How can CRM data analysis help you grow business sales?

Image source: Pexels CRM data analysis helps you better understand how you are engaging with leads and customers across various touchpoints. You can use those insights to improve your customer service, marketing efforts, lead management, and sales.  My article should provide you with a framework for conducting a CRM data analysis. You’ll review some relevant case studies and gain valuable insights you can apply to your business. But first, read on to know the four types of CRM data you should know.

Four Types of CRM Data 

There are four types of CRM data: identity data, qualitative data, quantitative data, and descriptive data. Here’s a quick overview of the four different types of CRM data:

• Identity CRM data helps you identify each customer. Identity Data includes information like name, address, social media details, email, and telephone number.
• Qualitative CRM data concerns customer attitudes, behaviors, and motivations related to buying decisions. The information is generally gathered through feedback and surveys.
• Quantitative CRM data helps you understand how the customer engaged with your company. It includes things like purchase history, order value, website visits, and social media engagements. 
• Descriptive helps you better understand the customer, their pain points, and goals. A customer lifestyle profile includes information about online behavior, opinions, etc.

The customer data you gather through your CRM helps you better understand your customer. You can use this information to create customer personas and better understand your customer buying cycle. Below is a list of other benefits from analyzing your CRM data. Source  In other words, you can improve customer service, marketing, or sales performance using CRM data. 

How CRM data analysis can help you generate more sales

We’ve covered the four categories of CRM data. Now it’s time to look at how to use this information to generate sales for your business. Below are some insightful examples from real businesses.

1. Reduce your marketing costs 

With CRM data analysis, you can discover great cross-sell and upsell opportunities. You can generate insights into customer buying behavior and patterns. You can act on those insights to run more effective marketing campaigns through your owned or earned marketing channels. For example, running paid social media campaigns to warm leads. Let me provide you with an example of a company that took this approach. Hurst Review was running sales and marketing campaigns across various channels. The company was generating valuable lead and customer data, but they didn’t have a centralized dashboard to track and analyze this information. Hurst Review transitioned to a CRM and collected data through a unified CRM platform.  The transition to a CRM helped Hurst Review better understand the user journey and run targeted sales and marketing campaigns based on how leads interacted with various marketing and sales channels. Overall, Hurst saved 20% in marketing costs thanks to CRM data analysis. 

Use your CRM to improve your email marketing.

Email marketing is one of your most effective sales and marketing channels. You can use email to develop leads and convert prospects into customers. CRM software can help you spot engagement and sales patterns enabling you to run more effective email marketing campaigns. Let’s look at a real-life example.  A&S Adria hosts security equipment exhibitions and runs two popular websites. Through utilizing a CRM, they could segment users more effectively based on interactions with their company. For example, they could segment people who:

• Regularly attended events on one category
• Had attended one event into a category
• Were on an email list but had never attended an event

The ability to segment people and send targeted emails based on how they engaged with the company in the past had a huge impact on profits. A&S Adria saw a 10% increase in overall company revenue. You can read more about how A&S Adria utilized CRM data analysis in this article.

1. Improves productivity

The average sales rep only spends 35.2% of their time making sales. The rest of the time is spent doing other tasks like creating prospect lists and following up with leads. If you can automate more of these tasks, the salesperson can spend more time selling. Nestaway is an online rental home network based in Bangalore. They used various digital marketing channels to generate leads for their business. The top three channels were their website, the email list, and the chatbot.   Source Leads generated through these channels were sent across to the sales team, who would contact the prospects. Nestaway struggled to manage leads through three different channels. It was an inefficient process that resulted in duplication and lost leads. As a result, they suffered from a high rate of lead leakage. By implementing a CRM, Nestaway was able to centralize data collection. That made it easier to analyze trends and reduce lead leakage.  A smoother workflow and more sales helped Nestaway grow faster. You can read more about the Nestaway case study in the following article.

1. Ensures better sales forecasts

Sales forecasts need to be accurate. Quality data can greatly aid your team and improve sales performance. According to CloudCall, CRM can improve sales forecast accuracy by 42%.  Source  Cartan Global, an events company, for a time, found it difficult to track their buying cycles even if they had a CRM solution in place. Data was in disarray. As a result, sales forecasts were inaccurate.  A management consulting firm hired to fix the system made several changes to data. The firm mapped out the sales cycle and determined the minimal data needed to produce an accurate forecast at a per-sale level. It also segregated revenue acquisition into current and future payments in the system.  After organizing the data, the CRM software accurately generated sales forecast reports while maintaining data integrity. Those forecasts informed Cartan Global’s business decisions. The company is the exclusive ticket and travel sales provider for the winter and summer Olympics and FIFA World Cup in 36 countries.

Conclusion 

Running a successful business is all about making sales. The good news is, you have all the tools you need at your disposal. CRM software is a potent tool. CRM data analysis can help you understand your customers. It can help with internal efficiency, too.  Companies are incorporating CRM into their strategies, and it’s easy to see why. CRM data analysis can help with your marketing and sales processes. You’ve seen that in this article. Don’t miss out. Use CRM software and leverage CRM data analysis. Like the case studies in this article, you’ll make better business decisions. You’ll see.