A marketer’s tool belt can span various categories and differ across industries and disciplines. From analytics and marketing automation to content creation and project management, your team probably already uses many different systems to keep everything on track. Could adding one more to the mix really make a difference? The short answer is yes: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be a significant benefit to marketing teams. 

Defining the Role of CRM in an Organization

At its core, a CRM system is a centralized hub for managing interactions with customers and prospects across various touchpoints. Within an organization, a CRM plays multiple roles:

Centralized Data Management: CRM systems serve as the central repository for all customer-related data, providing marketing teams with a single source of truth for the business. This consolidated database ensures that everyone within the organization (including your marketing team) can access accurate, up-to-date information about customers, prospects, and leads. 

For marketing teams specifically, accessing CRM gives them valuable insights into customer preferences, purchase history, and interactions across various touchpoints. Having a single source of truth eliminates data silos, reduces the risk of errors, and promotes consistency in customer interactions, which ultimately fosters better decision-making and alignment across departments.

Relationship Building: CRM systems facilitate nurturing relationships with prospects and existing customers by tracking interactions and preferences. As we all know, building strong relationships with existing customers is just as important as building relationships when acquiring new customers. Relationship building is essential because it drives engagement, conversions, retention, advocacy, and competitive advantage in the marketplace. CRM systems enable teams to stay connected with customers post-purchase, offering personalized support, recommendations, and exclusive offers. This can foster loyalty and encourage repeat purchases, contributing to long-term customer retention and lifetime value.

Marketing teams can leverage relationship data to deliver targeted campaigns, personalized messages, and tailored content, which helps foster stronger connections and increase brand loyalty.

Process Automation: Process automation is a game-changer for modern marketing teams, empowering them to optimize their workflows, save valuable time, and enhance productivity. CRM platforms, such as Insightly, offer robust automation capabilities that revolutionize marketing tasks, from lead capture to campaign management.

Workflow automation enables marketing teams to handle increased volume and complexity without sacrificing quality. By automating repetitive tasks like lead capture, email marketing, and campaign management, CRM platforms enable marketing teams to streamline their workflows and focus on high-impact activities. 

Moreover, workflow automation ensures consistency and reliability in team efforts by enforcing standardized processes and reducing the risk of human error. Whether scheduling automated email campaigns, assigning tasks to team members, or triggering follow-up actions based on predefined criteria, automated workflows ensure that tasks are executed promptly and accurately, maintaining high consistency across marketing initiatives.

Integration Ability: Integrations break down silos between departments and foster collaboration by enabling shared access to customer data and insights. When your CRM integrates with marketing automation, sales, and customer service systems, teams can collaborate more effectively to coordinate activities, align strategies, and deliver a cohesive customer experience. This collaboration leads to better coordination, improved communication, and a more holistic approach to customer relationship management.

CRM systems offering seamless integrations with email marketing platforms and automation tools enable marketing teams to orchestrate cohesive, multi-channel campaigns. By integrating with email platforms, CRM systems facilitate automated email workflows, personalized messaging, and lead nurturing campaigns. These kinds of integrations streamline processes, eliminate manual data entry, and ensure customer interactions are tracked and synchronized across platforms. 

Benefits of Insightly CRM for Marketing Teams

The benefits of CRM extend far beyond just sales and customer service functions. Like sales, CRM systems should serve as the backbone for marketing operations. Insightly CRM empowers marketing teams to work more efficiently, strategically, and collaboratively to drive business growth and success. Marketing teams can leverage Insightly CRM to work more efficiently and innovatively in their marketing strategies.

By leveraging Insightly’s robust features and capabilities, marketing teams can unlock enhanced lead management, improved collaboration and communication, robust reporting, and analytics, all housed in a customizable and mobile-friendly system. 

Enhanced Lead Management

Insightly’s lead management tools enable marketing teams to capture, track, and prioritize leads effectively. By assigning lead scores based on a combination of behavioral data and demographic information, Insightly helps marketing teams identify and prioritize leads with the highest potential for conversion. 

For example, leads with strong engagement with marketing content or who fit the ideal customer profile may receive higher lead scores, indicating their readiness to move further along the sales funnel.

Automated lead capture mechanisms simplify the lead management process by seamlessly capturing leads from various sources, including website forms, social media campaigns, and events. Whether a prospect fills out a contact form on the website or provides their information at a trade show booth, Insightly ensures every lead is noticed, capturing valuable data and initiating the lead nurturing process automatically.

Once leads are captured, Insightly provides marketers with powerful tools to segment, categorize, and prioritize leads effectively. By analyzing lead scores and other relevant data points, marketing teams can tailor their follow-up actions to suit the needs and preferences of each prospect, increasing the likelihood of conversion and revenue generation.

Improved Collaboration and Communication

A shared customer information and communication platform like Insightly serves as a unifying force within an organization, bringing together disparate teams and departments to work towards a common goal. By providing a centralized hub for customer data and interactions, Insightly facilitates collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer service teams, breaking down silos and fostering cross-functional alignment. Getting your marketing automation platform and CRM from the same vendor allows for shared data among the marketing and sales teams. 

The benefit of integrated communication further enhances collaboration by enabling real-time communication and project management between teams. Whether it’s sharing updates on leads, discussing customer feedback, or coordinating follow-up actions, these tools streamline internal workflows, ensuring seamless coordination and alignment across departments. Implementing Insightly CRM as a shared platform allows organizations to break down barriers, leverage collective expertise, and work together more effectively to achieve their goals.

Reporting for Data-Driven Decision Making

CRM systems should have robust reporting and analytics capabilities, offering insights into campaign effectiveness, lead generation, and customer engagement metrics. These insights empower teams to measure ROI, identify trends, and optimize strategies for better results. Insightly’s robust reporting and analytics empower marketing teams to make data-driven decisions. By analyzing metrics such as conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and customer lifetime value, teams can optimize marketing strategies for maximum effectiveness and ROI.

Unlike traditional reporting systems, which require custom development and specialized expertise, Insightly CRM offers out-of-the-box reporting and analytics and fully customizable dashboards that you can tailor to your unique needs. With drag-and-drop interfaces and intuitive visualization tools, marketing teams can create and customize reports without the need for expensive developers or IT support. This self-service approach empowers teams to analyze data, track progress, and make data-driven decisions independently, saving time and resources.

Scalability and Customization

Insightly offers scalability and customization options to accommodate marketing teams’ evolving needs. Whether scaling campaigns to reach new markets or tailoring CRM workflows to specific business processes, Insightly provides flexibility and agility for growing teams.

A CRM system that offers extensive customization options allows marketing teams to tailor the system to their specific needs and preferences. Custom fields, layouts, and dashboards enable marketers to capture and visualize the information they need to inform their strategies and decision-making. Whether tracking campaign performance metrics, segmenting audiences based on demographics, or analyzing lead quality, a customizable CRM empowers marketers to focus on the data that matters most to them. This flexibility enhances usability, efficiency, and productivity, ensuring that marketing teams can extract maximum value from your CRM investment.

CRM Mobile Access

Modern CRM systems offer mobile applications that enable marketers to access critical information and stay connected on the go, whether at trade shows, events, or on the road. Mobile access allows marketers to view customer profiles, track interactions, and update records in real-time, ensuring continuity and responsiveness in customer engagement. 

