There’s no question that it’s important to have some kind of client relationship management (CRM) system in place to keep all your contacts and notes organized. However, these systems aren’t helpful unless you can leverage them to maximize CRM return.
Because the hygiene of your CRM system directly affects your sales efforts, manual data entry into these systems may be hurting your bottom line. In fact, productivity, pipeline visibility, and your marketing efforts are all diminished by manual data entry. This leads to decreased revenue since all of these activities are directly linked to increasing profit.
To top it off, good CRMs are not cheap, and most continue to cost more over time as you add functionality and grow your database. You need a way to fully leverage your CRM investment and maximize CRM return. Here are three ways your CRM could be costing you money.
Sales Reps aren’t Spending Time on Selling
According to CSO Insights, only 33% of a sales rep’s time is spent actively selling and only 4% more of the sales rep’s time is spent on other revenue-generating activities.
The CMO Council attributes trillion in losses every year to lost productivity and poorly managed leads.
Streamlining data entry through CRM integration can improve CRM return. Indeed, the less time sales professionals spend on manual data entry, the more time they have to sell. More time increases the frequency of sales follow-up calls and closed deals.
Look for solutions that provide an easy way for sales reps to capture and instantly cross check the accuracy of lead information. It’s also important to find a solution that reps find easy to use and see as valuable.
Sales Reps Have Inaccurate Pipelines
Sloppy data management and incomplete CRM entries ultimately lead to poor reporting and an unclear picture of a company’s future revenue.
Often, sales reps don’t bother entering their opportunities into the CRM until they’re about to finalize the sale. This causes issues in reporting by providing an unclear picture of the opportunities in the sales funnel.
Investing in a solution that complements the existing sales process and automatically updates your CRM is incredibly valuable. It not only saves sales reps time and frustration, but it also provides a clearer picture of their pipeline.
CardTapp’s client engagement solution provides a personally branded, virtual engagement app that is easy to share. As the app is shared with leads, those leads are automatically uploaded into your CRM. Because leads are automatically added with our CRM integration, the lead capture process is streamlined. Plus, you’ve eliminated the risk of losing those leads at multiple stages of the sales funnel.
Overall, implementing a solution that offers CRM integration will deliver:
- Richer, more accurate data sets for reporting
- Greater predictability on revenue streams
- Marketing efficiencies for the company as a whole
- Improved tracking and follow-up with leads
Incomplete CRM Data Leads to Missed Marketing Opportunities
Beyond inaccurate pipelines and crippled sales productivity, consider that manually-entered leads tend to be referrals. Since leads from referrals tend to have the highest likelihood of closing, these are leads your business cannot afford to lose.
Whether not entered or entered incorrectly, errors keep your valuable leads out important marketing campaigns. For example, a marketing team could have nurturing automations and retargeting ads for various stages of the funnel. Incomplete CRM information significantly damages the marketing team’s efforts to create new sales opportunities.
Start Maximizing Your CRM Return
By simply implementing a CRM integration, you capture more accurate data of your hottest leads and eliminate data hygiene issues common from manual data entry. CardTapp’s client engagement solution syncs with just about any CRM system on the market. Request a demo today to find out more about CardTapp’s CRM integrations.