How To Find the Perfect WooCommerce-CRM Combination To Maximize Distribution Sales
A new year means new ways to grow, increase revenue, and streamline operations. It’s imperative for distribution professionals to both anticipate shifts in the market and strategically position their eCommerce and sales operations to best leverage emerging trends and opportunities.
With global eCommerce projected to grow by billions of dollars over the next two years alone, ensuring your platform is set up to best serve your customers is essential. If you’re using WooCommerce to run your online sales, it’s time to invest in a WooCommerce CRM, which can be achieved with the right integration.
Joining WooCommerce and CRM for Wholesale Distribution
While eCommerce platforms such as WooCommerce offer a streamlined solution for a fully functioning online store with all the necessary eCommerce features, it doesn’t provide a full picture of your customers or performance to activate a growth strategy.
The biggest piece of data that’s typically missing from WooCommerce (or any eCommerce) platform is every action your customer takes offline. Wouldn’t you want to know these answers or have these insights to start figuring out your customers’ habits? Industry trends and purchasing behavior are insights that empower your sales, eCommerce, and marketing teams to drive more revenue through better understanding both your customers and being more proactive and intentional in engaging them through that better understanding.
Unifying the data from online purchases with the offline data that’s available within CRM will give distributors a significant advantage because they’re getting a full view of their customers’ preferences and buying behavior.
Why Do Distributors Need a CRM for WooCommerce?
The easiest answer is because WooCommerce doesn’t have a CRM. But the more nuanced, helpful answer is that a CRM and eCommerce integration is essential for identifying new opportunities, engaging customers, and increasing sales in your industry.
Data and insights are powering innovation and growth across all sectors, distribution included. Without an effective CRM integration with WooCommerce, you are leaving data — and money — on the table, and your sales team in the dark. The integration of eCommerce and CRM allows distributors to leverage the benefits of online buying with human sales interaction to create more meaningful, personalized customer experiences.
With fully integrated eCommerce and CRM platforms — as well as ERP and BI systems — sales reps have a wealth of easily accessible data to personalize communication, identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities, and become more agile and flexible in executing sales strategies.
That said, work with your team and answer these questions to figure out how to bridge the gap between WooCommerce and your current CRM:
- Does your CRM offer a native integration with WooCommerce?
A seamless WooCommerce and CRM integration is best: to not upend everything you’ve already built, just get more from it. - Does it offer sales and customer management capabilities?
Data collected should support all aspects of the customer relationship. Does it offer ticketing systems for tracking service requests? Easy-to-find trackable emails and notes for keeping details on customers’ wants and needs? Data is great, but it needs to be organized and easy to use. - Does it integrate WooCommerce analytics and reporting with customer data?
This is the essence of why this integration is essential. You don’t want to just know that a product was purchased, you want to know what, by whom, when, how many times, online or offline, or why it was added to a cart and not purchased so these data-driven insights can lend themselves toward more meaningful customer conversations and inform sales initiatives. - Does the CRM allow for configuration and scalability?
Every business is different, so every CRM is going to need some configuration to integrate with your operations, business model, and eCommerce platform. The CRM should also be built and integrated in a way that it can scale as you grow. Ideally, you will select a CRM that is already built for distributors so every dashboard, scorecard, and report you need is available out of the box.
What Can an Integrated WooCommerce CRM Offer Distributors?
The driving force behind innovation and growth lies in having access to actionable insights that inform every next move. Integration empowers better conversions, personalized sales outreach and marketing, and better sales and inventory forecasting. Integration between your eCommerce platform and CRM establishes a more dynamic and proactive approach to customer engagement and increased operational efficiency.
These key areas are where you will see the most benefit from an integrated WooCommerce and CRM that tracks and collects every customer interaction:
Streamline sales processes
A CRM transforms customer data into an actionable resource. Elevate and optimize sales tactics by automating tasks that prompt your team to follow up with customers regarding both attempted and completed purchases. Enable the sales team to engage in meaningful conversations with customers, tailoring their responses based on data collected on the customer’s online activity for a proactive and customer-centric sales experience.
Enhance customer relationships and retention
Utilize business intelligence and segmented lists based on customer behavior to optimize conversions, while leveraging marketing automation to expedite the sales funnel. This strategic combination of eCommerce and CRM ensures that your online presence is not just a passive display but an active revenue driver, transforming your online store from a mere digital catalog to a dynamic revenue engine.
Improve analytics for better decision-making:
Give your team the tools needed to better forecast product demand, manage inventory, provide personalized customer support, and establish more accurate sales goals by gaining insight into customers’ online activity. Capture all eCommerce and offline customer interactions within your CRM, providing a comprehensive overview of where every prospect and customer stands.
How To Find the Best CRM for Distributors Using WooCommerce
Use this checklist to ensure the CRM you are considering for integration with your WooCommerce storefront meets the basic criteria for success:
- Ensure the CRM is built specifically for distributors’ needs.
This will knock a lot of CRMs out of the running. There are many general CRMs out there, as well as specialized ones. Choosing the wrong platform with the hope of customizing it or one that is too general will just lead to more work and cost. - Find a CRM with Business Intelligence (BI) tools.
This is the key to analyzing all that wonderful integrated data. Having integrated BI tools makes sales efforts that much easier. - Ensure the CRM syncs online and offline buying behaviors. Essentially, can the CRM connect the dots and provide your offline sales team with all the info for more personalized customer interactions? Does it enable them to capitalize on upselling and cross-selling opportunities?
- Determine if the CRM solution has full integration capabilities, rather than ad-hoc plugins or add-ons.
Are you investing in a CRM but also have to shell out extra money for an email tool, BI tool, ticketing system, etc.? - Give thought to what integration capabilities you need for your team today vs. tomorrow.
Remember that you’re going to grow, and any integrated platform should readily grow with you.
If you’re ready to find the best CRM for WooCommerce that turns your customers’ online activity into offline sales, get in touch to see what White Cup can do for distributors like you. White Cup’s eCommerce integration with CRM, BI, and ERP systems supports WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, and more.