Whether capturing leads at events, following up on inquiries, or accessing campaign metrics remotely, Insighty’s mobile access benefits marketing teams to stay productive and proactive, regardless of their location. This flexibility enhances agility, responsiveness, and customer satisfaction, driving business growth and success.

Marketing Teams Love Insightly CRM

A CRM is an integral tool with many benefits for marketing teams. It provides a centralized platform for managing customer relationships, tracking interactions, and, ultimately, informing marketing strategies. Whether harnessing the insights from Insightly CRM’s robust features or integrating it with other tools in your organization’s tech stack, CRM remains an indispensable tool for marketing teams looking to stay ahead in today’s dynamic and competitive landscape.

Supercharge your marketing efforts by combining the power of Insightly Marketing with Insightly CRM or by integrating with other tools in your tech stack using Insightly AppConnect to enhance marketing effectiveness, drive team efficiency, and enable data-driven decision-making. Set your marketing team up for success by watching a demo on demand or scheduling a personalized Insightly demo.

Effective lead management requires a strategic approach and a deep understanding of your target audience’s needs and preferences. It’s about more than just tracking contacts and interactions—it’s about guiding prospects through the buyer’s journey, from initial contact to final conversion. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the fundamentals of CRM and lead management, explore their importance, and provide actionable tips for effective CRM lead management.

What is a CRM?

Let’s start with the basics. A CRM is a powerful tool businesses use to manage relationships and interactions with customers and prospects. CRM software allows organizations to centralize and organize customer data, like contact information, communication and purchase history, miscellaneous preferences, and more. 

With a unified view of customer interactions across various touchpoints, CRMs enable businesses to understand their customers’ needs better, anticipate their preferences, and deliver personalized experiences. Consider your CRM a hub for managing customer relationships, facilitating communication, and driving sales growth. Whether you’re a small business owner looking to streamline your sales processes or an enterprise organization aiming to improve customer satisfaction, CRM software offers many benefits for businesses of all sizes.

What is Lead Management?

Lead management is a subset of CRM focusing on managing potential customers or “leads” throughout the sales process. It involves capturing leads, nurturing them through targeted communication and engagement, and ultimately converting them into paying customers. 

Lead management encompasses various activities, including lead generation, qualification, segmentation, nurturing, tracking, and analysis. Its primary goal is to maximize sales efficiency while improving conversion rates and enhancing customer relationships.

Lead management begins with lead generation, attracting prospective customers to your business through various marketing channels such as email campaigns, social media, content marketing, and advertising. Once leads are captured, they must be qualified to determine their level of interest and readiness to purchase. This involves evaluating demographics, firmographics, engagement level, and behavioral data to prioritize leads and focus efforts on those with the highest likelihood of conversion.

Segmentation is another crucial aspect of lead management, as it allows businesses to categorize leads based on common characteristics or behaviors. By segmenting leads into different groups, businesses can tailor their marketing messages and communication strategies better to speak directly to the needs of each segment. This personalized approach enhances engagement and increases the likelihood of conversion.

Nurturing leads is an ongoing process that involves building relationships with prospects through targeted communication and engagement. This may include sending personalized emails, providing valuable content, offering special promotions or discounts, and maintaining regular contact through various channels. Nurturing leads helps keep them engaged and interested in your products or services, gradually moving them through the sales funnel until they are ready to purchase.

Tracking and analyzing lead interactions are essential components of effective lead management. By monitoring lead behavior, tracking engagement metrics, and analyzing conversion data, businesses can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their lead management strategies. This allows them to identify areas for improvement, refine their tactics, and optimize their processes for better results.

Why is Lead Management Important?

Effective lead management is essential for businesses for several reasons:

• Maximizing Sales Efficiency Effective lead management enables businesses to prioritize and focus their efforts on leads with the highest potential for conversion. Businesses can streamline their sales processes by qualifying leads and nurturing them through the sales funnel.
• Improving Conversion Rates Lead management helps businesses engage with prospects meaningfully. Providing leads with the information and support they need to make informed purchasing decisions increases the likelihood of conversion. Businesses can drive higher conversion rates by nurturing leads through personalized communication and targeted marketing campaigns.
• Enhancing Customer Relationships Lead management is not just about closing sales but also about building and maintaining customer relationships. By providing value-added content, delivering exceptional customer service, and staying in touch with leads throughout their journey, businesses can foster trust and loyalty, turning leads into long-term customers and brand advocates.
• Gaining Competitive Advantage In today’s competitive marketplace, businesses that excel at lead management have a significant advantage. By delivering personalized experiences, responding promptly to inquiries, and staying top-of-mind with prospects, businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors and position themselves as industry leaders.

Customization of Lead Management

Customization of a CRM system is incredibly important when setting up lead management processes. Every business is unique, with its own specific needs, workflows, and requirements. Therefore, being able to customize your CRM to align with your organization’s processes is crucial for ensuring optimal efficiency and effectiveness in managing leads.

Another benefit of customizing your CRM is the ability to create custom workflows to match your business’s specific lead management processes. This could include defining stages in the sales pipeline, setting up automation rules for lead routing and follow-up, and configuring alerts and notifications for important events.

As businesses grow and evolve, their lead management processes may change. Customization allows businesses to adapt their CRM system to accommodate new workflows, processes, and requirements as needed. This scalability and flexibility ensure that the CRM remains a valuable tool for managing leads effectively over time.

8 Tips for Effective CRM Lead Management

Now that you understand lead management better let’s dive into some actionable tips for CRM lead management. 

1. 1. Define Your Ideal Customer Profile First and foremost, know and define your ideal customer profile clearly. By understanding your ideal customers, you can tailor your lead management efforts to attract and engage prospects who are most likely to convert. Create detailed customer profiles based on demographics, behavior, and preferences.
   2. Streamline Lead Capture Processes Streamlining lead capture processes ensures a steady influx of leads into your CRM system. Efficient lead capture is the foundation of successful lead management. You can utilize multiple lead capture channels, including web forms, email integrations, and social media. By leveraging these channels effectively, businesses can capture leads from various touchpoints and channels seamlessly. By centralizing lead capture within a CRM like Insightly, businesses can ensure that no potential opportunity slips through the cracks.
   3. Implement Lead Scoring and Qualification Not all leads are created equal, and prioritizing leads based on their likelihood to convert is essential for maximizing sales efficiency. Lead scoring and qualification help businesses prioritize leads based on their conversion likelihood. Assigning scores to leads based on criteria such as engagement level, demographics, and behavior allows businesses to focus their efforts on high-scoring leads to optimize their sales and marketing efforts and drive better results.
   4. Organize Leads with Tags and Custom Fields Organizing leads effectively is the first step for personalized communication strategies and targeted marketing efforts. Insightly allows users to categorize leads using tags and custom fields based on various criteria, such as industry, location, or lead source. This organizational structure makes segmenting leads and tailoring outreach strategies easy.
   5. Nurture Leads with Automated, Personalized Communication Nurturing leads through personalized communication is more important than ever when building relationships and guiding them through the sales funnel. Automation features like drip campaigns and personalized messaging enable businesses to deliver relevant content and messages to leads at the right time. By automating routine tasks, businesses can focus their efforts on high-value activities while ensuring that leads receive the attention they deserve.
   6. Track Lead Interactions Tracking lead interactions provides valuable insights into lead behavior and preferences. Insightly’s activity tracking feature allows users to monitor real-time lead interactions, including email opens, website visits, and social media engagement. By understanding how leads interact with their brand, businesses can craft their offers and messaging to better resonate with their audience.
   7. Collaborate Across Teams Effective lead management requires collaboration across sales, marketing, and customer service teams. By breaking down silos and fostering teamwork, businesses can ensure a unified approach to lead management. For example, aligning lead management with the sales process can ensure a smooth transition from prospect to customer.
   8. Analyze Data and Optimize Strategies Continuous analysis and optimization are key to improving lead management strategies over time. A CRM tool with robust reporting and analytics can provide valuable insights into lead performance, campaign effectiveness, and ROI. By analyzing these metrics and identifying areas for improvement, businesses can refine their lead management strategies and drive better results.

