Sales teams often have to navigate a variety of sales journeys with their customers. Since no two customers take the same path to find you, teams have a lot of communications to keep tabs on.

With all of the communications to keep track of, it can be easy to get lost in a sea of leads. Missing crucial steps of the sales funnel can have a negative effect on the customer experience and the potential sale.

If there are opportunities to replace manual steps or add reminders in your sales process you should take advantage of them. CRM systems help sales and marketing professionals navigate the different steps of a sales funnel through the customer’s unique journey. Features like triggers, automatic touchpoints, and email templates keep sales teams organized and on track during the sales process.

Triggers

Triggers in your CRM can significantly improve the workflow for your sales teams. A trigger designates an action that initiates subsequent actions in sales or marketing workflow. Common uses of triggers center around emails, website traffic, forms, and anything else that’s a part of your lead’s contact actions.

Think of a trigger as any action your lead can take by engaging with your business online, and your CRM is what takes that action and tells your sales team what next action they should take.

Since triggers are heavily rooted in the actions that customers take, they heavily support inbound marketing strategies. When your customers are coming to you, as opposed to outbound outreach, it requires sales teams to be that much more mindful of their actions. The goal is not just to respond quickly, but to respond more efficiently. With triggers directing your sales team to the next steps they need to take, it takes out the guesswork for them and they can focus on making a meaningful interaction with the lead that moves them further down the funnel.

For example, when a prospective customer requests a demo from one of your landing pages the trigger can change their status from inquiry to lead and direct the salesperson to set an appointment. Sales teams can not only act faster, but they can tailor their communication based on the landing page they engaged with.

The ability to customize triggers in a CRM to fit a company’s sales process is crucial. While workflows are similar across industries, there are those that are unique or specific to a business, that will need to be created. Opportunities are often missed when businesses don’t take advantage of the customization features their CRM has to offer. 

Triggers help both the customer and sales team members maneuver through the sales process at the pace and the path that works best for their journey.

Touchpoints 

In addition to the actions from the triggers, sales teams also have a variety of touchpoints with their leads throughout the sales funnel. Some of these touchpoints will be a direct result of a triggering action by a lead. Touchpoints are interactions between businesses and customers that occur during the customer’s journey. They can include demonstrations, follow-ups, and even marketing emails.

These touchpoints are the moments that shape the customer’s experience and ultimately can influence their decision to do business with the company. Missing or failing to maintain deliberate touchpoints can cause sales teams to lose sales. Touchpoints keep your business in the front of your customer’s mind and give sales teams the opportunity to engage in a meaningful way.

There are some touchpoints that can be automated while implementing your CRM. You can set up automatic follow-ups, emails, even share testimonials of satisfied customers. This allows sales teams to touch base with their leads without extra time or effort. What’s important is that you determine what touchpoints need to happen manually and which ones are beneficial to automate.

You hope that customers will buy on their first shopping experience with you, but most sales are made after five or more contact touchpoints with a customer. Automating some of those touchpoints with your CRM can ensure your team is supported throughout the customer journey.

Templates 

Email templates are a great way to support your sales team in addition to automated touchpoints and triggers. CRMs offer the ability to create and manage templates for emails, texts, and other communications. They can save time, reinforce company branding, and support marketing initiatives. 

Having a variety of templates in your CRM for your team’s communication can be a time-saver for your sales teams.  Replying quickly to inquiries boosts your chance of engagement. Sales teams should strive to respond to new inquiries within thirty minutes of receiving them. With templates for expected touchpoints and specific products in your CRM, your sales team doesn’t waste time crafting entire messages or searching for the right thing to say.

You can also ensure your company’s branding is being reinforced through email templates. It’s nearly impossible to view every single communication as they happen in real-time. With email templates, you can have peace of mind knowing that your sales team is communicating through high-quality, consistent responses. Creating templates for common questions, inquiries for products and services should be requirements for your brand.

Marketing and product managers also benefit from email templates. They can use them to communicate about new products, features, and upcoming customer events. Your CRM should offer the ability to customize templates with capabilities like changing or adding photos, links, and other content to support any type of template you may need.

These different features of your CRM are useful on their own, and even more powerful when utilized together. Using the data from your CRM you can create intentional triggers and combine those reminders with email templates, either sent manually or as an automated touchpoint. These improvements in your workflow can increase your sales team’s response time through the CRM, ultimately increasing your sales.

