Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Social CRM Features Increase Sales and Improve Customer Relationships

It’s no secret that social media has changed the way that people interact, but how do you harness that momentum to increase your sales? For some, the overlap between social media and customer relationship management (CRM) seems obvious, but in case you are wondering what social CRM is and what it can do for your business, here are a few points to consider.

Social CRM: What is it?
Social CRM is a strategy and philosophy that utilizes your CRM features to add in a social aspect to your business management. These features are designed to engage with your customer or potential customer in order to detect areas of mutually beneficial value.

Using CRM features to engage socially with your customers is a technique to plan, measure and design your social media efforts to improve customer relationships.

Why Social CRM is Important for You
Implementing social media into your CRM features is an investment of both time and resources, so it is important to understand how it can impact your business. Here are a few reasons that social CRM can benefit your business:

  1. Improve customer relationships. You can find out what your customers need from you and when they need it. You can also learn about the challenges they face and foster conversation on the platform of their choosing. Social media can also help you detect brand advocates and develop initiatives with them to maximize your combined potential. With social CRM you can increase your brand recognition and reach by using your CRM features to target populations with highly relevant content.
  2. Provide your sales reps with high-quality data. You can not only find out what potential opportunities are out there, but also find out what they are talking about on social media. This enables your sales reps to get a fuller understanding of the various factors and dynamics that affect your customers’ businesses. Your sales reps can walk into a meeting with a broader understanding of their prospect’s challenges and successes.
  3. Social CRM can help your sales reps identify and address business challenges. Social CRM gives your sales reps a window into the challenges that may face your customers. It can be a way to identify customer dissatisfaction before your customer decides to shop around and give you a way to fix the problem.
The right CRM features can allow your sales reps to tie into social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter to see what the buzz is around your company and industry. These sites provide valuable insight into the opportunities and challenges that might be there.

To find out about social CRM and how your business can maximize the opportunities that social media has provided, contact Front Row Solutions. We provide mobile CRM tools that use the latest technology to grow your sales.