Effective CRM lead management is essential for improving customer relationships and gaining a competitive advantage in today’s business landscape. Businesses can maximize sales efficiency and improve conversion rates by effectively capturing, nurturing, and converting leads. With the right lead management processes in place, the full potential of your sales pipelines can be unlocked, leading to sustainable growth and success.

By following the tips outlined in this blog post and leveraging Insightly’s powerful capabilities, businesses can streamline lead management workflows, nurture leads effectively, and ultimately drive conversions and revenue growth. Ready to implement an effective CRM lead management strategy with Insightly? Watch a demo on demand or get a personalized Insightly demo today.

But how can your company be strategic when data are created and stored in so many different locations and formats? Email inboxes, social media sites, document repositories, and other third-party software tools are just a few of the places where your data live.

Integrating your CRM is certainly an option, but where should you start? Is integration worth the effort?

In this post we’ll explore CRM integrations and discuss five important integrations to consider in 2024.

Why use CRM integrations?

Before we dive into specific integrations to consider in 2024, let us first examine why CRM integrations are necessary. After all, you’ve already made a considerable investment in your CRM. Shouldn’t it do everything you need without relying on other systems?

Not exactly. Here’s why.

Even the best CRM can’t do everything

Last time I checked, no CRM will run a profit and loss report or statement of cash flow. Nor should it. And, although CRM technology continues to advance and encompass more aspects of daily life for businesses, the reality is that CRMs are not built to support every process and workflow. System consolidation can be wise, but total elimination of non-CRM technology is simply infeasible (at least in 2024). Therefore, integrating mission-critical apps to your CRM makes good sense.

Some tools become more useful when enriched by data stored in your CRM

You’ve put great effort into making your CRM the central source of truth for your organization. Maximize the usefulness of that data by making it accessible in other mission-critical apps, such as email inboxes and team collaboration platforms.

Not every team member requires direct access to your CRM

Sales, marketing, and project teams tend to be the heaviest users of CRM technology. That being said, there are many other teams who do not (or should not) require access to your CRM. Does your freelance graphic designer really need a CRM license? Perhaps not. On the other hand, she does interact with customer-related projects. What’s the right answer? Integrating her workspace to your CRM could be the perfect solution.

Managing relationships is messier than ever

No matter how much thought you put into engineering the perfect customer journey, some relationships do not fit into a nice and tidy box. Creating additional web-to-lead forms and autoresponder emails will never stop some customers from circumventing your ideal workflow. In today’s digital world, customers have more ways to engage your company than ever before.

Building integrations to third-party platforms (in particular to social media and email) makes your company better prepared to handle these situations, avoid data loss, and elevate customer relationships.

Integrate these five things in 2024

So, what should be on your integration to-do list in 2024? Here are the five system integrations that will deliver the most value to your organization.

1. Inbox

Stop and think. How much time do you spend in your inbox on a typical day? Now, multiply that across your entire staff. If you’re like many companies, email is still your most frequently used tool. Email offers a convenient platform for outreach and engagement, but it’s not ideal for organizing relationship data.

A better approach integrates your CRM and email, allowing users to quickly access and edit relationship data without leaving their inboxes.

Tip for Insightly users: Insightly Sidebar for Gmail makes it easy to view and add contacts without leaving your inbox. You can also save email messages into Insightly with a click of a button. The Insightly Sidebar for Outlook is also available for customers who use Microsoft products.

2. Financial data

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business. When customers fail to pay their invoices on time, your company suffers. Unfortunately, for many organizations, customer relationship management and billing fall into two separate departments that rarely speak to each other.

Integrating proposal, invoice, and payment data into your CRM creates transparency for front-line staff who are most likely to engage with customers, thereby reducing past-due situations and increasing cash flow.

Tip for Insightly users: Insightly integration for QuickBooks Online pulls in invoice and payment data into a dedicated tab on the customer’s record in Insightly.

3. Documents and files

Your CRM is an excellent place to collect customer contact information, notes, memos, and small chunks of relationship data. However, some data sources are best retained in their original format (i.e. complex pricing spreadsheets, photos from trade shows, and product spec sheets).

Attaching downloaded copies of files to CRM records is one option, but a better solution integrates your CRM to a cloud document management system. Linking to live versions of an online document maximizes collaboration and minimizes the possibility of confusion caused by revisioning.

Tip for Insightly users: Insightly offers a number of document integrations, including Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, Evernote, and others.

4. Team chatter

With the advent of remote work and collaboration apps, such as Slack, team members spend more time “chatting” than ever before. This online chatter represents real business value, but value is decreased when data remains isolated from your primary source of truth. In a similar way, online conversations become much less meaningful when collaborators do not have direct access to CRM data. Manually logging into a separate system to search for records is not always feasible, especially in today’s fast-paced business environment.

Ideally, your team collaboration system should have a direct line into your CRM, thereby enabling data-driven conversations and avoiding the creation of new data silos.

Tip for Insightly users: Insightly for Slack allows users to quickly search for, find, and add notes to Insightly records without ever leaving Slack.

5. Everything else

Your CRM vendor cannot integrate to all of your mission-critical apps. That’s why integration platforms are so useful. For example Insightly AppConnect is a no-code integration tool that connects Insightly CRM with hundreds of applications you use across your entire organization. Learn more here.

Move faster with CRM integrations

In summary, connecting your CRM to mission-critical applications will help your company build a more data-centric culture that elevates efficiency, reduces data confusion, and, ultimately, helps your teams move faster.

Check out Insightly AppConnect to browse the complete list of integrations. Not a customer? Request a product demo, watch a demo on demand at your convenience, or jump right in with a free trial.

]]> https://www.insightly.com/blog/top-integrations/ Tue, 30 Jan 2024 19:55:44 +0000 https://www.insightly.com/?p=23557 The latest trend shaping the customer relationship management (CRM) horizon is the growing importance of the ability to integrate. One key takeaway from 2023 is that CRM systems should not operate in isolation. The traditional view of CRM as a standalone tool for managing customer interactions rapidly gives way to a more integrated approach. 

Integrations are vital to modern CRM systems as they enhance data management, improve efficiency, personalize customer experiences, support data-driven decisions, provide scalability, and foster collaboration. In today’s interconnected digital environment, where data is king and customer expectations are high, integrations are beneficial and essential for any business seeking to leverage a CRM fully. 

The Benefits of Integrating with Insightly

Integrating the tools you already use with Insightly CRM can transform how you manage customer relationships, data, and business processes. It leads to greater efficiency, deeper insights, and a better ability to meet the evolving needs of your customers. Some key advantages include:

• Streamlined Workflows: Integrations automate repetitive tasks, saving time and reducing human errors. Allowing your team to focus on high-value activities like closing deals.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Integration with collaboration tools ensures that your team stays on the same page and can easily share critical information.
• Improved Customer Insights: Integrating analytics and reporting tools with Insightly provides valuable insights into customer behavior, helping you make data-driven decisions.
• Data Accessibility: Integrations enable data to flow seamlessly between Insightly CRM and other tools, ensuring everyone can access up-to-date information.
• Scalability: Integrations can change and expand as your business grows, accommodating your evolving needs.

