9 Benefits of a CRM System in B2B Marketing & Sales
B2B companies thrive on the idea of tapping into several niches so as to discover their potential customers, evaluating their potential as leads for their product or services & finally guiding them through their sales funnel to convert to sales.
During their journey to make a purchase, B2B customers pass through different stages namely awareness, engagement & conversion.
CRM stands for “Customer Relationship management” & came into origin in the 1970s when marketers first realized that they need to be ‘customer empathic’ rather than ‘product empathic’.
The sales funnel has been a mystical analogy since its inception in the late 1800s when E. St. Elmo Lewis first mapped the customers’ theoretical journey & proposed the AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire & Action) model. As the potential customers move through the sales funnel towards conversion into sales their number decreases considerably.
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) has to be nurtured & kept engaged for it to be converted to a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). Knowing the customers nowadays is easier than ever; however, in order to convert them into sales prospects & ultimately sell them a product or service, one not only needs to collect the customer data but also needs to keep accurate & accessible records of customer transactions, inclinations, requests & concerns.
Modern CRM systems have been designed to manage companies’ interaction with current & potential customers. It helps in analyzing data to interpret the interest of the customers, nurture the leads & helps in customer retention by facilitating personalized content for them.
CRM is amazingly beneficial for B2B marketers as it helps them accomplish their ultimate task of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by identifying their customers & prioritizing their needs.
Not only CRM helps to personalize the experiences for the potential customers across multiple touch points but also helps in an array of other tasks as leveraging data from different sources to bridge the gap between the marketing & sales teams.
According to a study by Salesforce.com, CRM can improve customer retention by up to 27%.
CRM Uses
When it comes to B2B marketing, analyzing the customers’ journey can be really difficult. This is where CRM takes over. It is a piece of software that maps the customers’ journey and prioritizes the data in accordance to carefully examine the sales funnel. It is frequently saved in the cloud. To speed up the sales process, customised material or services can be offered to potential customers depending on where they are in their buying cycles. CRM also helps in interacting with existing customers alongside potential customers.
Following are some of the ways the CRM can prove to be beneficial for B2B marketers:
1. Mapping Opportunities
CRM can help B2B marketers identify leaks in their sales funnel & the touch points from where the potential companies are leaving the funnel. Identifying the opportunities helps marketers improve uoon their strategies to attract, nurture & convert more leads.
Every B2B set-up is different; however, ideally each of them possesses the following six stages:
- Opt-in by prospects & their affirmation for further contacts
- The completion of an ROI assessment by them
- Having initial consultation with sales team
- Prospects getting a proof of concept
- Sales figure out a probable solution to the problem
- Negotiation of costs & sales closure