The term contact management software used to be synonymous with an online address book. Sure, it could be shared across departments, and notes could be made against customers’ records, but that was about it.
Fast forward to today, and contact management software has become the lynch pin of many organizations’ sales strategies.
So, what is contact management software and how can it help grow your business?
What is contact management software?
At the most basic level, a contact management system provides quick access to customers’ names and contact info. But dig down a few layers, and it does so much more than that, from lead generation to sales management tools and email marketing features. A contact management system is the fuel for your sales team’s fire.
How to use a contact manager for business growth
1. Categorize your customers
When registering new customers and updating existing ones, it is worth capturing as much information as possible. This could be location, age, dependents, interests or previous contacts depending on the information you have access to.
This data can then be used to segment your audience so you can later target select groups. By slicing and dicing in this way, you can make sure your marketing team only sends offers that are highly relevant to a particular group of customers. This could include deals on products that are similar to those previously purchased, or suggestions of new products that may be of interest, for example, a pub or club buying another version of an ale that’s selling well.
Targeted email marketing or sales campaigns will increase the chances of customers taking you up on your offers. They will appreciate that they’re not being spammed with irrelevant marketing, and your company can genuinely come across as helpful.
2. Improve the customer service experience
As the saying goes, “people buy from people”. Customers look for real human interactions with organizations that make them feel valued and understood. A contact management system can help you do just that.
By storing all the information about a customer in one place, contact center staff or sales teams will be able to access everything about a customer at the press of a button. When a customer calls, no matter where in the organization the phone is answered, the call handler can immediately pick up where any previous interactions left off. This not only makes the customer feel cared about, but gives off the best possible impression of an efficient, organized businesses that does the right thing by their customers.
And forewarned is forearmed. If the customer has been unhappy or made a recent complaint, your staff will be more than ready to smooth the waters and pave the way for better relationship in the future.
3. Learn to interrogate the data
Storing all this useful data on customer insights and sales is great, but it’s not much use unless you really crunch those numbers and make them work hard for you. Luckily for you, your contact management software can help you out with that.
By producing meaningful reports from real-time data, you can manage sales pipelines, provide detailed forecasts and spot opportunities for your sales teams to follow up either face to face or through email marketing and other lead generation activities.
Through carefully interrogating the data, you might also be able to see problems cropping up. For example, have you received several complaints about the same product? Are sales slowing in a particular area? Or is a particular salesperson on target to under-perform this month? By spotting things early, you’ll be in a great position to investigate and do something proactive to head off an issue before it occurs.
And even better, using online contact management software will mean you and your sales teams have access to the data and reports in real time, wherever you’re working from. So, you can even check up on things from your sun lounger in Mexico.
Ultimately, contact management software can help your business make and keep great relationships with your current clients, turn leads into new customers, and make sales decisions based on real-time data. What’s not to love? Learn more about how sales-i can help your contact management today – Request a free demo of our software.
