Any business looking to scale needs business processes. Good business processes take your company to the next level by automating functions that previously required management in the form of human capital, says Aneesh Reddy, co-founder and CEO, Capillary Technologies.
And in case you haven’t noticed, human capital can get expensive.
Fortunately for you, the right tools can help you avoid and reduce those costs. One of your first core business processes to put in place is your sales process. A company is only a company if it has customers and once you have enough customers, the key to growth becomes how you maximise your revenue potential.
The best tool to manage that growth is a CRM. And the very best kind of CRM is one that incorporates not only the standard tracking elements of any sales cycle, but also social media activity and other key variables of customer experience. We call these CRMs – CX CRMs. CX CRMs add texture to your sales strategy by enhancing intelligence to improve communication and drive returns.
Here are five ways CX CRMS optimise sales for profit:
* They track every channel – just as a good sales rep leaves no stone unturned, CX CRMs leave no customer untapped. Nearly one third of consumers use three or more channels to purchase. And by overwhelming margins (75%), consumers prefer the path of “online to in-store” over any other omni-channel routes to purchase.
Whether your customers prefer to use mobile, e-mail or social media as a potential point of sale, CX CRMs address every necessary customer touch point to land the highest possible number of sales. They consider and predict the channels that customers want to use and match those channels with the perfect offer.
* They make rewards programs easy – customers love rewards. But often times, retail-based rewards systems are confined by the need for physical tracking rather than easy, electronic systems. With CX CRMs, it’s easy to track every purchase a customer makes. No more rumpled punch cards handed out upon first purchase before getting lost in the back of a wallet or bottom of a purse.
Instead, customers are propelled to buy without the hassle, and pleasantly surprised when they earn something for free.
CX CRMs make retail forms and cards obsolete so you can show your savvy and keep customers happy.
* They empower in-store employees – clienteling allows employees to pull up individual customers and utilise a variety of tools, such as in-store tablets, to improve profitability, productivity and sales. Armed with in-depth intelligence about past customer behaviour, from purchase to interaction, employees stand much better odds of maximising the value of every person who walks into the store and rings the register.
Don’t just incentivise your employees; provide them the power of clienteling so they stay one step ahead of the sale. Your bottom line will thank you.
* They leverage the instant offer – it would be nice if customers could tell you directly what would appeal to them before you made your offer. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Instead, your store is tasked with creating something eye-catching and sales-worthy based on past data alone. Seems a little like rolling the dice, right?
Good news: it doesn’t have to be. CX CRMs have a knack for knowing what kind of offer will appeal to what kind of customer and when to use instant offers to make the sale.
They are, bar none, the easiest, most effective way to deliver instant, actionable offers to customers in the form of relevant, useful coupons. And since 8% of instant offers are redeemed the day they are sent out, the impact is highly measurable and tangible for any business owner or decision maker.
It’s like reading your customers’ minds.
* They target with awesome precision – customer demographics are a retailer’s best friend. Breaking your customers into clusters yields better results because it allows you to account for thousands of factors, such as gender, age, date of purchase, frequency, income, purchase size, and so on, changing your approach for the better on a customer-by-customer basis.
Proper analytics can yield 2-5X the return of standard CRMs, even for smaller retailers. Of course, that kind of return is nothing to sneeze at, no matter how large the company is.
