Let’s be honest, 2020 was not a great year for many businesses. With COVID-19 still ravaging economies around the globe, finding ways to improve sales continues to be top of mind for many.
Thankfully, there are some simple steps businesses can take to help enhance their sales processes and customer engagement efforts. Making sure customer data is up to scratch is one of the best places to start.
Appreciate the power of data
It’s great to have lots of data, but it’s equally important it is good quality. Accurate data is critical for deriving value from KPIs such as conversions, call and win rates, as well as response times and sales cycle lengths.
Low quality data can result in poor decision making across lots of areas of your business including marketing, sales, customer service, and product innovation. If your data isn’t reliable, you can’t be sure your marketing efforts are successfully reaching and engaging your customers. And without this, good sales results are hard to come by.
Locate your data
It’s likely you’re already using a CRM to manage your company’s data, but knowing you’re capturing all data properly to begin with is critical in determining how effective you’ll be when using it.
To ensure you’re collecting all the data available to you, start by performing an audit of any places data could be hiding. This might include website analytics, Google Analytics, email subscription details, and sales and inventory records. Also consider your daily interactions with customers to see how you might be able to glean extra intel.
Clean your data
Common data quality issues include duplicate data, incorrect data, invalid data, incomplete or inconsistent data, and poorly defined data (sectioned in the wrong category). You can prevent bad data from becoming a recurring issue by looking at how it enters the system initially.
Establish protocols for keeping data accurate and educate all employees who interact with the system on how to correctly input and manage data. Rules for adding data should include using standardised naming conventions and formats (including abbreviations), inputting all required fields for a record, and updating customer details as they change.
Prevention should also include evaluating third-party tools to help ensure data quality. For example, Validity’s DemandTools suite offers DupeBlocker, a useful tool that finds and prevents duplicate data from being entered into the system.
Don’t forget about your CRM system
A good CRM helps you go deeper with your data and metrics, allowing you to collect, collate, tabulate, organise, interpret, and use your data more efficiently to improve and accelerate the sales cycle.
Your CRM system is an incredibly powerful tool and it’s likely you haven’t discovered all it has to offer. Take some time to explore your CRM features so you can maximise its value and take advantage of its clever functions that could save you time and generate even more sales leads. Most CRMs work seamlessly with third-party data quality tools and other software designed to support your business activities, so take advantage of this.
By making the most of your data and the tools available to you, you’ll be in a much better position on the journey to recovery and growth in 2021.