There is a range of products and services that a company can choose from to greatly improve their efficiency and transform their business. However, the real magic comes when these solutions are modified specifically for the unique purposes of an organisation, and when a solution’s respective products acutely improve day-to-day processes for users and employees.
Professional service firms are unique in that they usually sell the skills and expertise of a skilled professional as opposed to a product, and these professionals often have large networks of relationships that require their extreme care and careful management.
CRM usage for professional service firms bears this in mind, and when utilised, are heavily-focused on client retention and data management. The following are six benefits of deploying a CRM platform within a professional services firm.
In professional services, companies are only as good as the work they produce and the customers that they can retain. A strong CRM system allows you to see how each account is performing and track the pipeline for each company. This allows your business to view its most profitable clients, what products or services they’re currently using, and gives you the opportunity to see where you could cross-sell or up-sell as you see fit.
In a professional services firm, the detail you maintain on your clients is one of the most important aspects needed to provide the best possible customer service. With a CRM, users can log detailed information on a client via an account or ticket and include the details of specific calls, meetings, or communications as well as assign tasks to contacts within the organisation. This means that not that only can you track your what your customer needs from you, but you may implement tasks and have a complete view of the relationship thus far.
Marketing activity is crucial to upselling to your clients and creating extra opportunities where possible. With the power of CRM, you can utilise your data to create smart lists for a specific target audience. CRMs allow you to build segmented email lists organised any way you’d like, ensuring that you marketing activities are timely, targeted, and employed at the most crucial times.
Having a central area to group and organise all your data eliminates tedious busy work for your employees. Placing all your actions, tasks, communications and account information in one place allows your team to have an overview of a company as well as enables your workforce to prioritise work accordingly. You can assign tasks directly to a team member to let them know something is due for some of your most important high revenue clients.
CRMs take the guess work out of the day for both management and employees by allowing more transparency and clarity to exist between them and their respective duties.
Knowing what part of the sales pipeline a deal is currently in is crucial in ensuring that they eventually convert. Without a CRM, having that visibility is often reliant on one sales reps’ notes or memory.
CRMs can provide summaries of your entire pipeline for the big picture view as well as let you drill into specific accounts. You can see what stage every opportunity is in and how much each deal is worth.
With CRM software, you also get pipeline automation. You can define rules that when triggered automatically move leads through the various stages you have set up. The system can also send notifications when leads hit certain milestones or transition from one stage to the next.
Collecting data within your CRM system gives you the opportunity to update your records instantly as you are on site or with a client. This gives complete visibility to the rest of your team. Your team can update records as crucial changes occur to accounts instantly to ensure that the entire workforce can see how things are progressing. The more data and detail you can store regarding your clients, the more strategic you can be in making difficult decisions.
Most CRMs also have mobile solutions, so no matter where you are, you can maintain access to crucial information.
Most professional services organisations will greatly benefit from a CRM solution. After all, CRMs are all about enhancing client relationships, which is so important to professional service firms.
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