An effective customer relationship management platform is increasingly becoming a key contributor to business success as we head into 2024, according to Joe Gallick, SVP of national accounts for NationaLease. He believes CRM is becoming the foundational requirement for the future of sales enablement.
During a presentation at a recent NationaLease meeting, Gallick outlined the benefits and challenges of CRM.
The benefits include:
- Enhanced customer relationships—allows businesses to store and manage customer information effectively.
- Improved customer service—provides a comprehensive view of a customer’s history and preferences to help resolve issues faster and support customer data inquiries.
- Sales and marketing efficiency—allows businesses to monitor sales pipelines, analyze customer behavior, automate repetitive tasks, and identify potential opportunities.
- Data-driven insights—provides analytics about customer behavior, sales trends, and marketing campaigns to identify patterns and make informed decisions.
The challenges are:
- Implementation complexity—allocating resources, including time and expertise, for planning, data migration, and integration with existing systems.
- Data quality and maintenance—requires a continuous effort to ensure data accuracy and completeness to avoid being cluttered with outdated or inadequate data.
- User adoption—employees must be challenged to adopt new processes requiring extensive training and reinforcement.
- Cost considerations—requires a significant investment, including licensing fees, infrastructure costs, and ongoing support and maintenance.
See also: Clark: In a complex trucking world, leasing makes sense
Despite some of the challenges, a CRM system will provide tremendous insight into your customers, allowing you to understand them and their needs better. It also gives your sales team a wealth of information on prospects and customers before conversations, allowing them to be better prepared during their sales calls.
Using a CRM program will allow you to personalize communication with your customers and tailor offerings to each customer’s needs. This will give you a competitive advantage and increase customer loyalty.
