Is your sales process in need of streamlining? A successful enterprise relies on it. In the event that your sales team has difficulty selling efficiently, your company’s growth is going to fall, which isn’t good for anyone.

A significant portion of a sales rep’s day is spent on administrative work. They schedule meetings, set up reminders, send emails, and handle other small tasks that can prevent them from closing sales.

In order to speed up your sales process, how can you make sure all of those admin tasks get done, but your sales teams have the time to close deals? CRM, or Customer Relationship Management software, is the answer to many companies’ problems.

Here at CRMrunner CRM Software understands that CRMs are designed to make it easier for your sales team to cultivate positive relationships with all of the leads who enter your sales cycle and eliminate a lot of the busywork that hinders them from closing the sale.

Here are just 5 of the top ways a CRM helps streamline your sales process.

#1 Streamline the marketing-to-sales transition

Leads disappear at the handoff between marketing and sales for most companies. There are many reasons why leads fall out of the sales funnel during the handoff from marketing to sales, from a lack of communication between sales and marketing to a lack of time for sales to follow up on all the leads marketing sends.

Most of these problems can be solved by a CRM.

Your sales team should be notified first. CRMs can automatically alert your sales team when a marketing team determines a lead is ready for sales. You can eliminate lost leads by contacting them the moment they leave the cycle.

In order to fix this, your sales team needs to see immediately if that lead is ready for them or not. You can use a CRM to see where your leads are in the buying process. Marketing can use the CRM to track every contact they have with that lead, giving the sales team an idea of how warm and ready the lead is for sales.

You can see at a glance whether a lead should be assigned to your sales reps or if marketing should handle it.

Transferring a lead back to marketing is easy with a quality CRM. They are back in marketing’s “to nurture” bucket after getting reassigned or re-categorized by the sales rep.

It is common for marketing leads to not convert into sales for many companies. Managing leads is partially handled by sales and marketing alignment, but a CRM can also be very helpful.

A quality CRM not only helps your sales team get more leads through the sales funnel, but also helps the marketing team better understand what each team needs in order to succeed.

#2 CRMs Improve Sales Funnel Visibility

Sales are busy at your company. This cannot be avoided. Your sales team is busy making contact with every lead your marketing team generates, determining which of your products or services is suitable for each one, and then nurturing and closing the sale. By allowing greater visibility into all of the prospects in the sales funnel, a CRM streamlines your sales process.

Using a CRM, you can see at any time where each prospect is in the sales funnel. Your sales team is likely letting leads fall out of the sales funnel if they manage their leads with post-it notes, a notebook, or another method. All of us are only human, so it isn’t their fault!

However, a CRM can help solve this problem by allowing your sales team to prioritize warm leads over those that need further nurturing.

An effective CRM can lead to an efficient and effective sales process due to the increased visibility it provides. You’ll be able to spend more time closing deals when your sales team is able to sort leads by industry, job title, interest level, and more.

#3 Streamlining Your Sales Process with Automated Tasks

Despite its importance, sending out catalogs, brochures, and pricing guides can be time-consuming and repetitive. Taking the time to copy-paste, change the names, attach the files, and send the email should not be an undertaking that your sales team has to undertake every time they send an email. Your sales team will have more time to sell if your CRM automates these repetitive tasks.

With a quality CRM, you can automate workflows, send follow-up emails, and use chatbots to remain in touch with your leads through the sales process, while letting your sales team focus on more important tasks.

CRMs can also send automated reminders for tasks that they cannot automate. Each contact must be contacted multiple times before a sale can be closed. So no leads fall through the cracks, your CRM can automatically remind your reps when to make these calls.

#4 Reporting is simple

Reports are not enjoyed by anyone. Could they be eliminated?

Your team will be able to quickly see what’s working and what’s not by using a CRM program.

The data provided by a CRM is one of the biggest advantages for a sales team. Your CRM is constantly collecting data as well as assisting your sales team. Identify which content offers bring in the most likely to close leads, which sales tools are most effective in closing those sales, and how long it takes for them to close.

As a result of all of that data, compiled by your CRM, you are able to interpret your sales team’s success, which will allow you to streamline your sales process and increase results.

#5 Detailed Productivity Reports and Sales Leaderboards

Teamwork is important to us. Having worked in a growth agency, we have seen that companies which encourage their sales representatives to collaborate tend to perform substantially better than those which have sales representatives using different sales tactics and even different sales procedures.

As a team, you and your sales team can optimize and streamline your sales process with advanced CRMs, such as CRM Runner. Among other things, you can monitor performance with sales leaderboards.

You can see which team members are doing well with your new sales process and which are struggling. Using these stats, you can motivate your whole team to close more deals by asking the top salespeople what they’re doing.

Get in touch with our team at CRM Runner if you’re interested in a CRM but don’t know where to start or are afraid of a lengthy learning curve. CRM Runner has a dedicated team dedicated to onboarding and training sales reps and marketing teams on how to use and take leverage of our CRM Software to streamline marketing and sales processes, and we are confident we can help you too.