It is commonly accepted that CRM software is used by businesses to improve customer experience and build long-lasting relationships with clients. One of the major areas in which CRM can please your customers while increasing your company’s profits is through assisting the sales force as clients move through the pipeline from potential customer to actual purchase.

Recent research* has shown the great benefits of using CRM for sales force automation — businesses reported 4.5 percent increase in sales force productivity and the average of 4 percent profits growth.

Leveraging the power of professional CRM application can greatly assist by simplifying sales tasks:

• It can provide your sales team with reminders on when to follow up on a client, saving the time it would take your employees to log this information themselves.
• It can assess trends emerging in your sales patterns, which you can use to see where things are working well, or where there are bottlenecks that need to be improved to decrease the total time in your sales cycle.
• It can improve communications internally between your various departments to ensure sales opportunities are not missed. For example, if your accounting office discovers a client’s contract is coming to a close, they can notify your sales team with the click of a mouse.
• It can help you track sales pipeline and key stages in your sales process. Allowing a real-time overview of the sales pipeline CRM system empowers to assess the health of the pipeline and shorten the sales cycle.

Providing your sales force with tools to simplify their daily lives frees them to spend more time building strong customer relationships, thus benefiting your entire team.

*According to 2013 CRM Benchmark Report by Nucleus Research.