Insights into customer data can give companies much-needed clarity about their sales performance. Not only sales but also marketing, product development and customer service rely on customer data. And there’s no better place to look for customer data than your CRM platform. The CRM software you use is chock-full of customer data. From contact information to purchase history to your customers’ social media activity, your CRM can tell you a lot.
If you use CRM analytics correctly, you can uncover some very valuable secrets that will give you an immense competitive advantage. By better understanding what your customers prefer or what trends they follow, you can improve your interactions with them, enhance the customer experience and increase the chances of conversions.
What is CRM analytics?
CRM analytics refers to the practice of gathering and analyzing customer data from your CRM software, and interpreting the insights obtained. These insights help make better customer-focused business decisions. Through efficient CRM analytics, a business can improve the quality of its interactions with customers and build trust and loyalty. Having a better understanding of their customers gives businesses a better chance at gaining their confidence. CRM analytics can result in better lead nurturing strategies that take prospects down the sales funnel quickly and certainly.
How to use CRM analytics effectively?
CRM analytics can only deliver the best results if you know which information to process and why. CRM analytics is not just a pre-sale activity but also requires equal effort post-sale. It is an ongoing process rather than a one-time function. Here are a few tips to help you use CRM analytics to your advantage.
CRM analytics before sale
Some of the important pre-sales metrics you need to assess from your CRM data are the following.
New leads
This metric tells you the number of new leads entering your sales funnel. Based on how many cold calls your sales team made or how many cold emails were sent, you will be able to evaluate how efficiently they are being able to fill up the sales pipeline.
Sales opportunities
Sales opportunities refer to the number of sales-qualified leads or prospects your sales team has been able to generate. This will tell you what activities your sales reps are adopting to qualify leads (based on interaction details) and if your lead qualification process is effective.
Customer interactions
This metric shows the total number of touchpoints you have had with your customers. This includes personal interactions, website engagements, social media engagements, demos, presentations, or any other kind of communication you may have had with your prospects and customers. This metric will tell how these interactions may have affected a customer’s actions and if they haven’t, then what is lacking in your interactions.
CRM analytics post-sale
The job of analytics does not end once a deal is closed. The post-sale CRM analytics can also tell you a lot about buyer behavior which can be very useful for future sales. Here are some of the key metrics you should consider post-sale.
Buying pattern
The buying pattern of a customer can be assessed from their purchase history. This tells you if there is a particular pattern to how the buyer makes purchase decisions, or if one purchase leads them to another. So you will be able to determine what other products the customer may be interested in and if they will buy from you again.
Customer complaints
Keeping track of customer complaints and problems is also crucial to your sales process. Details about customer requests obtained from your CRM will help you address these problems better and avoid issues in the future. These insights can also help you improve your product offerings for the future.
Cross-selling or upselling records
Looking at the cross-sell or upsell opportunities you may have come across and how frequently such opportunities arise is also important. Being able to identify such opportunities in the future, thanks to CRM analytics, gives you the chance of increasing your sales.
Sales performance depends on how deeply you know your customers
CRM analytics is by far one of the most effective tools to better understand your customers, study their behaviour and make decisions based on these insights. It’s a known fact that customer-centric strategies lead to great results. So use your CRM for more than just recording data and see how it changes your business.
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