Every business today across all industries has an aggressive new business acquisition strategy. One of the challenges these businesses face is how to reduce the cost associated with new customer acquisition and retention. While revamping internal policies and procedures can help, many companies are turning their attention to customer relationship management software (CRM) for help. CRM software is highly regarded for its ability to manage contacts, activities, and sales, but it’s the marketing component found in higher end CRM solutions that can make a serious impact on customer acquisition cost. Let’s review how.
Most people think about marketing in terms of product brochures, direct mail and e-mail programs and integration with social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn that are used to generate new business opportunities. This is of course accurate, but marketing automation is actually much more. The cost of new customer acquisition starts with marketing, but the true cost comes from human interaction or the amount of time the sales team is engaged with the prospect. When new leads are generated and assigned the first thing a sales representative will do is contact the lead and try to ascertain if it is qualified or not. Seasoned well trained sales representatives may be able to do this efficiently, but all too often the sales team spends valuable time and money chasing tire kickers.
How can CRM software help reduce the time and cost associated with lead qualification? Well what if you had an automated process that helped you to qualify prospects based on a set of pre-determined criteria? And what if that process was built right within your CRM system?
The questions may include the following:
- Does the prospect have a critical need for our product or service? What if they do nothing?
- Do they have a sufficient budget in place to purchase our solution?
- Are the decision makers engaged or at least identified?
- What is their timing for a decision?
If your sales team utilized an automated lead qualification tool like this, it would enable them to immediately identity the most qualified prospects and allow them to focus 100 percent of their time on them. This has proven to result in faster and higher percentage close ratios which is exactly what you are looking for. But what about those unqualified ones; the ones that may be candidates, but just not at this time. The company spent time and money attracting these prospects so it would be a shame to have them simply fall through the cracks, but following up with them takes time and resources and resources cost money.
Another way CRM software can help reduce the cost associated with this follow-up activity is to simply automate it. Many CRM software solutions have the ability to establish an automated follow up program. The program consists of pre-built e-mail templates that can be scheduled to be sent out on a pre-determined basis such as monthly or quarterly. The CRM system will automatically send out the templates when scheduled thereby alleviating any engagement by the sales organization.
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