An effective sales team relies on exceptional client communication. Personalized communication with clients helps you market to, sell to, and support potential and current clients.

The communication process for your clients should be smooth and seamless, flowing from one stage to the next. However, many businesses don’t have the tools to support a fluid conversation process with clients, and as a result, the communication suffers.

Even top-notch salespeople can fall victim to outdated tech, and miss important calls or messages from clients. While one or two missed messages may not seem like much, they do result in a negative experience for your potential clients. This can lead to negative reviews, low retention rates, and fewer sales.

Your CRM should help you communicate with clients by email, phone, text, live chat, and social media. It should provide the sales team with a centralized place to view and manage communications with clients across different channels.

Email 

Email is one of the primary ways sales teams communicate with their customers and leads. From direct emails to email campaigns, email is often the first communication had with customers. Throughout the sales process, email is used in a variety of ways, and it’s crucial that your CRM can support them all.

Enabling Sales with Email Marketing

Email marketing plays a heavy role in the sales process. Sales team members may not interact directly with email marketing campaigns, but email campaigns play an important role in lead generation and sales enablement.

Email marketing campaigns help build relationships with prospective customers. They help companies understand customer interests, needs, and pain points. When email marketing campaigns are managed inside your CRM, your marketers can start to build trust with and insights about your prospective customers, and salespeople can better understand customer needs and close more effectively.

Email Follow-Ups

Initial inquires from leads often come in via email. With the right CRM implementation, salespeople can respond faster to initial inquiries, improving their chances of closing sales. CRM systems can provide dedicated inboxes for sales. With a dedicated inbox just for sales emails, teams can prioritize external requests that generate revenue.

Sales teams frequently use email to follow up with their leads and customers. Most customers don’t buy on their first interaction with you, in fact, 80 percent of sales take at least 5 follow-ups after the initial meeting to close.

Make sure your sales workflows are set up so that your CRM can keep track of your emails with prospective customers. With all your sales emails in one location, salespeople can keep track of how many attempts they’ve made to follow-up, ensure they’re touching base enough times before closing out any leads, and avoid missing out on potential sales.

Finalizing Deals via Email

Sending items like final details of a deal or contract paperwork through email is very common for sales teams. Depending on your CRM’s capabilities, sending these types of communications through your CRM can provide a secure avenue of communication for your customer. Using your CRM to send deal paperwork also provides transparency for all team members, as well as a paper trail to reference if there is any confusion down the road.

A CRM can enhance communication with your with prospects and customers and it can also lead to improved customer service and consequently increased sales. By integrating email with your CRM, you’ll have a more comprehensive view of your audience and can use that information to make your outreach relevant and with timely content.

An effective sales team relies on exceptional client communication. Personalized communication with clients helps you market to, sell to, and support potential and current clients.

The communication process for your clients should be smooth and seamless, flowing from one stage to the next. However, many businesses don’t have the tools to support a fluid conversation process with clients, and as a result, the communication suffers.

Even top-notch salespeople can fall victim to outdated tech, and miss important calls or messages from clients. While one or two missed messages may not seem like much, they do result in a negative experience for your potential clients. This can lead to negative reviews, low retention rates, and fewer sales.

Your CRM should help you communicate with clients by email, phone, text, live chat, and social media. It should provide the sales team with a centralized place to view and manage communications with clients across different channels.

Email 

Email is one of the primary ways sales teams communicate with their customers and leads. From direct emails to email campaigns, email is often the first communication had with customers. Throughout the sales process, email is used in a variety of ways, and it’s crucial that your CRM can support them all.

Enabling Sales with Email Marketing

Email marketing plays a heavy role in the sales process. Sales team members may not interact directly with email marketing campaigns, but email campaigns play an important role in lead generation and sales enablement.

Email marketing campaigns help build relationships with prospective customers. They help companies understand customer interests, needs, and pain points. When email marketing campaigns are managed inside your CRM, your marketers can start to build trust with and insights about your prospective customers, and salespeople can better understand customer needs and close more effectively.

Email Follow-Ups

Initial inquires from leads often come in via email. With the right CRM implementation, salespeople can respond faster to initial inquiries, improving their chances of closing sales. CRM systems can provide dedicated inboxes for sales. With a dedicated inbox just for sales emails, teams can prioritize external requests that generate revenue.