Seamless Integration with AppConnect

Insightly’s workflow automation tool, AppConnect, seamlessly connects Insightly CRM with many other business applications. This includes tools for email, marketing automation, finance, project management, and customer support. The power of AppConnect lies in its ability to adapt to your unique business needs. With drag-and-drop simplicity, automated error handling, built-in versioning, and instant deployment and provisioning, anyone in your organization can quickly build and run sophisticated integrations. 

Top 10 Insightly AppConnect Integrations 

With Insightly’s robust integration capabilities, it’s easy for your CRM to become a central hub for all your customer-related activities. Let’s explore some of the most loved Insightly CRM integrations from 2023 and how they will move into 2024. These top 10 integrations are poised to drive your business’s success, regardless of industry, in the coming year.

Integrating Asana & Insightly

Asana excels in helping teams plan, organize, and track their work, and when paired with Insightly, it brings a newfound level of structure and collaboration to your project management efforts. The Insightly + Asana integration offers a seamless way to link customer data to project tasks. It ensures that sales, marketing, and project teams are aligned, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Insightly’s capability to automatically generate tasks in Asana in response to specific CRM activities is a standout feature of this integration. For example, creating a new lead or opportunity in Insightly can trigger the creation of a corresponding task in Asana. This seamless connection allows for the effortless assignment of tasks to team members, enables tracking of project milestones and progress, and facilitates linking vital project-related information back to relevant CRM records in Insightly. This ensures that project timelines and customer interactions are tightly aligned and enhances visibility across different departments. Team members can access up-to-date information on customer interactions and project status, enabling them to respond more effectively to customer needs.

Integrating DocuSign & Insightly

For businesses aiming to streamline their operations and improve contract management, the Insightly + DocuSign integration is a game-changer. More than just a tool for electronic signatures, it’s a comprehensive solution that optimizes your contract management workflow, ensuring efficiency, speed, and an improved experience for your team and your clients.

This powerful combination allows you to dispatch contracts, agreements, and various documents for electronic signature straight from the Insightly platform. Leveraging DocuSign’s capabilities, you benefit from real-time tracking and automated reminders, ensuring that every signature is accounted for promptly. Once documents are signed, they are automatically linked and stored with the corresponding records in your CRM. This seamless process saves time and brings a new level of organization and efficiency to document management.

Integrating Gmail & Insightly

If you’re searching for a CRM that works seamlessly with Gmail, Insightly has you covered. It integrates effortlessly with the tools you already utilize, allowing you to concentrate on your business rather than juggling technology. Considering that 90% of customer interactions happen within your email inbox, the Insightly + Gmail integration enables you to unearth and utilize crucial customer data hidden in your conversations. 

Bonus! The Insightly Sidebar, a Chrome browser extension, provides convenient access to your Insightly CRM directly from your Gmail inbox, ensuring that all customer interactions are tracked and simplifying email management for sales and support teams.

In addition to being available as an AppConect integration, several Google apps integrate natively with Insightly. 

Integrating Salesloft & Insightly

If your business goals for 2024 include sales efficiency and better lead management, the Insightly + Salesoft integration could be the missing piece to your sales strategy. This integration can boost your sales team’s performance by enabling personalized outreach, facilitating data-driven decision-making, and improving sales outcomes.

Integrating with Insightly transforms your sales approach by providing a comprehensive view of each customer journey. Your sales team can leverage this integrated platform to craft more personalized and impactful sales pitches, follow up with leads at the right time, and close deals more effectively.

Moreover, this integration goes beyond just data syncing. It empowers your team to automate various sales-related tasks, reducing the manual effort and time spent on routine activities. The ability to track email interactions directly within the CRM provides valuable insights into customer engagement, allowing your team to tailor their communication strategies more effectively. Additionally, the integration aids in prioritizing leads more efficiently, ensuring that your team focuses on the most promising opportunities.

Integrating Calendly & Insightly

Efficient appointment scheduling is crucial across various industries. Whether it’s healthcare businesses that depend on patient consultations, professional service providers managing client meetings, or sales organizations utilizing demos as a sales tool, the Insightly + Calendly integration offers a solution that simplifies this process. 

Calendly, known for its user-friendly appointment scheduling capabilities, allows for easy organization of meetings and appointments. By integrating Calendly with Insightly, scheduling and tracking customer interactions becomes seamlessly coordinated. Once integrated, when you schedule meetings with new prospects using Calendly, Insightly can create a new lead, contact, or opportunity record effortlessly. If the prospect is already in your system, the scheduled event will be conveniently added to their existing record. It simplifies the scheduling process and enhances the overall management of customer relationships, leading to better service, improved efficiency, and higher conversion rates.

Integrating Outlook & Insightly

Centralize customer communication and streamline access to CRM data from the email application you know and love. The Insightly + Outlook integration is designed to optimize email tracking, calendar synchronization, and communication management, all within the familiar interface of Outlook.

This integration automatically records and tracks all email correspondence within Insightly CRM. Every email sent or received through Outlook can be instantly logged in Insightly, allowing for a comprehensive view of customer interactions and ensuring no missed communication detail. Additionally, this integration offers a two-way sync between Insightly and Outlook calendars. This synchronization ensures that any appointments, meetings, or events scheduled in Outlook are reflected in Insightly and vice versa. It helps maintain a unified schedule across both platforms. Most importantly, this integration allows you to easily access and manage CRM data and records without leaving your Outlook interface. This capability makes it more convenient to view customer information, update records, and manage tasks directly from your email application, streamlining workflow and saving valuable time. 

Integrating Slack & Insightly

Slack revolutionizes organizational communication by streamlining and accelerating interactions. Bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams with the Insightly + Slack integration and foster a unified approach. Ensure your team stays connected and can easily share critical CRM-related updates and information. 

With the Insightly and Slack integration, sharing crucial CRM information within Slack becomes seamless. Whether it’s celebrating successful closed/won deals with automatic alerts or informing managers about significant pipeline milestones, this integration facilitates the customization and automation of various notifications. You can also initiate conversations directly from Insightly. This integration enables the creation of new Slack channels, with names you choose, straight from Insightly. Need a bit more privacy? You also have the option to set up private channels that are accessible only to specified users.

By leveraging the strengths of both platforms, organizations can create a more cohesive team environment.

Integrating ZoomInfo & Insightly

If your business relies on accurate and current contact information for lead generation and sales outreach, the Insightly + ZoomInfo integration is an extremely valuable resource. Enrich your CRM data with accurate and up-to-date business contact information and maintain a high-quality database.

The ZoomInfo integration automates updating CRM records, eliminating repetitive manual tasks and ensuring uniformity across your database. Any updates to the company or contact information in ZoomInfo will automatically synchronize with Insightly, providing your team with the most current and accurate overview of your business opportunities. Leverage the extensive B2B database of ZoomInfo to augment your customer data and increase the effectiveness of your sales efforts.

