The Marketing 360® CRM is a game-changer for small businesses looking to stay organized, build better relationships with their customers and grow. And, in 2020, SMBs used the CRM to manage millions of contacts — 9,621,067 to be exact.

CRM stands for customer relationship management, and with the right CRM on your side, you can turn more of your leads into customers and more of your customers into lifelong fans.

7 reasons to manage your contacts in the CRM in 2021

#1. Streamline customer data

Whether it’s working a new lead or helping an existing customer, in most cases, there’s more than one cook in the kitchen. In other words, one lead or customer may work with many different people within your organization.

When you have a small business CRM, all of the data that you have about that lead or customer can be found in one central location. This makes customer data easy to access whenever your employees need it.

Streamlining customer data will help you stay organized, but it also prevents your customers and leads from having to repeat themselves over and over again to different people, which can create a bad customer experience.

#2. Drive sales

By diligently taking notes and keeping track of lead and customer data, you’ll have all the information you need to build better relationships and, in turn, close more deals and make more sales.

With the CRM, you can gain more control over your lead flow. With all of your notes and information in one place, you can easily see what’s working about your lead flow and what’s not, helping you to improve and optimize it.

In addition to turning more leads in to customers, the CRM is also a key part of building better relationships with your existing customers. Statistically, existing customers spend more and are more likely to write reviews and refer friends, which makes customer management a worthy focus.

#3. Know your customers better

Knowing your customers is a critical aspect of managing and growing a small business. The better you know your customers, the better you’ll get to know what they need and how to connect with them.

Not only will you have the basic information you need about your customers and leads (i.e. name, email address, phone number, etc.), but the CRM is a great place to keep track of all kinds of other information.

When you can keep track of little things, like a customer’s birthday, preferences or interests, you can better serve them.

#4. Get more repeat business

As I mentioned, building long-term relationships with your customers is an endeavor that can really pay off. In fact, studies show that 65% of an average company’s business comes from its existing customer base.

By increasing customer retention by just 5%, a small business can increase profits anywhere from 25% to 95%! Best of all, it’s a whole lot cheaper to implement a successful customer retention strategy than it is to acquire new customers.

Customer relationship management is more than just about customer relationships; it’s about customer loyalty, and that’s worth its weight in gold.

#5. Provide better customer service

The kind of customer service you provide can have a major impact on how successful you are. Poor customer service can lead to you losing customers, but unfortunately, the damage often doesn’t stop there.

Disgruntled consumers often don’t keep their unhappiness to themselves. Most of the time, they’ll tell a friend or family member at the very least, and many will go online to write a negative review, hurting your reputation online and off.

The average US consumer is willing to spend 17% more to work with a business that has a reputation for providing good customer service. Consumers value great customer service, and they’ll repay you for it in both repeat business and word of mouth.

#6. Segment your customer list

Not only will managing your contacts in the CRM help you to provide better one-on-one customer experiences, but it will also help you identify similarities and differences between your customers that you can use to build segmented lists.

All of your customers have one very important thing in common — they’re all your customers — however, your customers also have lots of different needs and may connect with different messages. By segmenting your customers into multiple lists, you can better meet your customers’ needs and connect with them.

Your customers can be segmented into all kinds of different categories using all kinds of different criteria. For instance, customers who bought a specific product could be sent additional product recommendations or maintenance reminders via email or text message marketing.

#7. Anticipate your customers’ needs

Unfortunately, mind reading is really only something that happens in the movies. It’s why relationships can be so tough and why predicting customer needs and behavior can be almost impossible.

However, having the right CRM on your side can make all the difference. With the ability to access information about a customer’s history with your business, including previous purchases they’ve made, summaries of customer service dealings, etc., you’ll have a lot more ammunition to predict what they might want or need in the future.

Learning how to anticipate what your customers might need is powerful, and it’s an effective way to build customer loyalty, drive sales, build a strong reputation and get a lot more repeat business.

Last year, the Marketing 360 CRM helped SMBs manage more than 9 million leads, customers and other contacts.

Take advantage of this game-changing technology for your business in 2021. Learn about our plans and pricing.