C2CRM Sales Automation

Sales people typically hate to compile the weekly, sometimes daily, reports regarding their pipeline and their opportunities. As a result, too much time is wasted reviewing notes, looking back at information regarding individual sales calls, etc. This pain is also felt at the management level. Having to call regular meetings to go over each salesperson's pipeline in the effort to create realistic opportunity reports can be a grueling process.

Solution

In a well designed CRM solution, reporting should be real-time allowing managers and executives to view instant status on leads, opportunities and closed deals from their own computer.

Benefits

An effective CRM solution will save time through improved forcasting and easily generated reports.

Real-time charts and graphs must be able to "drill down" to the actual opportunity for a detailed examination. For example, Joe, the Sales VP needs to get a report on anticipated revenue for the month of August. Using C2 CRM, Joe can access his customized portal and click on a graph which depicts real-time revenue projections by region and/or sales rep for each remaining month of the year. Moreover, Joe can pull a report detailing the individual stages of each opportunity and their likelihood of closure.

This could all be done without having to call a meeting or asking the sales people to provide reports. It saves Joe and his team time and effort. Furthermore, Joe's sales team can access their own information from their own customized portals to help them get a feel for their pipeline and help them decide which opportunities need more attention. Below is a screen shot from C2 which represents a customized portal showing an example of this scenario.

Timely follow-up on leads is a crucial component to closing more deals. However, it's so easy for a sales professional to get lost in a sea of leads (both warm and cold) and forget timely follow-up and repeated contact. The pain is trying to juggle follow-up calls with cold calls and remembering all of the pertinent information for each lead. This can cause errors and lost opportunities, which in turn cost the company money and the opportunity to gain new customers.

Solution

A true CRM system like C2 CRM offers a built-in “conveyor belt” which can be "activated" to send regular communications to leads, prospects and suspects in the system by simply tagging the lead.

Benefits

Having an effective tool for Lead Management will increase sales and decrease wasted sales efforts.

A conveyor belt system can help you follow up with your prospects automatically. For example, if you have a lead who is interested in product A, and after the initial contact, the lead says that they may be in a position to buy next quarter, then with C2 CRM, you can tag them to receive regular communications regarding product A over the next 3 months.

This targeted "conveyor belt of information" can include reprinted articles on product A, brochures, reference stories, personal letters from other product A users, and other key pieces of collateral. Your C2 CRM handles the process of follow up via email to help keep your products top of mind with the prospect. Then C2 tells you when you need to call them back to move the sales process to the next step. With built-in notes, you'll be able to keep tabs on each conversation you have with the prospect and indicate any possible hurdles you will have to overcome in order to close the deal.

Creating quotes and proposals on-the-fly that include all necessary components of a sale can take much more time than it should. This is painful for the sales person who is trying to get a warm prospect to close. At this stage in the sales cycle, speed and accuracy are critical.

Solution

CRM software, such as C2 CRM, can create complex quotes in minutes.

Benefits

Creating quotes and proposals quickly will help you save time, increase sales, and decrease administration costs.

Quotes and proposals created in C2 CRM can be linked to the details of any opportunity in the system. As a result, your sales team members would be able to generate new quotes and proposals, copy existing ones, or import values from any configurator which provides text-based output.

The pain is removed by making the quoting and proposal stage instantaneous. Added value is realized in bidding situations where the speed of delivery can give you a competitive advantage over others bidding for the sale.

All too often, sales professionals end up wasting too much time on leads that never had a chance to close, versus leads that could genuinely bring in revenue. Strong lead qualification is important, but more importantly, lead classification can help a salesperson keep track of which leads are moving forward and which are not.

Solution

C2 CRM can provide comprehensive information about the status of a lead.

Benefits

Prioritizing your leads can improve communication, increase productivity, shorten the sales cycle, and increase overall sales.

C2 CRM can offer stages within the sales cycle which sales professionals can call upon to properly tag a lead. Once tagged as being within a certain stage of the sales process, it becomes easy to prioritize leads based on how close they are to closing.

This lead classification is designed to give the sales person a common point of reference for each lead in the effort to not only keep track of his or her leads, but to communicate their status to others. A CRM system can empower each sales professional to properly prioritize their leads and shorten the sales cycle.

Perhaps one of the most painful issues for a sales professional is trying to get new leads. In many cases they have some support from the Marketing efforts within their organization, however, automating the process can speed up the lead distribution and follow-up. The root of this pain comes from the sales professional feeling out-of- control and out-of-touch with the lead generation process.

Solution

C2 CRM can provide immediate distribution of leads from multiple sources.

Benefits

When leads are qualified, you help shorten the sales cycle, improve lead tracking, and increase sales.

C2 CRM can automate the lead distribution process and provide the sales professional with key information as to the source of the lead and when it was generated. For example, C2 CRM includes WebTouch, an automated web activity tracking system which can identify web site visitors and alert the appropriate sales representative in real time.

Lack of information can cause a miscue within a sales opportunity. The result: an angry customer and an unsuccessful selling attempt that ultimately results in wasted time.

Solution

C2 CRM gives sales people access to historical information on a customer PRIOR to making the sales call.

Benefits

Having customer historical information available in real-time can improve communications, decrease errors, and improve customer satisfaction.

C2 CRM maintains comprehensive customer service information for each record. If a customer calls into support regarding a particular product, the service representative can enter details regarding the nature of the call. From that point forward, others can view this detailed information and get any needed information regarding the history of the customer.

This same situation can apply to targeted marketing and sales initiatives. A sales person or marketing professional could pull reports on various activities or product purchase history of any individual or group of customers within the CRM system. Once this report is created, the salesperson targets those customers which have purchased a particular product or service and cross-sell a related product. The historical information for each customer would be readily available to help the sales person during the sales process. CRM gives different people within different departments the ability to view customer information and historical data on the fly. It's a valuable resource which helps improve internal communications and promotes consistent customer interaction.