Integrating PandaDoc & Insightly

PandaDoc is a document automation platform that simplifies document creation, tracking, and e-signatures. Integrating with Insightly CRM optimizes your document workflow, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and a seamless e-signature process. Generate sales proposals, quotes, and contracts within PandaDoc directly from Insightly CRM data with the Insightly + PandaDoc integration. Streamline document handling with this integration. This seamless connection enables one-click data transfer, automatically filling PandaDoc documents with contact and field data from Insightly. The integration also brings the convenience of integrated e-signatures, accelerating the deal closure process. Your sales team can send documents effortlessly from any device equipped with secure, legally binding e-signatures for both sales reps and prospects.

In addition to being available as an AppConnect integration, PandaDoc integrates natively with Insightly.

Integrating QuickBooks & Insightly

Integrating QuickBooks with a CRM system creates a unified financial and customer relationship management platform. With multiple ways to integrate with Quickbooks, it’s no surprise that one of the best CRMs for Quickbooks is Insightly (and why it’s one of our top integrations for 2023 and will surely continue in 2024!)

Integrating QuickBooks with Insightly enables teams to view and manage financial information within the CRM environment. The Insightly + Quickbooks integration allows importing contacts, organizations, and opportunities into Insightly, facilitating a unified and comprehensive view of customer interactions alongside their financial transactions. This integration enhances the efficiency of managing client relationships by providing easy access to critical financial data, streamlining workflows, and improving overall customer management and service.

In addition to being available as an AppConect integration, QuickBooks integrates natively with Insightly. Learn more in this video: Best CRM for QuickBooks – Installing and Integrating Insightly CRM and QuickBooks Online

Kickstart 2024 with Insightly

By integrating with Insightly, you can supercharge your CRM strategy, improve customer relationships, and set your business up for future success. Top integrations for email applications, calendar and project management tools, and financial software tools offer myriad benefits for businesses seeking to improve their CRM experience. Seamlessly connecting Insightly with these tools allows you to streamline processes, increase efficiency, and gain a competitive edge in today’s business landscape.

Start your year with the modern CRM teams love. Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM, watch a demo on demand, or request a personalized demo to see how you can integrate your tech stack with Insightly.

However, there is a distinct use case for each and this article will explore those in detail. Many find that when comparing Salesforce vs. HubSpot, the real answer isn’t either of those platforms; in fact, it is Insightly. 

What is the history of each platform?

Salesforce was founded in 1999 by Marc Benioff and Parker Harris, both former Oracle executives. Thus, from the beginning, Salesforce had its roots in the enterprise space as a CRM. The big contribution Salesforce made was via its delivery of business applications via a website, eliminating the need for traditional software installation.

About 7 years after Salesforce launched, HubSpot hit the scene as a marketing automation platform. Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah had a vision of inbound marketing as a type of marketing that provides businesses with tools to attract, engage, and delight customers. In 2015, HubSpot added a CRM component.

Both of these companies made historic debuts: Salesforce’s was a cloud-based CRM and HubSpot’s was marketing automation for all. 

Then, Insightly came along in 2013 and learned from the debuts of each. Born in the cloud with a super-fast interface and the power to run businesses of all sizes, Insightly offers the best of CRM in a modern, affordable platform. Insightly was founded by Anthony Smith is Perth, Australia as a platform to work closely with Google to help businesses of all sizes improve their operational efficiency. It has since evolved beyond CRM to include a marketing automation application, a customer service ticketing application, and an integration tool with more than 1,000 pre-built connectors. It is truly an all-on-one application to run your business. 

In this comparison, we will explore the key aspects of comparing Salesforce vs. HubSpot vs. Insightly to help businesses make informed decisions based on their specific requirements.

Salesforce benefits vs. HubSpot and Insightly

Salesforce is a powerhouse in the CRM industry, renowned for its robust and customizable solutions suitable for enterprises. The platform provides a comprehensive suite of tools designed to manage sales, marketing, customer service, and more. Salesforce’s strength lies in its scalability, making it an ideal choice for large organizations with complex processes and diverse teams.

One of Salesforce’s standout features is its AppExchange marketplace, offering a vast array of third-party integrations that extend its functionality. This allows businesses to tailor the CRM to their specific needs, integrating with various tools and services seamlessly. Additionally, Salesforce’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, through Einstein Analytics, empower users with predictive insights, helping businesses make data-driven decisions.

Why do businesses move away from Salesforce?

However, the sophistication of Salesforce comes at a cost. The platform is complex, and its implementation requires dedicated training. Customizations take time and are costly to create and maintain. The system itself can be painfully slow due to its complexity, meaning pages load slowly and significant time is spent waiting. 

Perhaps the biggest obstacle with Salesforce is pricing. The pricing structure is designed for enterprise, Fortune 1000 businesses who can afford a multi-person CRM team, plus outside consultants, developers, and implementation specialty firms. Thus, pricing is a barrier for small to medium-sized businesses, especially when comparing Salesforce to Insightly.

Many mid-sized businesses will discover that they have over-bought with Salesforce and consider switching from Salesforce to Insightly.

HubSpot benefits vs. Salesforce and Insightly

HubSpot got its start as a marketing automation platform and moved into the CRM space years later. It is known for its user-friendly interface and the integration of marketing, sales, and now customer service functions in one platform. This all-in-one approach simplifies processes for small to medium-sized businesses, offering a more accessible entry point into CRM technology.

HubSpot’s free CRM option is a notable feature, providing essential tools without any cost. This makes it an attractive choice for startups and businesses with budget constraints. The platform’s marketing automation tools are the real star, however (remember that HubSpot was founded as a marketing automation platform with CRM as an afterthought.)

Why do businesses move away from HubSpot?

While HubSpot excels in simplicity, it may lack the extensive customization options that larger enterprises often require. Additionally, its free CRM has limitations, and businesses find out quickly that they need to upgrade to access some fairly basic features to run their day-to-day operations. At that point, pricing skyrockets. (Be especially cautious of multiyear deals where the out years’ pricing increases by 500%) 

Technology considerations come into play as well. HubSpot is considered a closed system, meaning customers derive the most value when they use all of the components of the system. Should you decide you need a different app for social posting, or website development, you lose many of the benefits of the platform (but still have to pay for them).

Businesses also find that while the marketing automation features of HubSpot are robust and continually improving, the CRM is fairly basic. Sales teams looking for more advanced CRM features like those found in Insightly and Salesforce can be unhappy with the standard features of HubSpot CRM. As such, sales teams may decide to leave the CRM behind while their marketing team may want to stay with HubSpot. This causes friction since integrations are not always stable. 

A better course of action when a company outgrows HubSpot is to start comparing HubSpot with Insightly.

Insightly benefits vs. Salesforce and HubSpot

Insightly positions itself as a CRM platform geared towards small and medium-sized businesses. It has all of the powerful features you’d expect from a modern CRM.  Features like pipeline management, lead management, workflow automation, PPQ, email management and more are all included. Unlike other CRMs, Insightly offers built-in project management capabilities so that businesses can execute on delivery of services after the sale. Additionally,  the platform is highly customizable and offers robust, built in dashboards and reporting capabilities. 

Beyond the CRM itself, Insightly is a platform. It also offers a robust marketing automation app (Insightly Marketing) and a customer service ticketing tool (Insightly Service), along with middleware for integrations (AppConnect) The CRM application includes a series of robust project management capabilities, catering to organizations that need a comprehensive solution for managing customer relationships and want to use the familiar interface for managing internal projects. 

