How CRM benefits the engineering sales process
As engineering firms begin to expand, effectively managing your sales process can become a tricky task. With growing sales departments, communication can become an issue, making it difficult to keep on top of prospects, oftentimes letting one or two slip along the way. Team members may struggle to remember who is working with what lead and at what stage in the buyer’s journey that prospect may be.
CRM benefits engineering sales teams by providing a solid solution to accurate internal communication and efficient prospect management.
Here are 4 ways CRM benefits engineering firms:
Greater efficiency
CRM systems can help businesses achieve greater efficiency by aligning people and processes:
- CRM replaces repetitive manual tasks with automation that completes actions and sends emails; reducing administration and eliminating duplication.
- Multiple teams can access the same information at the same time.
- Automatically stored communication allows you to view emails, calendar, and phone call details in one easily accessible place.
- Productivity is improved through better time management- CRM prompts users with reminders when important events occur, or if actions are overlooked.
- A CRM system can collate contacts, events, contracts, projects and application requests; Staff no longer need to jump between systems as everything is all in the one place.
Increasing sales
By incorporating a CRM system into your business you will be able to drive more revenue. By using your data, you can promote your business and marketing campaigns in more effective way. For example:
- Identifying the most valuable accounts and delivering appropriate service levels to capture a sale.
- Relationship and order details aid the discovery of new upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
- Opportunity management will help the sales team connect with the right prospects at the right time.
- Lead nurturing processes that alert the sales team when individuals respond.
- Increased lead generation using segmented lists and personalised messages that resonate with the end user. Segmentation will also ensure that your promotions reach a new set of customers, not past ones.
Improved customer service
Your time is valuable, but so too is your customers’. If a customer experiences a problem that needs a solution- you need to resolve it quickly. With a CRM system in place, as soon as a customer contacts you, you will be able to retrieve all available info, regarding past purchases, preferences, etc. Armed with this information, you should be able to create a solution fast.
By providing better services to customers through improved understanding of their issues, this, in turn, helps in increase customer loyalty and reduce irritation; With CRM, customer support becomes a walk in the park.
Collaboration
Collaboration is a big plus that comes with CRM. The entire customer life cycle is typically much too complex to be managed effectively by one person- a team needs to be in place and it needs to be able to work in sync.
CRM fosters a positive team culture and improves communication as individuals share information, collaborate effectively and gain a better understanding of other areas in your organisation. This is better than functioning as an isolated entity, as it will help in increasing the company’s profitability and enabling better service to customers.
The sales process in an engineering firm plays a huge role in business success making it fundamental to get right. Achieving constant in-house communication as well as managing external prospect relationships can be strenuous, especially with copious documents and data exchanged daily. Introducing CRM into your engineering sales process provides a centralised system to efficiently manage client and prospect relationships and ensure all relevant employees can easily access and update information when necessary.
