3 Hacks to Optimize Your CRM

Whether you are an established Fortune 500 company or a growth stage firm seeking to seize greater market share, you likely have some form of CRM in place. However, many organizations in your position fail to leverage the full capacity of CRM, thereby leaving profits on the table. Here are three hacks that optimize CRM:

Capture the Full Buyer Journey

A lack of understanding regarding the full customer journey precludes you from planning and leveraging subsequent advantages in the sales process. By tailoring your CRM to cover the entire consumer experience from the beginning to the end, you realize the full spectrum of the consumer process, whereby you integrate affiliated CRM applications such as sales enablement, activity management and/or pipeline management tools.

Integrate CRM into Sales Operations

By aligning CRM with your sales operations, you cultivate greater control over your company's sales workflow. Although many firms have CRM applications, many do not actively use the system to drive sales processes. As a result, develop a sales process that is closely integrated with your CRM system. This maximizes workflow efficiency, aligned with the objectives of your firm, thus enabling you to better leverage leads and engage in profitable follow-up approaches.

Stakeholder Adherence

Gaining and maintaining stakeholder buy-in to CRM systems proves to be one of the more challenging impediments to companies fully leveraging the prowess of CRM. Too often CRM integrations fail because company leaders do not communicate persuasively the benefits of the system or enforce adherence across departments, thereby undermining the potential for greater efficacy. Take advantage of the flexibility CRM systems offer to tailor an approach the meets the needs of your internal team members and customers to optimize outcomes.

Ultimately, by tweaking your current CRM approach, you may well unleash robust growth in sales conversion and greater market share.