Insightly’s user interface is intuitive, making it easy for teams to get started quickly. It offers a range of features, including management, lead and contact management, opportunity management, pipeline visualization, reports, and project tracking. The platform has a group of vital native integrations, and then unlimited integration options via its open API and AppConnect..

One key benefit of Insightly as compared to Salesforce is the lack of complexity. It’s unusual for businesses to hire outside integrators or developers to run an Insightly implementation – it’s easy to do on your own. Customizations are easy to accomplish. Custom fields, custom objects, custom dashboards, custom page layouts and custom reports are easy to create and modify. Integrations are similar, since they are accomplished with a low-code/no-code drag and drop tool like AppConnect, they are easy to build and maintain.

While Insightly’s feature set may be perceived as less extensive compared to Salesforce, it’s simply the complexity that is reduced. 

For businesses just starting out, Insightly’s free plan is a great option. You get access to a world-class CRM for up to 2 users. This isn’t a meager plan either – you get up to 2,500 records, 5 email templates, 2 custom fields and custom page layouts. All for free forever. It’s Insightly’s way of giving back to the business community and fostering small businesses worldwide. 

How do I choose between HubSpot and Salesforce and Insightly?

This blog post presented a lot of information, but here is a summary:

1. If your business is in the Fortune 1000 and can afford a team of CRM specialists, the power and customizability of Salesforce may be a good fit.
2. If your business is early stage and is looking for a platform primarily for marketing automation that includes website hosting, social posting, and that also has a CRM available, HubSpot can be a good choice.
3. If your business is seeking a robust, feature-rich and customizable CRM that can integrate with a variety of applications that you use to run your business, Insightly is the ideal choice. 

The choice between Salesforce, HubSpot, and Insightly depends on the size and specific requirements of the business. Salesforce is a robust solution for large enterprises with intricate processes and a need for extensive customization. HubSpot is ideal for start-ups, small, and micro businesses seeking an easy-to-use, all-in-one platform, while Insightly is a balanced option for organizations looking for a powerful CRM that can propel the sales team into efficiency, be easily customized, and connect to any other application. Ultimately, businesses should carefully assess their needs and priorities to select the CRM platform that aligns best with their goals and resources.

Insightly CMO Chip House tackled this topic in a recent webinar with sales consultant and keynote speaker Jen Allen-Knuth. This blog post explores what they shared.

Market forces shaping 2024 sales outlook

Why do sales people and leaders need to be making resolutions in the first place? What’s going on in the market that is mandating change?  Before diving into 2024, let’s look at the market forces from 2023 that are shaping the 2024 outlook.

Here are some market forces to consider:

Force 1:  Email deliverability/personalization.

We had a collective scare back in November about mail deliverability regulations. Businesses that send more than 5,000 emails per day (and that’s a pretty low number) were going to be subject to stricter metrics on spam complaints by Google and Yahoo. It was walked back to ONLY apply to @gmail or @yahoo.com addresses, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to come around again. Therefore personalization, which has been having a moment for quite some time, is about to get even more important.

Jen shared some data from author Dr. Howard Dover in his book, The Sales Innovation Paradox. With a 1,000% increase in the number of SDRs, and the SDR becoming 10x more efficient with sales engagement platforms, that yields a 10,000% increase in the amount of prospecting activities in the market today. As such, you need personalization more than ever to make an impact and cut through the noise. Personalization was a 2023 buzzword, and it’s not going anywhere for 2024. 

Force 2: Tech consolidation and COI

Another ‘force’ is tech consolidation meaning that companies are doing more with less, reducing their SaaS tech stacks due to cost. This is combined with the cost of inaction, meaning that companies may be losing out on technology advances by sticking with the status quo. 2023 was shaped by businesses using fewer applications and often sticking with their current tech stack even after being in-market for something new. This will carry over into 2024. 

Force 3: Consensus sales without the seller

Another force that we can’t shake and seems to be getting even bigger is the impact of consensus buying without a sales rep. It’s now estimated 83% of the buying group’s time is spent without the seller. Committees are making the consideration set without talking to sales people, and they are doing research on their own for the overwhelming majority of the buying journey. With this in mind, getting into that initial consideration set was huge in 2023, and it will remain a focus for 2024. As such, branding is becoming more vital than ever for B2B companies. 

Force 4: Higher buyer expectations

Once buyers start to engage with sales reps, they want the seller to truly bring value. Jen shared some data from Gong about how buyers feel about their interactions with sellers, and the data was disappointing. Only a quarter of buyers felt the seller understood their role (25%), 13% felt the seller’s message addressed a relevant challenge within their organization, 9% indicated the seller’s message was personalized, and a mere 6% stated that they learned something from the seller. These numbers are abyssal at best. Sellers need to up their game and be able to provide value. 

With these 4 areas in mind, Chip and Jen revealed the 5 resolutions that they feel sellers and sales leaders should make in 2024.

2024 Sales Resolution #1: Learn what’s really behind objections

Understanding objections – the types and their meanings. In 2024, ‘overcoming objections’ is over. Rather than focusing on overcoming objections, it’s vital that sellers understand them – especially those that are recurring – to close a deal and to become a better seller. Jen explains the difference between future vs. current objections and what they signal to sellers. Current objections signal that there may not be any or enough ‘pain.’ For example, with a CRM purchase, perhaps the prospect is OK with continuing to run their business on spreadsheets and post-it notes. A future objection is the what if – “what things could go wrong if I buy?” In the case of CRM, an example would be “what if the implementation fails?” 

Jen further shared the need to flip the script on objections. They are not a dead end, but rather they are in fact feedback for you as a seller. If you have recurring objections, perhaps it’s time to revisit your outreach, your messaging, or your target audience. 

2024 Sales Resolution #2: Love my personal pipeline report

Everyone has heard sellers lament that the pipeline report is ‘busywork’ and not something they derive value from. It’s something they do for their manager, weekly or biweekly, out of obligation. 

Jen feels like this is a big miss, since it’s the only opportunity to look over the body of your work, rather than deal by deal. Revisiting your pipeline report over time can help savvy sellers see trends and react to them. She shared something she learned by looking at her pipeline report as a seller was viewing closed won and lost and pipeline trends. With this view, you can see where in the pipeline there was some velocity and where perhaps there are slow-downs. These are patterns that you may not see looking deal-by-deal. There are lessons in there for the sellers who are open to them.

Your resolution is in this mantra: Your pipeline report is a tool you can use and analyze to learn patterns in your processes.

2024 Sales Resolution #3: Embrace COI

Chip shared some recent data from Gartner that estimates that 40-60% of B2B buying journeys end in ‘no decision.’ This means that B2B sellers are losing to the status quo more frequently than any other real competitor. When selling against the status quo, sellers need to show the negative consequences of it. Jen has coined this as “COI” or Cost of Inaction. 

Sellers need to  learn how to paint a picture where the pain of the same is greater than the pain of change. So often, sellers are pitching ROI which could possibly happen vs. COI which is real and will happen. 

Indecision is a byproduct of risk, meaning buyers stick with the status quo to avoid risk. Therefore it is part of the seller’s job to derisk the buying process. 

This is a shift that sellers will need to make, so being aware of COI and how to sell against the status quo is a resolution for 2024.

