What happens if you fail to invest early in CRM software?
Are you missing opportunities to invest early in CRM software? Find out what can happen if you do.
Businesses of all sizes can drive revenue with CRM software. Any failure on behalf of a company to invest in CRM technologies means that the brand risks not spotting the opportunities to act on relevant sales data.
In short, companies with sales models that are not backed up by CRM software will likely be caught sleeping in comparison to any competitors with access to the sales tools within the software.
All of the above can sound slightly foreboding, so let’s take a minute to apply a little more focus on what could happen if a company fails to invest early in CRM software.
Missed opportunities to connect with customers
Customers return to brands that make them feel like their spending power is welcomed and appreciated. Or put another way, customers return to the brands that treat them well.
How can you treat your customers well? One way is through automated responses to direct messages. CRM software can gather and store all contacts in a single database for easy use in future marketing opportunities (please see below for more information). Replying to your customers with an instant receipt of their message – and a note to say you will be in touch ASAP – is a great way to help your customers feel valued.
Any missed opportunity to reply to messages across all channels means your brand instantly risks losing favour with that particular customer (read moreabout building rapport).
Missed opportunities to speak to returning customers (returning seasonal sales)
Gathering the details of customers basically comes down to two things. Firstly, you need their contact details. Secondly, you need to know why they are interested in your brand. When you can deliver a tailored message via the most appropriate sales strategies (based on the motivating factors involved in the customer being interested in your brand), you increase the likelihood of a sale.
Failure to invest in CRM software at an early stage means that you will not have the contact details – nor the recorded interests – of your customers to hand. As the months of the year pass, you could miss linked opportunities to target those customers with related sales.
For example, businesses that invest in CRM software at an early stage can rely on reminders to target repeat audiences for sales across related products and services (a customer who buys gym clothes in the summer may wish to know more information about waterproof running clothes in the winter, etc.).
Data can’t steer your marketing decisions if you don’t have the data to hand…
Data can only be available later if you put the effort in to collect it now. To this end, companies that fail to invest in CRM software cannot hope to compete with the fast-moving competition further down the line.
While emails and spreadsheets can be used at the outset to collect data from a limited number of customers, the need for robust integrated data management tools will soon become apparent where staff are overrun with admin duties.
Invest in CRM early and benefit from greater sales opportunities while minimising the data headache your staff would otherwise face.
