🕗 3 min read | Maple CRM | 13th Jan 2025
💡 In this blog-
– What is CRM for B2B businesses?
– How can a Sales CRM be a part of daily operation of a B2B business?
– Benefits of using a CRM for Sales and Operations
B2B (Business to Business) is that type of commerce where business provide products/services to other businesses and not directly to the consumers.
Some examples are- B2B Saas providers like CRM software, corporate marketing companies, logistic companies, etc.
Although the strata of customers in B2B is far smaller than B2C (Business to Customer) segment, B2B shares a major chunk of the economy due to higher market value of its deliverables and serve a long term value business.
Sales are a key driver of growth and success in B2B businesses. Management of Sales and the sales team play an equally important role in the day to day operations. CRM software for Sales management is truly crucial for any B2B business.
What is a CRM for B2B business?
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software for a B2B business can be defined as a platform for channelising the workflow, tracking client journey, monitoring the process and entire team’s functionality, all the while maintaining a central database for client details, product details and documents.
CRM is not merely a software used for sales updates. It’s a way of working for the sales team in order to stay organized, constantly up to date with the client’s requirements, providing the pricing and other info and deriving statistical analysis on the basis of the system data.
How can a Sales CRM be a part of daily operation of a B2B business?
When a particular business is running with a sales CRM, practically each and every sales executive is on the system for client management, contact, document preparation, product/service details and sales updates.
Some core functionalities:
Client Contact Management:
Sales team needs to be continuously in touch with the clients. New leads arrive unannounced and demand to be contacted immediately. A CRM system with communication automation not only enables quick communication and auto-contact capturing, but also raises the chances of conversion significantly.
Sales Pipeline Management:
CRM systems enable sales teams to visualize and manage the progress of their client journey through various stages of the sales funnel. This helps prioritize tasks, forecast revenue, and identify bottlenecks in the sales process.
Workflow Managements- Lead to Deal:
Workflow steps, client status, journey mapping and live updates- all can be accessed from the CRM software. This way, right from the lead receipt, to the deal closure- entire process is organized in the system and can be followed through by the sales executives flawlessly, without missing out on any step.
Business Performance Analytics:
CRM system provides perfect and up-to-date analytics of the sales performance and the reports can be customize to suit your business requirements. Analytics plays a vital role in strategizing business plans and getting a know-how of the team’s overall performance.
Benefits of using a CRM for Sales management:
Listed are some of the key benefits of using a Sales and Operations CRM:
- 1 platform operation and access
When your team can access each and every information of a lead / client from one platform, which defined access controls and update the status as and when required, so that management and other authority figures can glance at it when they require- it creates a transparency in your organization.
Teams perform better and management can monitor better.
CRM system can have access restrictions on the client info based on the user or the executive attached to the clients. Managers can access the entire data so as to stay updated on their team’s performance. - Structured process workflow
Workflow procedures and steps can be custom defined in a CRM system. (Check Maple CRM for more details.)
This enables the sales executives to follow the process and take the client through a well-organized, pre-defined journey. Automations along this path include auto emailing to the clients, prompts to ensure mandatory data receipt, reminders and follow ups. - Better Client Communication
Since CRM provides task automation, it can be ensured that even without manual intervention, clients stay well-communicated. This way, when a new lead is received or when updates need to be sent to the client, or any reminder is to be sent, the sales executive does not have to rely entirely on their memory for the task.
Their Sales CRM software does it automatically for them. - Better Client Retention
Happy clients = Long lasting relationships.
Long lasting relationships bring in loyalty of the clients, which is of utmost importance for B2B businesses.
Since the deals signed are meant to be long term and usually involve high investments, retaining every single client is crucial for the B2B businesses.
CRM software can help bolster this by automating client communications, auto reminders to the executives for tasks, follow ups with clients, product pricing communication, feedback collection and number of other functionalities. - Brand uniformity
Imagine this scenario- When you have a team of multiple sales executives, that too, working in different branches, their could be chances of discrepancy in the documents (like quotation, invoice, etc.) sent to the clients if it’s managed by manual process. There could even be errors.
CRM system provides a central database of document templates, mandatory checks, product listings and information forms. This information can be accessed and used by executives, so that all the documents, quotations, information forms, etc. go in the same structured format. This gives a professional look to their approach and leads to better client capture. - Improved Productivity
Productivity rise of the team can go to upto 5x of the manual process, if CRM system is used. Automation in sales pipeline, deal management, client relations, updates and note-keeping, all of it improves the productivity of the sales executives.
CRM automates the repetitive tasks, thus saving productive time of the sales executives. Thus, they can concentrate more on selling, and not on data-entry. - Better analysis- Better business strategies
CRM software gives to-the-point analysis of the team performance, sales pipeline performance, financials and product performance too.
This gives the concerned authorities a clear idea for further business strategies, like recognizing best lead sources, picking out the best and worst performing product lines, analyzing team performance, etc.
Overall, a CRM system is the driving force behind a thriving organization which imposes on structured and organized way of working.
This article is presented by Maple CRM – the best sales and field service management software for SMEs.
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