Sales teams frequently use email to follow up with their leads and customers. Most customers don’t buy on their first interaction with you, in fact, 80 percent of sales take at least 5 follow-ups after the initial meeting to close.

Make sure your sales workflows are set up so that your CRM can keep track of your emails with prospective customers. With all your sales emails in one location, salespeople can keep track of how many attempts they’ve made to follow-up, ensure they’re touching base enough times before closing out any leads, and avoid missing out on potential sales.

Finalizing Deals via Email

Sending items like final details of a deal or contract paperwork through email is very common for sales teams. Depending on your CRM’s capabilities, sending these types of communications through your CRM can provide a secure avenue of communication for your customer. Using your CRM to send deal paperwork also provides transparency for all team members, as well as a paper trail to reference if there is any confusion down the road.

A CRM can enhance communication with your with prospects and customers and it can also lead to improved customer service and consequently increased sales. By integrating email with your CRM, you’ll have a more comprehensive view of your audience and can use that information to make your outreach relevant and with timely content.

Good contact management is important to many of your marketing and sales processes and strategies, including email marketing. It helps provide the context you need to enable you to send the right email to the right person at the right time. And if you can’t do that, not only are you less able to compete with the best marketers in your space, but you also run the risk of damaging your relationship with members of your audience, potentially causing them to disengage from your brand.

Email continues to be one of the best ways to reach an audience. So, if you’re spearheading any growth initiatives, chances are it should involve email marketing as a strategy, and chances are that you want to have solid contact management so that you can do email marketing well.

Even if you’re starting from scratch with a new business, it’s essential to build good contact management practices. For new businesses, your contact database may be the most valuable currency you have (if not the only currency you have). Neglecting building a good contact database could be the end of your fledgling business. Contact management will likely be a major factor in the success of your business.

What is good contact management? What separates the good from the bad, and what are the core capabilities that your business should have when it comes to contact management?

Collecting Contact Info

You should be able to collect contact info for people who are interested in your brand. This may sound like a no-brainer for a lot of established businesses; few of us are strangers to a subscription box or lead form. Even if you’re familiar with common methods, you also want to make sure that you’re doing it right.

At a minimum, make sure to collect a full name and email for your brand’s contacts. It may be tempting to just collect an email address, but requiring a name on your subscription requests won’t deter people who you’ve truly made a connection with, and including name information in the To field of your emails will help keep your emails out of the spam folders of your audience. You can’t help anyone if you’re sending emails into the void.

Make sure that you’re transparent about how you use your contacts’ information. Now more than ever, matters of privacy and information security are important to your contacts. Make sure to communicate what user information that you collect, and how you use that information, including any third parties that you use to collect or process that information.

Centralize Your Contact Info

You should have central storage for information about your brand’s contacts. Having centralized storage for your brand’s contact info better enables you to make the most of your relationship with your audience.

For instance, if someone subscribes to your email list from one of your blog posts, and then shows interest in multiple other content pieces on the same subject, then they may find your product that relates to that subject helpful. If you have centralized contact information, then you have the context to know how to help this person, and you can provide them with the right message at the right time.

Going without centralized contact info is a risk. Given the same person showing the same interest in your brand, if you are missing information about your brand’s relationship with them, you’re missing opportunities to connect with them and ultimately sell to them. Worse, you might send them something irrelevant to their needs and potentially lose them forever.

Customer relationship management systems, or CRM systems for short, can enable businesses to centralize their contact info, and help people interested in their brands as best as possible. If you have adopted a CRM for your business already, make sure that it’s working for you in enabling you to connect with your audience. If you haven’t already adopted a CRM, you should make it a priority to look for one that works for your business.

Organize Your Contact Info

It’s not enough to collect contact info. Once your contact database starts growing, you need to proactively organize it to keep it healthy and up to date.

At a minimum, make sure that you promptly separate defunct email addresses from the good ones. Sending to a bad email address can negatively affect your sending reputation, and your ability to deliver emails to the good email addresses in your contact database.

If you can, another good thing to do is to organize contacts by their last engagement. This can allow you to better engage your best customers and followers, and also allow you to maintain a relationship with loyal audience members who don’t engage as often.

The more that you do to keep your contacts organized, the more opportunities you’ll find to better connect with your audience. You can do some pretty sophisticated things with well-organized contact data to make happier customers and a better-performing business.

We hope you find these tips on contact management helpful! You can always contact us with questions or feedback about contact management.