One of the critical resources any business has is the client database. Managing your client database effectively is one of the most fundamental ways to boost the relationship with your leads and clients. Let your contact list go stale, and you'll miss out on opportunities to convert leads to paying customers. On top of the missed opportunities, you also run the risk of not updating clients about significant changes or events that could affect their relationship with you, like changes to terms and conditions or regulatory status, for example, or even account level warnings for companies in the financial verticals.
This can't be stressed enough. Being able to reach your contacts lies at the core of your success. Your contact management needs to be efficient and effective, particularly in the online world, where the ways you can reach out to your clients are multiplied. Telephone numbers, email addresses, messenger apps, and more, you need to stay on top of them all.
Contact Management
Your contact management strategy has to include efficient handling of the following components:
- Contact List
- Mobile Accessibility
- Data Entry
Contact List
Your contact list (or client database) is where you store all the contact information for your leads and clients and information about when you last communicated with them and how. Entries like a physical mailing address, email address, telephone, and mobile number are all part of this contact information.
Keeping an updated list of communications is also a vital part of an accurately maintained contact list. When did you last speak to a particular lead or client? What was the last email you sent them? What was the last email a lead or contact opened and read? All these are a crucial part of your retention process and serve to develop and strengthen the relationships with your clients.
The ability to share this information with your sales and retention desks is also vital to the correct operation of any call center or sales operation. This sharing allows your sales and retention staff to quickly scan the communication cycle and pick up any emails or calls precisely where they were last.
Keeping your contact list up-to-date can be a time-consuming process. If your CRM doesn't offer a simplified yet effective way to maintain your lead and client database, your overall business will be at a disadvantage.
Mobile Accessibility
Mobile is a part of the landscape, and being able to access and maintain your contact list on mobile devices is an absolute must today. Especially with the massive move to work-from-home caused by the COVID pandemic, being able to work effectively over a mobile device isn't an option anymore; it's vitally important.
Mobile accessibility keeps your sales and retention teams far more connected with leads and clients and improves customer engagement enormously. Gone are the days of people being stick behind their desks all day. Mobile CRMs mean increased efficiency and better engagement.
Data Entry
While this is a crucial part of any business operation, data entry is a time-consuming and resource-intensive operation. Anytime you have multiple points of data entry, human errors can creep in. Your sale teams are there to close the deal, and anytime spent on data entry is time spent away from their core function.
A properly designed CRM automates your data entry, making it far more efficient and less prone to any mistakes. Your CRM will organize all your lead and client information and make this available for all your employees. This leads to less time wasted on admin tasks and speeds up the information sharing sales operations depend on.
Having an "ok" solution isn't an option anymore. Business today has become far more competitive than even just a few years ago, and if you don't stay on the cutting edge of technology and systems, your business will suffer. Your company has to evolve and adapt; otherwise, you're running a Dodo, and we all know what happened to them?
Are you stuck for ideas on how to maintain and streamline your contact lists? Get in touch with us today and see what Antelope Smart Systems can do for your bottom line!
