Hello!
I start this blog, with this simple idea, although completely “real” in the business world. Every company implements a CRM.
And it is that every company, regardless of its size, relates to customers, suppliers and, in its most essential case, establishes a communication that tries to convince the potential customer of the value of the products or services it offers, with the ultimate goal of “make a sale” using a CRM.
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In the same order of ideas, whether you are a multinational company, a large company, a small company, a one-person company, or even a freelancer, everyone, absolutely everyone, has “clients”.
“Many entrepreneurs, like many companies, mainly small ones and those made up of 1 or 2 people, say that they are satisfied with keeping their clients’ information in spreadsheets.”
And although doing so solves the saving of information, this registration model is obsolete and does not offer any value in the world of Digital Information or rather, in the principle of “Digitalization of Information” and the “Experience of User”, where the DATA must be storable, easily consumable, transportable and able to be measured and viewed, preferably in real time, from anywhere in the world.
Actually… Couldn’t you do all this in a spreadsheet and see it from your cell phone?
The answer is yes,
Definitely yes!.
However, the attributes of flexibility, saving time and money, sharing information, as well as enabling the cloud systems model, do not respond very well or effectively to the current information storage model of the and for the business “in a spreadsheet”.
Let’s see why?
Today’s agile businesses, which are Customer-Driven or driven by the behavior and interest of the client, require data to be consumed, on a daily and constant basis, even in bidirectional mode, for the client to access their registered data. and he can change his personal data or request products and services in real time.
You must also be able to register actions, tasks, calls, meetings, quotes, orders, tickets, as well as other additional actions, just by registering the prospect or client, whose registration means much more than just your name, surname, email and the number of the quote sent.
Now, all these “actions” are associated with and belong to the client. They are not separated at any time from the customer-driven sales process.
The reality is that they separate when we begin to record your data in a spreadsheet, “voluntarily and involuntarily” ignoring the life cycle of the sale and the data that this cycle provides us during the management of the relationship with the client. to achieve the sale of one of your products or services.
Understanding that data recording is not “static” and that the best decision-making is achieved by obtaining and processing the greatest amount of data possible from the prospect or client, responds to a “real dynamic” that we must develop with our clients.
Therefore, in a “timeline” you have the opportunity to get to know your client while you are recording the data of interest, such as their preferred color, their birthday, their preferred brand of vehicle, among other data of a tactical nature, such such as: meetings, calls or tickets; which will allow you to communicate effectively and efficiently, with your client or prospect, to achieve the necessary trust in him and on that trust, generate multiple business opportunities, where each of these opportunities has its own particular and specific data, which may be registered, transparently in the CRM.
Here, let me give you some personal advice, to maximize your time in sales and increase your quality of life. Forget spreadsheets to manage your customer relationship!
Leave the spreadsheets to receive or download the results of your clients from your CRM and to make reports or graphs, where effectively the spreadsheets integrated into office suites such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google G-Suite, They can give a hand in your business. Everything else, upload it to your CRM and enjoy the increase in efficiency, free time and effective time to increase your sales pipeline and your results at the end of the month.
You can see that, in the previous paragraphs, I wrote the acronym CRM which stands for Customer Relationship Management. In Spanish, it means Customer Relationship System.
CRMs come to save your life as an entrepreneur or as a businessman. Mainly, to free yourself from time and have centralized business data, easily accessible from any digital device, anywhere in the world and have real-time data, which includes the data of your current and potential customers.
They can be implemented in Freelancer businesses going through companies of 1 or 3 people or 50-100 employees, up to multinational companies with thousands of employees. The objective is one and it is the same for all, “Know your Client“.
In that “Knowing your Customer“, is where the CRM allows you to record the data that matters to you to offer your value proposition, in a much more assertive, clarified and orderly way.
It is then, in this context, where you can leverage your business, in the Evidence-Based Management paradigm, which is based on “Data-based Decision Making”.
This model, based mainly on constant data recording, can save your sales channels a lot of time, money and effort, as well as your sales team, making them focus on what is important to you and your business.
It can even help you reduce or eliminate by 100% the dispersion of activities that do not add value to your business, making your salespeople focus more on the sales stages of your pipeline, being able to identify more and new opportunities or simply identify money that is staying on the client’s table and that your sales team has not yet been able to capitalize on.
One of the great benefits that CRM offers you is that it integrates very easily with your marketing campaigns, which focus on attracting potential customers to your CRM. Where, then, your sellers will be in charge of managing and making the sale possible.
Igualmente, puedes amplificar la potencialidad el CRM, integrándolo con otros módulos, tales como:
- Projects.
- Automation.
- Marketing and Social
- Networks.
- Collaboration.
- Finance.
- office automation
- Telecommuting.
Expanding your CRM with other modules allows you to integrate your business, giving you multiple benefits, such as saving time and money.
In the case of the Automation module, it is in charge of doing the repetitive work for you and your sales team, “while you dedicate yourself to what is important to your business, which is finding clients and closing sales.”
To end this blog, I want to inform you that at Ovnicom, we can offer you the ZOHO CRM customer management software.
ZOHO CRM has been recognized by Gartner Insights as one of the best CRMs in the world. It is important to mention that this rating is made by clients from all over the world, who give their opinions through satisfaction surveys, which results in a real validation and potential value of using ZOHO for the Management and Digital Transformation of your Business.
We want to help you automate your business processes, and especially in your Sales and Marketing processes.
Click here and schedule your appointment with one of our Digital Transformation specialists and we will gladly support you to Innovate your Business and Increase your Sales.
In a future article, I will tell you about the “ZOHO Suite of Applications and its value as a Business Operating System“.
Greetings and success
Jesus Espinoza
EVP and CTO
OVNICOM
