Sales Leads Increase Using Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

By James Rickman

When a person starts a business, the desire to see it grow is one of the things on his or her mind. There are a lot of ways that organizations can build their businesses, but one of the most effective methods is through the use of software to help manage their current customers and the individual contacts who might become future customers.

The majority of industry professionals call this valuable sales method; customer relationship management or CRM software, but there are many different names used for it. CRM is the most popular term, and the one that most people universally understand. Since there are different terms, being aware of each can help to ensure that a person you are speaking with will not become confused. That way a person will not find himself or herself out of the loop when talking about the issue with others, or when trying to find the right applications software that is needed for business purposes. Individuals who are able to locate CRM software have an advantage, because they do not struggle as much with successfully monitoring and solving specific business development needs.

A lot of people think that CRM software is just a fancy address book, and that there is really no need to have it. However, effective CRM tools can do much more than individuals often think possible. Once properly exposed to CRM, many professionals are quite impressed with the capabilities of such collaborative software. Usually, this occurs when people put the software to work within their company because they have learned enough about the CRM software that they begin to build on a valuable knowledge base of how it works.

Customer relationship management consists of the processes a company uses to track and organize its contacts with its current and prospective customers. CRM software is used to support these processes; information about customers and customer interactions can be entered, stored and accessed by employees in different company departments. Typical CRM goals are to improve services provided to customers, and to use customer contact information for targeted marketing.

Specific tools offered by Sales Intelligence CRM packages can be similar to Analytical CRM, but is intended as a more direct sales tool. Features include alerts sent to sales staff regarding:

Cross-selling/Up-selling/Switch-selling opportunities

Customer drift

Sales performance

Customer trends

Customer margins

Customer alignment

When a company learns what it needs to know about CRM software, the salespeople in that company will generally find that it can be used for many different types of information gathering and storage. Anniversaries, birthdays, and other important dates can also be stored, as well as important pieces of targeted customer information that might be valuable in generating future niche sales.

When a salesperson has contact with a potential customer, he or she should record that information and keep it so that a follow up can be performed later. This is beneficial for remembering what a customer and salesperson talked about in the past and knowing what a customer might need in the future.

CRM software can help keep much more than only the name or address of the customer. It can also store the conversations that a person has with customer service. This is one of the ways that the company not only keeps track of what the customer needs, but also makes the customer feel as though his or her input is valuable. Using CRM is one of the most cost effective ways to help companies build sales and marketing campaigns.

For more information email james@sustainablevirtualbiz.com  or Call (503) 621-4953.

Turn Your Leads into Sales Appointments

Some people in sales think a lead is a name from a list. That's not correct. A name from a list is not a lead--it's a suspect, a total stranger and it does not matter if they meet some criteria (e.g. age, occupation, net worth). A true lead meets your criteria AND has expressed interest in what you offer. Specifically, the warm lead has responded to an email, a print ad, a piece of direct mail, etc. A true marketer or sales professional uses time wisely for the most part only contacting people that have first expressed an interest.

Now that you have a lead, how do you turn it into a sale?

You don't call the lead and say, "I'm following up....." EVERY sales person says this and the phrase has now become synonymous with "get ready for my sales pitch." Your lead automatically gets defensive (no one likes to be sold) and your chance of a sale is close to zero. Rather, call the lead and say "Bob, you returned a card expressing your interest in having more.....better...(fill in the blank), is that still of interest to you?" The only words that should come out of your mouth are the benefits your lead desires. Your first task is to engage your lead, not to talk about your product.

Next, you don't say "we have" or "my company offers" as these phrases are synonymous with "get ready for my pitch." Again, these will make your lead defensive. You do say, "I don't know if I can help you...may I ask you a few questions about your (business/heath/investments, fill in the blank)?" You disarm the defensiveness of the prospect by stating you don't know if you can help.

Next, you ask intelligent questions about what's important to HIM. The best thing you can do here is forget about the features and benefits of your product because your lead does not care. He cares mostly about what's important to him. So to really listen, you need to forget your spiel. As your prospect reveals answers to your questions, you ask deeper questions to reveal their emotional desires. Questions like:

Why is that important to you?
If you could have that, how would it impact you?
If you don't solve that, what's the long term cost to you?
How does that make you feel?
Are you satisfied with that?

What has been your previous experience with similar projects or services?

Since people buy emotionally, you must get them to reveal what motivates them emotionally. Until you do, forget proceed to your next step (to set an appointment, ask for the credit card, close the deal) as you will generally fail. Too many sellers ask for the order too early and they get objections. First, get your prospect to reveal what motivates him emotionally and then you ask if he would be interested in a solution to that problem/opportunity. Only when he says yes, do you proceed to the next step.

"Bob, if there were a solution to that problem, what would that be worth to you? So if you could have the solution for only 10% of that amount, you would want to know about it? Great, then (set an appointment, ask for the credit card, close the deal)."

I know that sellers tell me they are client focused or customer focused but it's not true. They are product focused and my-agenda focused. If your personal mission or company mission is to really help someone, then it becomes easy to turn leads into sales. Because your objective changes from "getting" people to buy your product to "finding" people who want what your product offers. You can only determine that by asking questions. And when you encounter someone that does not have an interest in your product, you move on.

The key to turning a lead into a sale is to leave your agenda to the end of the conversation and get your lead to reveal his emotional agenda first. Then you have the relatively simple process of showing your prospect how your product fits his agenda (rather than convincing the prospect why they should have interest in your agenda).

For more information email james@sustainablevirtualbiz.com  or Call (503) 621-4953