Recessionary pressures on the global economy have made it more challenging for businesses to achieve sustained profitability and success. That means organizations must do everything they can to grow, maintain, and even protect their current customer base. But making decisions on what systems to prioritize and where to spend budget can be difficult when businesses seek to reduce overheads and minimize risk.
With CRM software expenditures projected to reach $79.16 billion by the end of 2023, businesses clearly view them as a core enterprise resource to maintain and a key area to invest in despite economic headwinds. As CRMs spearhead sales and marketing, generating new revenue streams and sustaining existing ones, continuing to optimize current systems can go a long way towards effectively nurturing leads, converting prospects into customers, and improving repeat business, especially in challenging sales environments like these. Learn how leading businesses are investing in their CRM to full-proof their sales funnels and continue their growth.
Use your CRM to strategize
CRM systems are powerful tools for managing the range of interactions that businesses have with their customers. Over time, the information gathered through a CRM can help build a more complete picture of the buyers’ journeys that can inform and automate future sales and marketing workflows.
Tracking communication history between customers and employees can effectively drive purchasing decisions in a number of ways, including:
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- Lead management. Sales teams can track, assign, and prioritize leads, allowing them to follow up with top prospects promptly and efficiently.
- Contact management. CRMs track communication history, preferences, and interactions. Detailed contact profiles can be created with relevant information such as purchase history, email addresses, and phone numbers. This helps businesses better nurture leads or support existing customers.
- Workflow automation. CRMs can automate repetitive tasks, such as follow-up emails or scheduling appointments. Automating these tasks helps streamline sales processes and reduces administrative work, giving CRM end-users in marketing and sales more time to focus on complex tasks.
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Put plans into action
IT teams can help salespeople put effective action plans in place. Supporting IT teams with sufficient resources will allow them to continually develop and improve sales and marketing workflows to generate more leads, close more sales, and maximize long-term profitability.
IT teams can create effective business strategies into place via CRM systems by:
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- Improving lead generation. Sales and marketing teams become more effective at lead generation. Teams can focus on leads with a stronger likelihood of success instead of spending the same amount of time on every prospect.
- Enhanced customer experience. CRM systems enhance touchpoints as businesses can engage with customers based on their individual experiences and preferences.
- Real-time data and performance. With access to real-time data, businesses become empowered to improve their sales, marketing, and customer service techniques – leading to more personalized and relevant content.
- Backing up critical systems. Having systems backed up protects customer information in the event of system breakdowns or data breaches.
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How DevOps impacts CRM delivery
Investing in development practices and tooling helps development teams deliver better sales results while simultaneously driving profitability. DevOps can significantly impact CRM deployments and optimal performance by promoting improved collaboration, building greater efficiency through automation, and creating faster feedback loops.
Release management and pivoting
Developing effective CRM systems requires strong release management systems. Effective release management can help ensure system updates are deployed smoothly and effectively while minimizing user disruption. Whether it means fixing bugs, introducing new features, or improving system performance, users can expediently update sales and marketing functions.
Further, companies that fail to change and adapt to technological innovations continually may face stagnation and limited growth. Staying abreast of necessary changes can make the difference between a business’s success or ultimate failure. Faster releases of development work will allow your company to pivot and change strategies to improve profitability and long-term success.
Backup, compliance, and resilience
While some companies may be more focused on long-term growth, others may find retaining their current customer base more advantageous. Maintaining customer trust and support should be a continued goal of organizations; however, this becomes even more crucial during times of economic downturn.
A single data breach or lack of compliance incident can forever hurt the long-term viability of organizations. DevOps practices can have a transformative effect on CRM delivery by streamlining processes, encouraging collaboration, and enhancing the speed and delivery of quality software processes. DevOps compliance for data protection can help safeguard companies against potential risks while maintaining customer loyalty and trust.
Increase your business’ resilience
While businesses have little control over current economic climates, businesses can become more resilient by using tools like CRM systems. With budgets often in flux, CRM systems augmented by a robust DevOps program can help companies utilize their available resources to the fullest extent, allowing them to do far more with less through automation of workflows.
Whereas booms are times to increase market share, surviving a recession often hinges on maintaining and deepening relationships with existing customers. Effective CRM management can help businesses maintain, grow, and expand on all fronts.
