How CRM Works In The Sales Funnel

How CRM Works In The Sales Funnel

Your business depends on your customers and the relationships you build with them. Understanding how they relate to others is important to increasing your brand awareness. These relationships depend on maintaining rapport and communication with your customers. A CRM journey can help you develop and manage leads, expand your customer base and grow your business.

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What are the four phases of the customer relationship management (CRM) process?

The CRM funnel has four stages that mirror the stages of the sales funnel.

awareness

The first step in the CRM journey is awareness. This happens when a potential customer spreads their knowledge about your business or your products or services. Outreach can happen in a number of ways, such as email marketing, online and offline marketing campaigns, and social media. For example, a potential customer may discover your company's offerings by searching the Internet for a solution to their problem.

interest

The second stage of the CRM journey is interest. A potential customer shows interest in your products or services when they contact you through your website or follow you on social media. They can also provide their email address in exchange for a webinar or e-book.

permission

The third stage of the CRM journey is decision making. A potential customer intends to buy your product or use your services. They evaluate their options by comparing prices and features with competitors' offerings. Your sales team can contact the prospect to determine if they are ready to make a purchase.

Get started

The last stage of the CRM funnel is action. Either the prospect decides to become a customer and makes a purchase of your product or service, or they reject your offer and do not become a customer.

As a prospect moves from awareness to action, CRM software collects data on the efforts of your sales and marketing teams to convert them into customers.

How a CRM system automates sales at every stage of the funnel

A CRM funnel can automate the closing process and help your company increase revenue. It can also provide the following benefits:

  • A CRM channel can help your company deliver its services in a way that better meets customer needs. Because a CRM system contains information about customer issues, you can use it to improve customer interactions and improve customer service.
  • Your customer relationship management (CRM) system contains data that will help you understand your customers' behavior. You can then use your CRM channel to offer customers products or services when they need them or are ready to hear about them. This will help you identify your most profitable waypoints and avoid wasting time on less profitable waypoints or potential prospects, improving your sales process.
  • A customer relationship management (CRM) channel can help your company increase sales by using information stored about customers.

Follow these sales automation best practices at every stage of your CRM funnel.

Awareness = Research

You'll probably use a variety of social media platforms to build relationships with customers. You can use CRM integration with social media to track interactions between potential customers. This will help you listen to potential customers, interact with them and build relationships with them through social media.

Every customer conversation (via chat, email, cold calling, etc.) is an opportunity to generate leads. You can also use customer questions, comments and complaints to find out what matters to your audience. Your customer service team can feed this information into your CRM software, and your sales team can use this data to identify sales opportunities or solicit referrals.

Your CRM system should organize your leads in a way that is easy to see and contact. You can then use your CRM to segment leads by category (eg, region, industry, function, profitability). This will allow you to create customized marketing and communication campaigns for specific customer segments.

Interest = qualified leads

Before you spend time marketing to prospects, determine who is most likely to convert. Use your CRM system to qualify leads. Evaluate prospects based on potential value and likelihood of becoming a customer.

How you generate leads will depend on what is most important to your business. For example, you can segment leads based on contact information, company data, lead sources, or other factors. Your CRM system will use variables defined in a formula designed to assign numerical scores to certain leads. You can filter from highest to lowest score and then focus on the leads at the top of the list.

Some prospects will not qualify after being hired. Use your CRM system to determine why they don't have the criteria. For example, a prospect may not have a budget for your product or service or may not need it right now. You may have contacted the wrong company contact. Please include these reasons in your CRM so we can respond to you later or remove them from the list.

Use a CRM to track interactions with potential customers. Determine how often the prospect interacts with someone at your company, why they contacted them, and what questions or concerns they raised. Integrating your email account into your CRM system allows you to record these interactions to filter key data and metrics (such as email opens and responses). Tracking communications with prospects will allow you to identify other useful information, such as key decision makers in the business, the client's budget, and the value of your product or service.

Solution = Remind potential customers

Your CRM contains a lot of data about customers and prospects who have reached this stage. Before making an offer or negotiating pricing, review customer data in your CRM (such as customer profiles and recorded calls) to gain actionable insights and personalize the experience.

For example, a prospect may be able to resolve issues raised during a phone call or an email conversation. This will show that you understand your prospect's problems and pains and care about meeting their needs.

Use CRM software to improve your efficiency by setting reminders to complete tasks at specific dates and times. You can set up follow-up tasks and reminders to contact specific managers and assign tasks to managers or contacts. Stay organized by marking completed tasks, setting deadlines for proposals, and changing those deadlines if they don't respond within a certain time frame.

You can also use CRM software to track the activities of other salespeople in your company. Publish activity reports to track proposals submitted, opportunities missed, calls and emails made, meetings scheduled and closed, notes logged, clients visited, and more. You can sort activities into groups, view email and call results, and determine which salespeople are moving (or not) to the next stage of the funnel.

Action = close the deal

Use the CRM Sales Forecast report to track the progress of deals in your sales funnel. Estimate the expected closing date and probability of closing for each transaction. If a deal won't close, you can determine why and identify potential solutions that will help close the deal.

Evaluate the effectiveness of your sales funnel and customer relationship management (CRM) process. Determine where offers will be suspended or canceled. Use the stage duration analysis feature in your CRM to determine how long the process takes at each stage of the conversion funnel. Look at historical data on successful and unsuccessful deals to estimate the probability of closing a deal. Publish reports to identify vendors who close deals with the lowest rates.

For example, the Sales Funnel Analytics report allows you to compare the number of closed deals to what you expect to close. This will help you shape and improve your deal results in the future.

When you win or lose a deal, use your CRM system's metrics to gain valuable insight into your results (eg, win rate, average sales cycle, lead conversion rate). This will allow you to review which activities are working best and identify which ones are underperforming.

If you lose business, write down the customer details and the reason for the loss so that you can take action later. This will help you identify ways to overcome these causes in the future. This can also allow you to interact with the main character in a different way. You can also update your CRM to exclude prospects with few or no leads, saving you time and money chasing uninterested prospects. 

CRM software is essential for automating many tasks at every stage of the CRM funnel. Contextual score data helps sales and marketing teams convert customers.

Five Stages of the Sales Funnel and How to Improve It to Convert More Leads

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