The most important factor determining the success of a business belonging to any industry is the customer flow. As the art of marketing flourished over the years, so did the methodology of building a consistent customer pipeline. It used to be nothing more than remembering the name of your clients or sending them a few cards on important occasions, but now it has turned into a multimillion-dollar industry. It now goes by the name of Customer Relationship Management or CRM.A longtime ago, the modern man realized how crucial it is to integrate technology in every field of life. As a result, the CRM software was developed in 1995 and has been modified for betterment ever since. Especially in the last ten years, the technology has been changed to revolutionize the companies’ strategies in contacting the customers, as well as, in storing their information. Another term that is added to the vocabulary of an average salesperson is pipeline CRM.
What is pipeline CRM and why is it so important?
A pipeline CRM means managing the customer relationship with your company in a manner that your business is always brimming with prospective clients. It encompasses tools and techniques that allow the sales team to manage their clients in a way that nurtures them and thus, close more business in less time.A pipeline CRM should not be confused with the heavy duty enterprise CRMs including Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com, and Sugar CRM. Instead, these tools are developed in the form of lightweight CRMs in order to fit the budget of average sales professional, any business owner, and/or a sales manager along with providing all the benefits a CRM is supposed to provide.Salesmate, for instance, is an example of a modern pipeline CRM that allows you to visualize the sale pipeline of your business, various stages of deals, and the open sales contracts all under one umbrella. CRM software have brought the business prospects to a new stage where profits have soared because of better client-company relationships. Better efficiency, speed, improved connection among the team, and presentation of a complete picture of your sales game are just a few crucial parts of the modern pipeline CRM.
What does the future has in store?
By using modern CRM technology, sales teams can keep a record of the contact information of their customers along with a copy of their past correspondence. This practice allows them to develop insight into their client’s behavior and develop better customer relationships.Various factors are involved in determining the success of a particular pipeline CRM tool. Having built-in marketing automation, a mobile app to make operation easier and portable, and induction of improved visuals lets a CRM tool admirably handle customer services and marketing. Previously, it was only a dream.To begin with, CRM was a simple tool that fed off other innovations and solutions. However, with its popularity and enormous success, every other company is now looking for a CRM to fit their needs; it has now become a huge software industry. The technology is all set to work with further innovations, and the future is sure to hold even better customer relations.Here are a few ways that CRM could change and thus impact the future of sales, marketing, and business:
- Social media integration
With one of the latest scandals of leaked consumer data involving Facebook, everyone in the world is aware of how the internet seems to know about all our needs, almost to the point that one wonders what sorcery is involved. It is nothing more than what we call technology.Social media has emerged as the major forefront where technology has made all sorts of progress. Platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook are not only there to serve the purpose of socializing or telling the world about your professional competence anymore. In fact, all of the big industry names have turned to these channels to communicate and interact with their customer base. It has been a success as it has led to the exponential expansion of customer base for their businesses.Irrespective of its success for effective customer management, social media does not allow you to focus on the individual client. It is where CRM can be of assistance. Shortly, the two powerful tools will be used together to enhance the data collection on consumers for better marketing techniques.
- AI and IoT
According to Martin Schneider, the clients’ demands are changing at unimaginable speed, and to ensure your company stays on top of its game, it will have to keep up with these demands. The future of CRM will include advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT). According to him, CRM vendors, as well as the practitioners, will be bringing different and exciting ideas to the table.One example is the integration of assistants in CRM software. Imagine if all you have to do to get to a particular set of data is to tell the assistant on your CRM app and you will be able to access it. It is just like you ask Siri to fetch the relevant information for you.
- Holograms
Another expected future change in the CRM industry could be the introduction of holograms. A 360-view of the data in the form of a graph, chart, or a pipeline is not only possible but will be an excellent improvement.
In conclusion, CRM is bound to transform our working procedures, our ways of connecting across different businesses especially informed by artificial intelligence, smart data, and decision-making practices. Compared to that future, the CRM advancements we have today will look prehistoric to us.Evie HarrisonGuest BloggerBio: Evie Harrison is a blogger by choice. She loves to discover the world around her. She likes to share her discoveries, experiences and express herself through her blogs.Find her on Twitter: @iamevieharrison
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
