Even if that sales rep who originally spoke to the lead is no longer with your company, you and/or other sales reps in your company can access the information and ensure the potential client gets a follow-up call with someone who “knows what’s going on.”
With a CRM, your sales rep can record the information about the lead’s needs and set a reminder to touch base in 6 months. After some back and forth, the potential client says they’re not ready to pull the trigger just yet and ask to touch base in 6 months. Plus, you get to control what information is added, viewed, and/or edited by various team members for privacy purposes.įor example, say you have a new lead that’s interested in your services and your sales rep collects information about their needs and budget.
With a CRM, you have full transparency over communication with clients and the status of deals. All emails, phone calls, appointments, notes, and follow-up items are logged under a client or lead, so you have easy access to context and important details the next time you engage with them (no need to remember what was said on a call three weeks ago). “CRM” is an acronym for Client Relationship Management: They are systems that allow you and your team to log all your interactions with clients in one place. This is where a CRM can help: it will enable you to centralize communication and action items with leads and clients and share everything with your team so they’re on the same page.
The challenge is that with more clients and employees comes an increase in status update meetings, Slack messages, and emails you need for proper visibility into what’s happening. Growing your business gets way easier when you have oversight over communication with clients and the status of projects. When a client says to follow up in 6 months, how do you make sure they get a follow-up? Spreadsheets and Google docs may work better than your memory and post-it notes, but they don’t allow you to have visibility over the history of communication with clients and they don’t help you stay on top of follow-ups to ensure you’re touching base with clients and leads regularly. When you only have a few clients, it’s relatively easy to rely on your memory, notes, or search your inbox for details to remember what you last spoke to a client, what was said, and what needs to get done next on a project.Īs your client list grows and you hire more people, keeping track of what’s been discussed with clients and what you or team member’s have committed to quickly becomes messy and eventually chaotic. The challenge, however, is keeping track of all the information, communication, and action items with clients as your business grows.
This is especially important when you’re in professional services where your relationships are the lifeblood of your business.You’re bound to get more repeat clients and referrals when you build strong relationships because clients trust you. Keeping track of communication and action items is essential to building strong relationships with clients and growing your business. This is a guest post by Kristie Holden, VP of Marketing at Daylite.