How Does Social CRM Help Boost Your SALES

Until recently the limitations of CRM were higher than the benefits derived out of it. With evolution of better technology, the processes have reached a highly automated level. Many functions which required hours of dedicated manual labor can now be performed automatically by a single tool.
When social CRM was still in its budding phase, its operations were limited to listening and providing customer service on various social media platforms. However, lately its use for enhancing sales has become the talk of the town and intelligent case routing techniques has made its application simpler. The constant CRM developments have made it possible to leverage social media collated data to effectively channel sales activities and integrate them with other functions.
Approach 1:
Sales as an operation does not function singularly and needs to be constantly backed by the company’s/brand’s marketing efforts. A CRM tool can be used to keep track of any form of communication happening from the brand’s end or even otherwise.
The tool should be fed with sets of rules to segregate and trigger various workbaskets depending on the type of message received. This can e easily achieved by feeding the tool a list of commonly used terms, based on which the messages get segregated and delivered to the destined team. This can be used as a cue by the “Sales” team to keep track of people showing interest in the home product as well as competitor brands.
Once the target markets/individual targets have been discovered, they should be approached, initially using more subtle ways. Here’s a list of steps to be followed:
1. Following the prospect and their background, i.e. the industry size they are seeking solution for, the industry type, their possible budget and more.
2. This can be accompanied by certain representative from the company should approach the prospect personally and probe them to answer questions. More the number of questions they answer better you understand their needs/requirements.
3. This can be supported by the company pushing content which is targeted at solving the prospect’s problems. For this to happen, the brand needs to do their homework well, by tracking the prospects social media presence, their preferred place for communication, the space they use the most and the like.
4. A sales representative step in at this time and talk to them about how they can provide solutions to the prospects problems and how are they better than the rest of the solutions in the market.
5. However, one needs to approach them only during the stage when the prospect is actually looking for solutions. (There are a lot of people who generally talk/discuss issues but might not be seeking solutions)
This brings us to the question, how do we reach these prospects. This is a collaborative effort of social media listening as well as advertising (both online and offline) and research by the brand’s sales team. A good CRM tool can make all the above mentioned stages much simpler.
Approach 2:
Today’s is a fast paced world and if not followed stringently, one might easily lose out on prospects. Modern ways of doing business requires easy identification of problems and even faster ways of providing solutions. Enabling a CRM tool can help listen to conversations where your brand is being spoken about or in this case, when a prospect is looking out for a solution your brand provides.
Most companies miss out on opportunities due to lack of visibility of key customer areas which can be eventually converted into positive sales prospects. CRM tools help keep your customer/ lead details updated by identifying potential areas and routing it to designated workbaskets.
This approach can be collaborated with other marketing campaigns to initiate a decision making process for the prospect, by citing examples of existing case studies/clients with similar problems and sharing their successful experience stories.
Just to clear the air of doubts, this is no way means promoting any form of stalking activities. CRM tools only provide data which can be otherwise publicly viewed, except this is a congregation of hundreds of selective data.