Use the Right CRM Reporting Tool to Populate Your Database

In many ways, having a successful business boils down to providing excellent customer service. When the customer is happy, it reflects well upon your brand. One of the tools successful businesses use to boost their brand is customer relationship management solutions (CRM).

If you are still using your CRM solely to manage your leads, you’re missing out on valuable portions of it that can help you keep your clients happy. The newer school of thought is to embrace every aspect of the CRM solution to boost your entire business. Specifically, when the CRM is properly utilized, companies can establish longer-lasting relationships by building up customer loyalty. The goal is to have your clients identify your brand on many different levels, and using CRM to help you gather and crunch the data that can help you achieve this.

Rather than spend an inordinate amount of time squeezing your CRM to get the most new customers you possibly can, take a moment to consider embracing the customers you currently have to offer them more; you’ll get more in return. For instance, when companies work really hard to bring in new clients, they’re essentially neglecting the opportunity to increase the loyalty of existing clients. When you use your CRM to capture data on your current customers, you can use that data to enhance your interactions and build products around what they want even before they know they want it; the data can be that insightful.

Your customer data reveals a wealth of information. If you have tracked a customer long enough, you’ll see a trend in their buying habits. You’ll know how long they wait between purchases, the average amount of the purchases, what products they gravitate toward and which ones they never even consider. You’ll even know what time of the month and what time of day they close on a sale. You’re basically learning their limitations, which can help you determine how to approach them for future sales. This limits the time you spend pushing a product on the wrong people while creating upsell opportunities for the right people.

The best way to gather this valuable information is often the least pursued by companies using CRM – the salesforce. Your sales reps are out in the field, talking to your valuable customers day in and day out. They have developed relationships with them and have key insights that can make a database extremely valuable. The problem is, most companies don’t give them the tools they need to send this information back to the company and into the database.

When armed with the right CRM reporting tools, your salesforce can send back sales reports from the field in a matter of seconds, preferably less than 60. If the solution is easy to use, you’ll see a consistent flow of sales reports populating your database.

Front Row Solutions knows how the salesforce works and what they are willing to use when it comes to reporting tools. We have designed our mobile app around those preferences and included email calendar integration so everyone can be on the same page and a follow-up is never missed. Check us out and see how we bring value to our clients’ sales department.

The Mobility of iOS Sales App Increases Productivity

The strength of a good sales team is in its ability to be mobile – to get out of the office and make face-to-face interactions with customers and solidify sales. A sales team that is tied to their desks is far less productive. However, until recently, mobile sales teams still had to return to the office to submit sales reports.

Insights = Better Productivity
Your sales managers need the information that can give them the insights they need to get more clarity on what’s going on in a sales rep’s daily activities. It’s through sales reports that these insights can be gained. Unfortunately, when it comes to adopting CRM solutions enterprise-wide, it’s usually the sales team that falls short of total buy-in and fails to offer the reports on a consistent basis.

Smartphone Ubiquity Works in Your Favor
It’s highly unlikely that any member of your sales team is not using a smartphone or tablet computer while in the field. An iOS sales app on these mobile devices can offer your sales team a quick and easy way to stay mobile while sending in the reports you use to drive better performance out of your team while pinning down customer habits and behaviors. So many businessmen and women have realized the value of the iOS sales app in their day-to-day routines that the app adoption is expected to grow by 500 percent at some point this year.

Cater to Your Sales Reps’ Work Habits
Your focus might be on the bottom line, but giving your sales reps the mobility and flexibility to work in the field creates more loyalty among your workforce. However, sales reps are notorious for loathing laborious CRM training. They’re even more notorious for their reluctance to file sales reports, especially if the CRM reporting tools are too complex and time consuming. Therefore, you need to take a close look at the iOS sales app you’re considering and make certain it caters to the needs of your sales team.

Get Your Data Right the First Time
You rely on your data to help you make sales to your current customers, but also to market to those customers so they’ll be around for a long time. This means your data has to be accurate. You need to make sure your contact information is entered correctly and that everything about the sale is recorded accurately. The iOS sales app allows your sales team to make the report within seconds of the end of the sales call, which means all the information is completely fresh in their memory and less likely to be entered incorrectly.

How an iOS app Should Work
Front Row Solutions has perfected the iOS sales app process. When your sales rep finishes a sales call, they simply launch the Front Row app and enter the sales information, which could include pictures from the camera app, and send it to the Front Row servers. The whole process takes as little as 30 seconds.

The message from your sales reps will identify who sent the report, which client was contacted and the time and date. The sales rep analytics database, client database and customized dashboard are all automatically populated with all the information in the report. Whether it’s a Blackberry, iPhone or Android – give your sales reps the power of Front Row mobility today.

Utilize Your CRM Database for Better Customer Loyalty

Your CRM database isn’t there just to help you make sales; it can also be of use in keeping your current customers completely loyal.

If you are focused on using your CRM database exclusively as a sales tool, you’re missing out on its potential for marketing to your existing customers. More marketing departments are beginning to focus on better customer service to help improve customer loyalty, which is an effort that has tremendous potential when carried out correctly.

We all know that it’s easier and cheaper to market to existing customers than it is to new customers. However, not everyone realizes how valuable the CRM database is in catering to existing customers, furthering relationships with them and all but guaranteeing a fruitful interaction for years to come.

Are you taking a systematic approach to giving your current customers everything they require to pledge their loyalty and return business to you? Digging into your CRM database and extracting valuable information about the habits of your customer base can assist you in this systematic approach, which research shows can increase your revenue by around 20 percent on average.

You might be thinking the responsibility of building relationships with customers is that of the sales department or perhaps your service team. Regardless of the fact that your sales reps spend a lot of face time with customers, your marketing team has the CRM database at their fingertips and more time to focus on the research that the sales team offers you.

The sales rep is definitely a big part of the process. It’s the rep who enters the information about the customer that helps you determine when and how they like to be contacted, what products they prefer, how often they buy and how much they spend. If your sales reps aren’t providing this information, it’s probably because your CRM reporting process is flawed.

If you know your sales reps well, you have already determined that they aren’t the best at toiling with paperwork, especially the sales reports that can be rather time consuming and difficult to navigate within most CRM solutions. Granted, most vendors don’t have the sales department in mind when they create their solutions, particularly with the reporting tools.

What you need is a solution that allows your sales reps to quickly and easily enter their sales information. When your sales managers are armed with information about their sales reps, which they gain through regular reports, they can get more out of their one-on-one training sessions to address areas where improvement can be made.

Front Row Solutions has created a mobile application that allows you to harness the power of your CRM while giving your sales reps the mobility they need and a reporting method that allows them to send reports in 30 seconds or less. The solution also includes a camera tool that has a variety of uses in sales reports, from sending pictures of contracts to vice presidents to pictures of displays that need attention to the service department. Whatever the ultimate goal, Front Row has you covered. To learn how this solution can impact your sales team and drive loyalty, give us a call today.