2024 Sales Resolution #4: Make real email magic 

As mentioned above, email regulations are likely going to change again soon, given the proposed anti-spam initiatives that Yahoo and Google rolled out in early 2024. Sellers need to be writing personalized, powerful emails every day in order to cut through the noise. Writing emails that work and embrace COI is on your resolution list for sure. It also pays to see what tech is out there to help you write better emails (e.g. Lavender.ai.). 

Jen also shared her outlook on problem prompting – assessing whether or not a problem exists within an organization prior to offering a solution. This can save sellers a lot of time since many people are willing to hear a pitch even if they don’t have enough pain at the time that makes it a priority. If sellers can research to determine if the pain exists first, they can save a lot of time and a lot of pitching to the wrong people. 

2024 Sales Resolution #5: Finally commit to social selling

2024 is the year to get your social game off the ground. Chip talked about the power of your personal brand via social selling. Jen explained what she calls social ‘sparking’ which is using social media as a place to discuss ideas, offer guidance and create awareness of a brand without pitching or overtly selling. An area she particularly recommends is groups and communities where sellers can join and listen to hear what concerns their ICP has and how people in their ICP are reaching out to peers for advice. 

LinkedIn still reigns supreme in 2024 for business social, so whether or not your ICP is on LinkedIn, it’s time to engage. If you don’t get LinkedIn Sales Navigator from your company, it’s time to pay for it yourself according to the experts. Learn time blocking tips (e.g. spending 1 hour per day engaging on social media) is a great way to build up that discipline. Another great use for LinkedIn is to follow job change announcements. Has someone you sold to changed to another company? That could be a great time to engage and see if they need your services in their new gig. Chip pointed to experts Mandy McEwen and Sam McKenna for more tips like these. 

What’s next?

2024 is in full swing. Get out there with these resolutions are start your best year yet of selling. And if a new CRM is on your horizon, or if you’re simply tired of the one you have, check out Insightly with a free trial, a demo on demand, or a personalized demo. 

Ask yourself the question “Does your sales leader love your CRM?” They should because they’ll spend A LOT of time in it.

Insightly partnered with RevGenius to host a webinar with Mallory Lee VP of Operations at Nylas and Ping Del Giudice, a revenue leader and former VP of Revenue Operations at Leapsome. The moderator was Insightly CMO Chip House.

The webinar, entitled “7 Ways a CRM helps your sales leader stay sane” was a lively conversation among these exceptional professionals. Because if your CRM is keeping you sane, you’ll start to love it.

You can learn more about the full event, watch the video below, or skim this blog post to catch the main points of discussion.

CRM: beyond the tool

CRM isn’t just a tool but a strategic ally that empowers sales leaders to maintain their sanity amidst the chaos. The webinar delved into seven key strategies that transform a CRM into a force multiplier, enabling sales leaders to streamline processes, enhance decision-making, and elevate the entire sales ecosystem. And yes, getting your sales leadership to love it.

Here are the 7 ways with detail on each.

1. Making your CRM the single source of truth

A great mantra for this is “If it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen.” In B2B sales, clarity and accuracy are paramount. A CRM acts as the anchor, the single source of truth that centralizes every customer interaction, communication, and deal-related detail. When sales leaders can rely on the CRM for a complete and up-to-date history of engagements, they gain an understanding of each customer’s journey. This clarity eliminates confusion, enhances communication, and empowers informed decision-making. The CRM’s role as the repository of accurate, comprehensive information ensures that sales leaders can confidently guide their teams and respond effectively to opportunities and challenges. In order for this to work, it must be enforced by leadership and they have to walk the walk, not just talk to the talk. A great way to support this daily is having managers use the CRM on their one-on-ones with reps. 

2. Keep your data clean with data hygiene practices

A cluttered CRM filled with outdated or duplicated data can quickly become a nightmare for sales leaders. Data hygiene practices involve consistent maintenance, such as regularly updating contact details and purging redundant entries. Clean data translates to efficient operations, as sales reps spend less time deciphering information and more time engaging with prospects. Here are some practical ways to keep your data clean:

Driving Consistent Behaviors and Discipline. By instilling a culture of discipline and accountability among sales teams, sales leaders ensure that every team member understands the importance of accurate data entry and ongoing maintenance. When everyone understands the collective responsibility for data integrity, it becomes a shared goal that contributes to the overall success of the team.

Use of CRM Validation Rules

CRM validation rules act as automated guardians of data quality. They enforce standardized data formats, required fields, and other criteria essential for accurate reporting and analysis. By implementing validation rules within the CRM, sales leaders create a safety net that prevents incomplete or incorrect information from entering the system. This ensures that data integrity is maintained from the outset and reduces the risk of errors or inconsistencies that can lead to wasted time, misinformed decisions, and compromised customer interactions.

3. Ensure you are enforcing definitions

A unified understanding of key terms and definitions is crucial for effective communication and collaboration across sales teams. Sales leaders play a pivotal role in enforcing these definitions within the CRM. Defining what constitutes an opportunity, aligning on the stages of the sales pipeline, and establishing clear criteria for lead qualification are vital steps. When everyone speaks the same language and follows the same playbook, misinterpretations are minimized, accountability is increased, and sales leaders can confidently evaluate the health of deals and pipelines. Here are some areas to contemplate:

What Constitutes an Opportunity in Your Organization? Is it BANT (Budget-Need-Authority-Timeline) or something else? Defining what qualifies as an opportunity in your organization sets the foundation for consistent pipeline and lead management. The BANT framework is commonly used to evaluate prospects’ readiness to buy. Customizing BANT criteria based on your industry and business model helps sales teams identify high-potential leads. This clear definition prevents ambiguity, aligns the team’s efforts, and ensures that resources are directed toward prospects with the greatest potential to convert into customers.

The Right Depth of Information for Opportunity Health. Striking the right balance in gathering information about opportunities is essential. Sales leaders need enough data to accurately assess the health of each opportunity, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming for sales reps. Information about the prospect’s pain points, challenges, timeline, and decision-making process is vital. This depth of information empowers sales teams to tailor their approach, address specific needs, and anticipate potential roadblocks, resulting in more effective interactions and higher conversion rates.

Pipeline Stages and Probability of Close: How Sales Leaders Develop and Enforce It. Defining clear pipeline stages and assigning probabilities of closure at each stage empowers sales leaders to manage their teams effectively. Sales leaders develop these stages based on their unique sales process, breaking down the customer journey into distinct phases such as prospecting, qualification, proposal, and negotiation. Assigning probabilities of closure helps assess the likelihood of a deal progressing to the next stage. Enforcing these stages encourages consistency, enables more accurate sales predictions, and aids in resource allocation for maximum impact.

4. Customize the CRM to support your business

Every business operates differently, and a CRM should mirror those unique processes. Sales leaders can customize the CRM to align with their specific business needs. Tailoring page layouts, fields, and workflows ensures that the CRM becomes an intuitive tool that enhances productivity rather than hindering it. By accommodating the intricacies of the business, sales leaders can create an environment where their teams spend less time navigating complexities and more time nurturing relationships and closing deals.

Customizing page layouts within your CRM is like tailoring a suit to fit perfectly. Every business has unique processes and data needs, and page layouts allow you to design the CRM interface to match your specific requirements. Whether it’s capturing industry-specific information, highlighting key metrics, or streamlining workflows, page layouts ensure that your CRM becomes a natural extension of your business operations. Sales reps neglect to update CRM because it’s too cumbersome and time-consuming, so your page layout design can be an underrated factor to consider. 

