What is crm and how to learn to use it?

For users who are new to CRM, they will always hear some new concepts, but many of them are just "icing on the cake" words or functions. What you need to know is the really important core content of CRM. Although the definition of CRM is customer relationship management software (literally, it means helping enterprises to establish a better relationship with customers), in fact, CRM is usually built around the sales model and sales process of enterprises. If you don't know much about CRM, then we suggest you start with some important and basic concepts, which will help you describe the "outline" of CRM and find its value to your enterprise. Here are five CRM concepts you should know, which are closely related to your business operation.

First, customer relationship management.

Customer relationship management (usually abbreviated as CRM) is a commercial software that can help sales, marketing and customer service teams manage customer communication and sales. It aims to help enterprises manage and analyze the customer interaction in the whole customer life cycle and precipitate all kinds of data related to customers.

In short, CRM (Customer Relationship Management Software) aims to manage the business interaction related to customers, thus improving your business relationship with customers and promoting sales growth.

Some people who don't understand CRM software think that it is just a big digital address book, which is a big misunderstanding. In fact, CRM is a powerful platform to provide customers with the best experience by using various business interaction data.

Understand CRM easily and interestingly

On "R" in CRM R”—— How to Understand Customer Relationship

Second, lead management (potential customer management)

Clues mean sales opportunities. For B2B companies, the clue is the company's contact information. For B2C companies, clues mean personal contact information.

Potential customers are usually either waiting for activation in the customer list or at the top of the sales funnel. In order to create sales opportunities for these potential customers, you need to talk to them to determine whether they will buy, whether your products or services will arouse their interest and whether they can solve their pain points.

In CRM, you can enter the information of potential customers in many ways. You can:

1. Enter the details of potential customers manually or collect them automatically from the interface provided by the third-party website platform.

2. Import in batches from spreadsheets that store potential customer data, such as uploading Excel files to CRM.

3. By creating a web form on your website, allow potential customers to submit their contact information or questions and synchronize them directly to your CRM.

Usually, entering clues into CRM is just the beginning. CRM has many mechanisms to manage these potential customers, such as high seas pool, collision avoidance list, automatic or manual batch allocation, adding extended information and so on.

What are the functions of the customer management module of Zhike CRM?

Potential customer management: five steps of lead transformation

Third, the sales process.

Sales process is a systematic way to describe how to sell products to customers. The sales process sets a series of steps for your sales team so that they can seize every opportunity, close more transactions, build better relationships with customers and improve sales performance. A reliable sales process can firmly lock in customers, help your sales team to activate more sales opportunities and put them on the right track.

Before you plan to use CRM, it is important to have a well-defined sales process. This is because modern customer relationship management software aims to support your sales process by establishing the steps to be followed in the software. CRM can also help you find the weak links in the sales process through real-time data, so that you can change (optimize) the way of selling to customers more quickly.

"Understanding the sales process is enough."

A guide to CRM sales management: improving results with processes

Four. Statistical analysis (sales report)

The sales report is a summary of the company's historical sales. These reports can be divided into multiple pages or functions to show you past sales performance, market trends and overall customer situation. Sales reports give you an in-depth understanding of your business. By analyzing past sales, you can make important decisions on how to sell and how to interact with potential customers in the near future.

The statistical analysis function provided by CRM software usually allows you to view past sales reports, business volume of different customer types, important data in the sales process and KPI of team performance. These data can even help you make a sales forecast. For example, Zhike CRM supports extracting the conversion rate of each sales stage to help you evaluate the future sales trend.

Demo video: multidimensional sales report with drillable data

Verb (abbreviation of verb) sales funnel (sales channel)

What are the main stages of your sales cycle? Do you need to go through the steps of intention confirmation, product demonstration, quotation and contract? The sales funnel outlines your sales cycle according to these stages and distinguishes all your potential customers. The sales funnel can quantify the future business volume of potential customers, enabling you to track the sales situation at each stage of the sales process.

CRM software can make it easier for you to track the sales funnel, find the key data in the sales process, and intuitively show how customers go through the whole sales process. You can customize each stage of the sales funnel and list in detail the tasks or processes that need to be completed in each stage.

In CRM software, there are usually two forms of sales funnel. One is the "funnel" type, which usually presents the sales process with a funnel diagram of "upper width and lower width" and gives some summary figures related to the sales stage. The other is the "pipeline" style, which usually shows the sales stage "from left to right" and arranges potential customers by stage. This type can visually present the stage of each potential customer and how to get them into the next stage.