
Sales growth – How CRM helps to meet the biggest challenge for SMEs
A nationwide survey recently conducted by an SME business consulting firm highlighted an important statistic. Covering thousands of SME firms all over India, the survey identified pain points that act as the biggest hurdles to the SME growth story. An overwhelming 47% of the respondents reported that Sales Growth was their biggest challenge.
Sales growth is followed by factors such as working capital crunch and HR retention issues. But companies state that even these factors are a result of poor sales growth. Unless a company is confident of its growth trajectory, it cannot invest heavily in skilled man power, machinery & equipment or working capital infusion. Thus solving the Sales growth problem seems to be the top most priority.
Now let’s contrast these statistics with another correlated survey finding. A CRM consulting firm covering B2B and B2C companies from various business domains found several note-worthy observations regarding the impact of CRM implementation on Sales Growth.
CRM impact on Sales – Statistics at a glance
- Salesperson productivity – increases by up to 26%. When your sales team doesn’t have to waste time on manually tracking sales leads, they are free to pursue other customer avenues. Segmenting, prioritizing and communicating with the customers leads is managed very effectively using the CRM solution. Consolidating all communication with your customer across various channels – Email, social media, website queries and manual outreach happens automatically with CRM.
- Revenue per salesperson – increases by up to 41%. This is simply because of improved productivity of the salesperson. Time taken from pursuing initial leads to finalizing contracts with customers is drastically reduced. A single salesperson is now able to handle several customers in parallel. So even a small sales team well versed with using CRM features is sufficient to handle large customer bases.
- Customer Retention – increases by up to 27%. Business consolidation with existing customers happens because it is easier to sell more to an existing customer than hunt for a new one. When lasting customer relationships are built, not merely based on a business transaction, it results in increased customer confidence. CRM helps to keep a constant communication channel open with your customers – new product promotions, customer queries and feedback, grievances, payment history. Everything is available for your quick reference at the CRM dashboard. An associated statistic is even more encouraging.
- Customer acquisition through referrals – increases up to 70%. Satisfied customers tend to recommend your company to their business / family associates. Referrals are indeed the most cherished customer acquisition method. So one happy customer is worth more than huge money spent on marketing budgets. Since CRM enhances customer retention, it leads to consolidation of your existing customer base. When these satisfied customers spread the word about your company, that’s the possible advertisement.
As a testimony to the impact of CRM on SMEs, we see that among all the software segments sold across the world – products or SaaS subscriptions – CRM is the fastest growing software segment. The year on year growth of CRM adoption by businesses is exponential. A recent Forbes survey forecasts that the CRM market is expected to reach a staggering 52 Billion U.S. Dollars by 2021 and over 80 Billion U.S. Dollars by 2025!
Increased use of CRM on mobile phones by salespersons, wide spread deployment of cloud based CRM services and SaaS based CRM subscription models for customers are the 3 main reasons for the increased CRM adoption. With increased integration of AI based solutions in the CRM domain, personalized and targeted customer management becomes easy and affordable.
With the present crisis faced all across the world, restricted people movement has impacted sales activity performed in the traditional method of face to face contact. Companies are forced to make a quick transition of digitizing their entire operations, especially the sales process. However, many sales persons may not be familiar with technology usage in their sales work. When a company adopts a CRM solution, the CRM vendor ensures that sales and top management teams are trained and supported throughout the CRM deployment process. Thus the sales team can seamlessly move to CRM based remote customer management. No wonder small businesses all over the globe are leveraging the power behind the CRM system!
We at Rixyncs are a leading CRM service provider based out of Bangalore, India. We have been in the business for over a decade and have helped hundreds of small and medium size companies successfully adopt the CRM enterprise business process. As a result, our clients have seen growth of up to 35% in their revenues.
We are global premier partners for vtiger and affiliated partners with all the major CRM providers like Salesforce, Zoho and Microsoft Dynamics.
Get in touch with us and we will be glad to give you a demo on how your business could benefit from acquiring the CRM advantage. Explore our website http://www.rixyncs.co.in/ to know more about us.
Author Profile – Anuradha is a content writer cum corporate trainer in the IT/Telecom domain with 20 years of experience. She is a member of the Rixyncs content generation team.
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