Advantages of CRM for Distributors
If you’re at all curious about the advantages of customer relationship management (CRM) built for distribution companies, you will likely benefit from adding one to your tech stack.
If your distribution business has ever found it difficult to stay on top of your growing customer base or to juggle disparate business technologies, you may be ripe for a customer relationship management system. Or, if your distributor marketing needs have grown beyond word of mouth (which they should!) or you’re not tracking your customer data (which you should be!), then you can benefit from a CRM.
What is a CRM
A CRM software for distributors is a tool that allows you to manage your contacts, sales pipeline, productivity, inventory management, and marketing. As its name implies, a customer relationship management CRM gives you control over the relationships relevant to your distribution business. This includes clients, employees, suppliers, prospective customers, former customers, and more. The overall advantage of using a CRM at all is to allow you to bolster your relationships so you can sell more and drive revenue.
Advantage 1: Get more new customers
One of the most important advantages of CRM is the ability to facilitate the discovery of new customers. After all, more new customers mean faster growth of your business.
A customer relationship management system should house all of your customer information in a single platform which gives insight into the type of customer you should target next. Armed with like-customers, you can view all customer interactions and identify commonalities, such as unique needs, buying tendencies, etc., to better cater to your offering and services. Tracking all of this data in one place means that no matter who’s speaking to the new customer, they’re working confidently from one up-to-date database.
Small advantages like these pay dividends when it comes to differentiating yourself from your competition and ultimately winning more business for you.
Advantage 2: Retain more customers
Customer churn is an inescapable reality for distributors. However, you do not need to sit idly and watch your customers move on to your competitors. Along with scoring new customers, another powerful advantage of CRM systems is increased customer retention and customer satisfaction.
With your customer data in one place, it’s easy to stay on top of your customer relationships. You should be able to see who was talked to, when it happened, and what was discussed, your customer segment’s preferences, and understand that relationship up and down. Customer satisfaction and, more importantly, dissatisfaction will not be a surprise with CRM systems.
By using a CRM you can address your customers’ needs before they become problems worth jumping ship over.
Advantage 3: Personalize your messaging
Another of the advantages of CRM’s centralized database of customer information is personalized communication. These days, customers expect, not just appreciate, a personalized experience—that goes for distribution companies too.
Consumers believe that a tailored experience plays a role in their decision to remain loyal to a particular company. With that information in mind, sending your next generic marketing message should be a very scary thought. With CRM systems, marketing automation means it’s simply too easy to personalize your emails, calls, and meetings to justify another canned, overused script. Personalization leads to improved customer satisfaction and audience engagement.
Advantage 4: Track Your Sales Pipeline
Your CRM should be able to manage your sales pipeline too. Where you’ll feel the advantages of CRM is in sales management.
We’ve already discussed the benefits CRM brings in getting more new customers and personalizing your messaging. So it should be no surprise that when it comes to managing your sales process and sales data, a CRM is all the support you need. It will track your leads, show you when you need to follow up, and allows you to keep a close watch over your full customer buying journey. What that means is sales managers and reps can take an active approach to customer interactions as the journey moves, filling in gaps as needed.
With a CRM system, there are no details lost in the sales process. It’s a single tool that will help track performance all of your business processes, from marketing automation to aligning your sales teams.
