Many entrepreneurs have heard that CRM helps increase sales, but not everyone understands exactly what a CRM system does to manage sales and what functions it has. In our experience, most customers use the service mainly to keep a list of tasks and store documents. We tell you about the features of CRM, which will help increase revenues.

1. Use customer cards

CRM stores data on clients in special cards with contacts, purchases, and the entire history of interaction with the client, each call, correspondence, and agreements. You can also see what requests and deals are open on the client, what stage they are at, which manager is working with the client and what changes he has made to the card.

A manager no longer keeps the specifics of this or that client in mind: everything is fixed in the sales management system. And if it's necessary to pass things off to another employee, the manager can do it in two clicks.

2. Manage tasks in dashboards

Thanks to this feature, managers will stop forgetting to call back or write to the client. All tasks are displayed in a special section. There they are sorted by deadline time: "Overdue", "Today", "Tomorrow", "Later" and "No deadline". 

Set the task as a leader by assigning responsibility, as well as the manager himself: for example, after talking with a client, the employee sets himself a task "Call back in 2 days," so as not to forget. And you can set up a CRM so that it itself sets the task employees.

For example, some time after sending a commercial offer you need to call the client back. In the sales management software, automation can be set up: when a manager moves the deal to the "Sales proposal sent" stage, the "Call the client back" task with the required deadline is created by itself.

How do you manage sales if employees ignore instructions? Work in the CRM-system can be set up so as to eliminate the "amateurism" of employees: add mandatory fields, attach checklists for each stage of transactions. The program will not allow you to move the deal to the next stage until the employee enters all mandatory data into the card.

For example, a manager has developed a list of mandatory questions to help identify a customer need. Some managers think they can do it better and ignore the questionnaire created. As a result, they do not identify the need and make a weak offer. Conversion of presentations into deals decreases. 

The company implemented a CRM system and added a mandatory checklist with these questions to the client card. Now all managers have to ask questions and write their answers in the client card. The better the employee identifies the need, the higher the probability that he or she will offer exactly the goods or services that the customer needs. Conversion to sales will increase.

4. Automate the work with documents

Work with documents is time-consuming: you need to manually make a template agreement details, a list of goods and services, then duplicate this data in the template invoice and act, and the contract agreed with the lawyers. 

As a result, managers spend a lot of time on this work, make mistakes, the contract gets lost on the lawyers' desk, and everyone forgets about it. The clients' legal department panics because of missed deadlines, and the accountant refuses to pay the bill because of mistakes in the invoice.

To effectively manage sales, it's better to relieve managers from meticulously filling out paperwork. In the CRM-system details are entered once, and then they are loaded into all created documents. With the click of three buttons, an agreement is formed, a lawyer is tasked to coordinate it, and the document itself can be sent to the client by mail from the CRM. 

Invoices and closing documents can even be made automatic at the transition to the appropriate stages of the transaction. This would eliminate errors and resulting delays in payments.

5. Configure access rights to the client base

Managing a company's sales is not just about controlling employees. Often there are unpleasant situations when managers when dismissed steal the client base. The CRM system helps prevent this thanks to flexible settings of access rights. For any group of employees, the manager designates which data they can add, edit and delete, which data they can only add or view, and which they will not even see.

Read: Customer Support Management

6. Keep track of your business with reports

The CRM can generate a report on any parameters. Here are the reports we advise you to use in your work: 

1. sales funnel report. This is a diagram that shows how many clients are at this or that stage of the deal. With its help, the manager will immediately see where the leads are lost. This will make it possible to find the cause of the loss faster and eliminate it.

2. report on the effectiveness of advertising channels. To manage the sale of products, you need to manage the advertising budget competently. The analytics section shows how many leads came from one channel or another. Thanks to this information the company can abandon ineffective advertising channels in time and reduce budget losses.

3. report on completed tasks and employee calls. CRM-system allows you to track the work of managers. At any time you can find out how many calls a particular employee made, how many deals were closed and for what amount.

Report on the number of calls: If these five work exclusively on calls, it's no wonder the company has few sales

All the reports the manager needs can be displayed on the desktop and you can assemble as many dashboards as you want from them.

Read: Social CRM

Conclusions

We advise you to use 6 tricks in CRM to increase sales:

• Keep a customer card. All information on orders and interaction history is recorded in one place.
  
• Manage tasks in dashboards. Managers can see what needs to be done for the day: who to call, bill, send a presentation or prepare documents. 
• Set up mandatory fields and checklists. Managers will not violate regulations and instructions.
• Use the document builder. Contracts and invoices can be quickly created in the CRM system. The manager saves time and avoids mistakes. 
• Create different access rights for employees. Your trade secrets and customer base are protected. Keep track of your business with reports. A sales funnel report will show you at what stage many deals get "stuck", a bid report will show you the most effective advertising channels, and a task completion report will show you which managers are not working well enough.

Read: How Your B2B Business Could Benefit From Offering E-Commerce