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If you’ve been running a business for a while, you know the importance of a sales function. You need to focus on using sales to generate demand if you want to win over customers. It doesn’t matter how good your products and services are if you don’t market them well.
Think about it: why would customers pick your brand if they’ve never heard of it? But it’s not easy to run a marketing campaign online if you’re running a large business. After all, you’ll need considerable resources to be able to perform your sales function. This is why you need to focus on collaborative sales.
This involves interacting directly with customers to close deals with them. So, in a way, your sales reps involve your customers in further lead generation. You can focus on both B2C and B2B demand generation using collaborative sales. Now, you should also know about the role of CRM and CRM in collaborative sales to drive results.
We’ll talk about how CRM can help your collaborative sales efforts boost demand.
What are Collaborative Sales All About?
Let’s first take you through what collaborative sales are all about here. While it may sound complex, you’ve probably known what it is all along. Think about what sales involve: a sales team getting together to win customers. Now, collaborative selling involves salespeople working directly with customers.
In this way, the salespeople are aware of what your customers expect from your products. One way for them to get in touch with your customers is to set appointments with them. You can hire an appointment setting company to stay in touch with your customers.
You’ll find that these companies have experts who know the basics of demand generation. They schedule a time to reach out to your customers and mature promising leads. You’ll be pleased to know that these companies only reach out to leads who might convert.
In the past, you may have spent time and money chasing leads that didn’t convert. So, it may be a good investment for you if you hire an appointment setting service. In this way, you can find out what your customers want when you need this information.
By making your clients part of the sales process, you increase your chances of conversion. This is sure to be useful if you’re looking for B2B demand generation. Also, remember to factor in what your clients are saying about your products. Only then will you find collaborative selling to be an effective solution.
Now, let’s talk about how your CRM efforts can contribute to your sales collaboration.
Automating Lead Generation
One of the biggest reasons why you should use CRM for sales collaboration is automation. You may know that CRM (Customer Relationship Management) deals with your interactions with customers.
You should be able to automate your demand generation with good CRM software. Your marketing department would likely be busy generating leads for your sales department.
Their efforts are sure to take up your time and other resources in the long run. So, it would make sense for you to seek out automation to make things easier. Think about it: is it truly productive to have your marketing department chase leads all day? Wouldn’t you rather have them design effective marketing campaigns?
This is where CRM comes in for your sales collaboration efforts. If you use CRM software, your sales team can handle lead generation by themselves. They can connect with you through your customers and nurture leads. So, your marketing team can focus on designing creative marketing campaigns.
In the meanwhile, your sales team can focus on chasing down leads that are interested in your products. They can talk to these customers and understand what they expect from your brand. In return, they can tell your customers how your products would benefit them.
You can use CRM software to contact your customers on more than one platform. Social media is one of the platforms your sales team can use to contact customers. Using these platforms would give your customers access to you. They can reach out to your sales representatives and talk about your products.
Your sales team can also track potential leads with CRM software. They can then talk to these leads and convince them to convert.
Gaining Insights
You could even use CRM software to gain insight into your leads. You should remember that generating leads and nurturing them are two distinct functions. It may be easier for you to find leads than it would be to nurture them. After all, you can generate leads by running interesting display ads online.
But that doesn’t mean you can get them to buy your products and services. Your customers would need to be truly convinced that your products would be good for them. You could use good CRM software to convince them of the same. But, it won’t be easy for you to convince customers about something you know nothing about.
Any advertiser would tell you how important it is to gain customer insights. After all, you should know that not every one of your customers has the same needs and preferences. Your customers come from different age groups, genders, and cultures. So, what may appeal to one of your customers may not appeal to another.
This is why you’ll find insights to be such an important part of lead generation. These insights will allow you to glean who your customers are and where they come from. So, you can try to figure out if your products will appeal to these customers.
Also, you would know how to approach these customers to make them like you. Remember, one wrong foot in advertising can lead to years of a bad reputation. So, you should be careful about how your sales team approaches these customers. They should have your customer insights on hand to guide them whenever they need them.
The insights you gain will improve your demand-generation efforts as well. Over time, you’ll learn how to create demand in different consumer groups. This would be a great way to take your marketing efforts forward.
Personalizing Lead Generation
You should also remember that you can personalize your lead generation with CRM software. You can get the software you need to understand how you want to respond to your leads. So, you won’t fall into the trap of sending generic messages to your customers.
Often, you’ll find companies slacking off and using generic marketing messages. You mustn’t do the same, especially with collaborative sales. We spoke about how this kind of selling involves direct interaction with customers.
Your customers are sure to be unimpressed if you contact them only to come up with generic marketing. They’ll wonder why you got in touch with them in the first place if not to focus on their preferences. So, you should take your time studying how you can personalize your lead generation.
Your sales department would need to brainstorm ideas on this. You can get them to kickstart this process by giving the leads insights first. As we discussed, good CRM software is great for gaining lead insights. You can use this information to target your sales efforts properly.
Each of your customers should feel as though you’re speaking to them on a personal level. Only then will your customers feel inclined to check out your brand and products. Fortunately, collaborative selling using CRM software would make this simple for you.
All you need to do is introduce your sales department to the right CRM software. Then, they would need to match lead insights to the marketing efforts of your company. So, they would need to work closely with your in-house marketing department for the same.
At the end of the day, you’ll see how these departments can learn from each other to boost conversion.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it, our reasons why CRM is great for collaborative selling. Sure, using a CRM can sound complicated to you if you haven’t used it before. But you should know that it’s a lot easier than you’d think once you get started. And get started you must because it’ll make collaborative sales so much easier for you.
Your customers will soon learn to appreciate the extra efforts you’re making to win them over. Not only that, but they’ll also appreciate how you’re keeping their preferences in mind to keep them loyal to you. After all, it’s likely your competitors are already using CRM software with their sales.
So, it wouldn’t do for you to be left behind and depend on traditional marketing methods. And speaking of marketing, you’d be pleased with the time they can save with lead automation. The best CRM software can make lead generation an automatic process and help them save time.
You’ll surely see how this can be good for your marketing efforts in the long run. Your marketing team will be able to design campaigns instead of chasing leads. The lead generation side of things will be left to your sales department alone. This could be great considering your sales team is better suited to lead generation.
But, you should personalize lead generation if you want to keep customers interested. Remember, your customers are used to seeing changing advertising trends online these days. So, if you give them an unimaginative marketing campaign, they’ll know right away.
Instead, focus on originality, and all your lead generation efforts will bear fruit.
