The modern CRM is the heart of a digital transformation for any company, and without it, you’ll get left behind. In order to bring your sales reps to the next level, you need data. You need a system that answers questions like:
What percentage of time sales spends on selling vs. administrative tasks
How aware are sales of customers’ needs?
What are your best sales reps doing that is enabling their success?
Do you know what your most promising deals are?
Is your forecast accurate?
Are you getting quality leads?
This is exactly where my 3 favourite letters come in, and these are CRM. You’ve likely heard of CRM, but you may not know exactly what it represents.
“CRM stands for customer relationship management. With a CRM system, you can automate and integrate your customer-facing activities including sales, marketing, customer service, and e-commerce. Best-in-class CRM solutions also offer you tools for customer analytics, personalization, social media engagement, collaboration, and even advanced technologies like machine learning.” – SAP
Also Read: What is SAP CRM?
4 Key Characteristics of Modern CRMs
When CRM tools were first launched in the 80s, these old-school CRMs weren’t much more than a digital contact or activity list, and all they really did was store phone numbers and meeting dates. Fast forward to today, and Modern CRM offers you :
1. Real-time customer insights and data analysis
Allowing you to deliver personalized experiences to your customer. CRM empowers your sales reps to achieve more with less effort so they spend their time on things that actually matter.
2. Mobility
Now that we are all walking around with supercomputers in our pockets, you can utilize a mobile CRM to essentially run your business right from an app on your phone, as mobility in all business applications has become a must-have.
3. Seamless software integration
Modern CRMs can be integrated into just about anything you use to run your business. They can be integrated into your ERP, Finance, Inventory or Accounting systems. Or even integrated into your communication channels, such as allowing your customers to lodge a complaint or request via e-mail, chat, social media or your website. They also enable you to run workflow and approval processes to assign responsibility and the next steps throughout the sales process.
Today’s CRMs are deeply integrated into sales operations, allowing users to perform crucial business operations such as creating sales quotes or even taking orders.
4. Machine Learning
Another characteristic of a modern CRM that has emerged in the past few years is the ability to incorporate Machine Learning into the sales process, which is of course a game changer. CRMs can analyze your historical data to predict the success of an opportunity or even to recommend products for your customers automatically when creating a sales quote.
Also Read: SAP Sales Cloud & Machine Learning
Bottom Line
Now if you do happen to be using a CRM at that moment and it looks more like this:
Then like this:
It means it’s probably time for an upgrade. Modern CRM like SAP Sales Cloud offers you real-time customer insights and data analysis, allowing you to deliver personalized experiences to your customer.
