CRM Software Can Help

Every sales representative dreams about that phone call when they hear a prospect say “I was referred to you by one of your customers.”  Want to know why? Statistics indicate that close ratios for new sales increase from 1% for cold calls to as high as 90% for those calls where a personal introduction has been made.  Despite this, sales people consistently neglect to ask their customers who they know or if they can make a personal introduction for them.

One of the ways sales representatives can improve the potential for personal introduction is through the use of Social CRM.Social CRM sites such as LinkedIn provide a wealth of personal information about company management such as, where they work, their position within the firm, where they worked before and who they know.  By reviewing this information it’s quite possible that the prospect you are trying to reach may be somehow connected to someone you know.  Armed with this information you can perhaps get the personal introduction into an account that you would have had a great deal of difficulty getting into without it.  So how can CRM software help?

Social Networking with CRM

Many CRM systems today have links to social CRM or what’s known as social media sites.  For example, Commence CRM offers a seamless connection to LinkedIn directly from the contact within the CRM system. This allows the sales representative to review a prospect’s information, determine how he or she might find a way to get that personal introduction through others they may know, and at the same time add additional contacts and important notes to the history file for future use.  The CRM system not only acts as a conduit to the prospect’s information, but as a centralized system for retaining notes and history as well.

Image “social_network” by Trebor Scholz on Flickr under Creative Commons license.

Image “Social Networking” by sman5612 on Flickr under Creative Commons license.