benefits of a CRM for companies
Most important features
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Definition of CRM

The "Customer Relationship Management" or "CRM" refers to the technology and processes that an organization uses to manage its contacts and relationships such as: Clients, Prospects, Sales Opportunities, etc.
Customer relationship management also includes technologies to organize all the relevant information needed to find prospects, feed leads, close deals and retain customers, build stronger relationships, increase sales. create a more personalized customer service among others.
The CRM can in a company of any industry be this real estate, financial services, startups, commercial, industrial, technology, etc., help sellers to automate their sales activities and managers to measure the performance of their team.

How CRM technology improves sales processes

Automation is one of the greatest benefits that a CRM platform can provide. Instead of manually executing tasks like scoping, tracking, and grading, they can help you automate these tasks. This allows salespeople to focus on the activities that have the greatest impact.

This level of automation can benefit other areas of the business. For example, marketing by contributing to the qualification through the Lead score (Sales Contact). Every time a potential customer interacts with your brand, their score increases.

On the other hand, it allows you to store key information in your conversations with clients in phone calls or in meetings. This not only leads to more efficient sales and follow-up processes; it means more information relevant to you and your team.

Unlike using spreadsheets like Excel for customer and prospect management, with a CRM platform, all your sales, marketing and communications data is in one place.

Another disadvantage of using spreadsheets is that your data is insecure, because if it is lost or files become corrupted, it is difficult to recover them. Some platforms like Pipedrive store their users' data in a cloud on secure servers, which means that their data is more secure than it would be on your local computer.
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Another downside to having disorganized customer data is how difficult it can be to work with other teams. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and the same data can often be duplicated in multiple places. By bringing the entire organization to a single platform, there is a standard way of doing things and a home for the same data. Marketing can see which channels are generating leads, while sales can access that historical data to feed their sales communications.

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Benefits of a CRM for sales in companies

When it comes to CRM, most people think of sales, but the benefits can be extended to the entire business. Why? Because it is a tool to improve the entire customer experience, not just to increase sales performance. Here's how it can benefit your entire organization:

  • Convert the right customers
    • Marketing captures leads and passes them on to sales. But without a system in place, it's difficult to keep track of opportunities and follow-up activity. A good platform helps you track all sales activities. Each lead can be tracked, assigned, and followed throughout the sales pipeline.
  • Attract the best customers
    • As you collect more data about your leads and customers, you can define who the best customers are. Use this information to work with marketing teams to find more of those ideal customers.
  • Build bulletproof relationships
    • Within each target account there are individuals. These are the people who will eventually buy from you. Also, these people have their own challenges to overcome. Use your CRM platform to understand:
      • Past communications and previous points of contact.
      • The personalized messaging that will resonate with them.
      • What products, services and packages have they invested in.
  • Higher ROI on sales
    • While customer acquisition is key to business growth, nothing beats retention. Improving and offering new products and services to existing customers can help balance the costs of acquiring new ones. Look for opportunities to renew and add more value to your customers.
  • More productive employees
    • ​Marketing automation and CRM platforms can help free teams from manual tasks. They can automate their most common workflows and activities, giving reps more time to focus on high-impact work.
  • Delight your customersBetter customer retention
    • Their customer service teams work to provide the best service to their customers. This technology can further facilitate this level of service. By having a map of the customer journey in front of them, customer service representatives can provide highly personalized and prompt service.
    • Understanding each customer relationship allows you to reach out when it matters most to you, build strong customer relationships, and take action when signs show a customer may leave.
  • More optimized customer experience.
    • Executives are used to managing their employees, but they often let salespeople manage their customer relationships and contacts, whether these leads are individuals (in B2C) or other companies (in B2B). This means that there can be multiple ways of operating in the same company.
    • Adopting a CRM solution and integrating it across as many teams in your company helps change that. It will create a more streamlined experience for customers as they move through the funnel, as different teams using the same tool will have access to the same customer data.

Most important features of the CRM

Not all CRM tools are created equal. When evaluating these systems, make sure they include functionality to help your salespeople do their jobs.

So how do you choose the right software to benefit your business? - These are the characteristics to consider:
Management of sales funnels. –
Your sales funnel is the element that helps you measure where the opportunities are in the sales lifecycle and where the bottlenecks are. It also helps you create accurate sales forecasts. So, what exactly is a sales funnel? - It shows you how many deals are expected to close in a specific week or month. It also provides information on how close each of your reps are to reaching their quota.
Gestión de embudo de ventas en un CRM
Visual description of where each prospect is in the sales cycle
​With each stage of the sales process planned, you can improve and optimize the sales activities that help them move forward. For example, if there is an above-average loss rate between the proposal and the negotiation stages, you can work with your team to test new approaches that improve those closing rates.
Email integration. –
Keeping track of and keeping track of emails can be stressful. Again, with your data and email correspondence in multiple locations, managing potential touchpoints can be difficult. This is why the best CRMs have email functionality built into the platform. Simply integrate with your Gmail, Outlook, or SMTP accounts, and you can send emails and schedule follow-ups on the go.
Activity management. –
Your pipeline is the main stage, and sales activities are the ones that run in the background. Sales activities that contribute to the flow of business are what makes or breaks success.
These activities include phone calls, follow-up emails, and scheduled meetings. These are all things your reps have control over. As a sales manager, this is what you need to help them improve at.
Seguimiento de Actividades de Ventas en un CRM
Check the next task on your agenda and manage activities to optimize your time
Contact management. –
The purpose of a CRM is to help you manage customer relationships. So it makes sense for the best platforms to give you as much information about your customers as possible. This includes details about your organization, contact details, email follow-up (open email, etc.), and a communication timeline.
Even better, large platforms can feed contact details from other sources, such as social media and other platforms. This data can provide you with a wealth of information that you can then use to personalize your prospect interactions.
Sales reports. –
With all the data available to you, your CRM should show you what you need to do with it. Sales reports should help you answer the most important questions. This can include why certain reps outperform others, as well as whether or not you're on track to hit your yearly goal. Great sales managers need to know how many touchpoints and activities it takes to close a deal. You also need to know how long it takes to close deals, as well as where certain bottlenecks lie.
Informes de ventas y de gestión en un CRM
Reports show how many opportunities your sales teams win or lose and why
Sales forecast. –
Having a sales forecasting tool helps automate much of the sales management process. You can help your reps stay current without having to breathe through their necks. What allows them to continue with what they do best: sell. A good forecasting tool should allow reps to determine which activities and agreements to focus their efforts on.
Pronóstico de Ventas en un CRM
The Forecast View will project your revenue by the expected close date of the lead
Try the Pipedrive CRM free for 45 days
​​In this guide, we provide you with what to look for in a CRM. Now you need to understand why a CRM platform will not only make your salespeople more efficient, it will also bring better business results.
Of course, since this is such a gigantic topic, you probably still have questions.

Pipedrive is the best reviewed on the market. Designed to scale with your sales team, you have the ability to perform hundreds of app integrations so you can automate your process and better focus on the selling process.
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Best of all, you can get a free 45-day Pipedrive trial and get our advice and demo for your best implementation.

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