Often, the user experience within the CRM can significantly impact adoption rates. Cumbersome layouts or excessive data entry fields can discourage sales reps from consistently updating the CRM. By designing intuitive and user-friendly page layouts, you eliminate friction in data entry and retrieval. A well-designed layout ensures that essential information is easily accessible, saving time and making CRM usage a seamless part of the sales process. Page layouts play a pivotal role in enhancing information organization across teams. By strategically arranging fields, tabs, and sections, you create a logical flow of data that mirrors how your teams work. Sales, marketing, and customer service teams can effortlessly locate and update the information they need, leading to smoother collaboration and more accurate data-driven decisions.

Determining what fields are included in each section of your page layout will make It easy to find and act on information. Thoughtful consideration of field placement can significantly impact user efficiency. Essential fields like contact details, deal value, and timeline should be prominently displayed for quick reference. Action-oriented fields, such as follow-up tasks or next steps, should also be easily accessible. Organizing fields in a way that aligns with the sales process ensures that sales reps can quickly identify what needs attention and take informed actions to move deals forward.

5. Keep It Simple (and Safe) by Limiting Data Access

Too much information can overwhelm and distract sales teams. Sales leaders can alleviate this by using the CRM’s permission settings to control data access. By limiting access to relevant information based on roles and responsibilities, sales leaders foster focused and productive work environments. Additionally, data security is enhanced as sensitive customer information remains visible only to those who require it. This balance of simplicity, focus, and security provides sales leaders the peace of mind that their team members are working efficiently and responsibly.

6. Eliminate Time-Sucking Tasks

Repetitive manual tasks can drain the energy and enthusiasm of sales teams. Sales leaders can harness the power of automation within the CRM to free up valuable time and mental bandwidth. Workflow automation handles routine processes, like follow-ups and reminders, reducing the administrative burden on sales reps. This efficiency translates to higher morale, better engagement with prospects, and more time for meaningful interactions that drive revenue.

Using Workflow Automation. Workflow automation is the secret weapon against time wastage. By automating routine tasks such as data entry, follow-up emails, and task assignments, sales teams can reclaim valuable hours that were once spent on manual work. This automation not only accelerates processes but also ensures consistency and accuracy, freeing up sales reps to focus on more strategic and value-added activities.

Reduce Repetitive, Manual Tasks. Repetitive tasks can drain energy and creativity, diverting sales reps from high-impact activities. Implementing automation tools to handle these tasks slashes the time spent on administrative work. This reduction in manual effort empowers sales reps to allocate their time to activities that truly drive revenue, such as building relationships, nurturing leads, and closing deals.

Allow Reps to Focus on Great Customer Experiences. When sales reps are freed from time-consuming manual tasks, they can redirect their efforts toward crafting exceptional customer experiences. Building rapport, understanding customer needs, and providing tailored solutions become their main focus. This shift in emphasis not only strengthens customer relationships but also increases the likelihood of repeat business and referrals, ultimately contributing to revenue growth.

7. Real-Time Data at a Glance (Helping You Hit Quota)

Sales leaders are tasked with achieving targets and quotas, and real-time data is their ally in this endeavor. By creating dashboards that provide instant insights into team performance and pipeline health, sales leaders gain the ability to make agile decisions. When they can identify bottlenecks, trends, and opportunities at a glance, they are better equipped to lead their teams strategically and take timely corrective actions. The data-driven approach facilitated by CRM dashboards ensures sales leaders stay on track and work towards consistent quota attainment. And since everyone is on the go today, ensuring those dashboards and reports are easily accessible on a mobile device is essential. 

Fall in love with with Insightly CRM

Just like there is a difference between buying a gym membership and going to the gym, there is a difference between buying a CRM and effectively using it. From basic contact information and purchase data to deeper insights like customer behaviors, attitudes, and preferences, the right CRM empowers your team to serve every customer, every time. 

The more your team uses it, the more information you will have as a sales leader and the more you’ll love the platform that drives your business. 

Insightly CRM was designed to help teams build lasting customer relationships through a simple, scalable platform. Insightly’s unified solution aligns cross-functional teams like sales, marketing, and customer service on a single, shared data platform with a single customer view. The result? Unprecedented transparency, better decision-making, and a seamless end-to-end customer experience.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, watch a demo on demand, or request a personalized demo to see how it can help your company achieve its business goals. 

The basic formula for calculating ROI is not overly complicated. Simply divide your net profit by the total investment, multiply by 100, and you have your number:

ROI = net profit / total investment * 100

But estimating ROI for a business system—such as a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) —is not as straightforward as a one-time advertising campaign.

In this post we will:

1. Explore best practices for calculating the return on your CRM investment (e.g. the ROI of CRM).
2. Review a webinar where sales leaders talk about ways to improve ROI from CRM.
3. Share an ROI study from an analyst firm to provide real world data

Let’s start with perspective

Going from no CRM to a paid monthly (or annual) subscription is a new expense and takes a bit of adjustment.

After all, up to this point, your business has been successful without a CRM. Will the new expense of a CRM solution be worth the upfront and ongoing investment? How long before you recoup your investment? Wouldn’t the money be better spent on paid promotion, freelance labor, or something with more immediate impact on performance?

To answer questions like these, you must have the right perspective. Go back and revisit your original motivation for considering a CRM. Most likely, you wanted technology that would help you grow faster and smarter. A CRM, when properly implemented, aligns perfectly with these goals by providing the tools you need to:

• Increase sales revenue/revenue growth
• Decrease operational costs
• Maximize internal collaboration and productivity

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

Revenue growth

A CRM cannot make cold calls for you. It cannot source and hire new sales talent. It can’t close deals like your salespeople can. So, how can a CRM contribute to top line growth?

In short, a CRM maximizes the impact of your salesforce and your sales processes and systems by:

Freeing up sales reps to sell more

Sales reps don’t want to waste time fumbling with spreadsheets or subpar CRM systems and arguing over lead assignments. They want to sell. Lead management, workflow automation, and assignment rules make sales reps more productive and less distracted. Focused sales reps find more time for prospecting, customer acquisition, and upselling, which results in a healthier pipeline.

Providing transparency into what’s working (and what’s not)

Your sales team tries their best. No one doubts that. Aside from their personal anecdotes, however, how can you definitively know which actions and team members are contributing to your success? Without a CRM, it’s difficult to track and measure performance.

CRMs are built to increase the transparency and accountability of your sales operations. Pipeline visibility dashboards, lost deal monitoring, and sales rep performance reports deliver actionable, data-driven insights for measuring success or failure.

Aligning sales and marketing

In today’s virtual world, sales and marketing teams frequently operate in isolation from each other. Marketing focuses on content creation and delivering MQLs, while sales builds pipeline. 

This sounds great in theory, but, in reality, it rarely works due to goal misalignment.

CRM technology bridges the divide between sales and marketing. Marketers gain insights into conversion rates to understand which leads convert into paying customers and therefore contribute most to the bottom line. With the right CRM and marketing automation combination, sales reps enjoy greater visibility into the status of important marketing initiatives and lead flow in real time. All of this creates a virtuous sales cycle that, hopefully, leads to streamlined and enhanced communication and collaboration between two vital departments.

Increasing the value of your data

When properly organized, customer data can be one of your most valuable business assets for revenue-generating teams. However, data that is unstructured and spread across countless inboxes, spreadsheets, and disintegrated business systems cannot be fully leveraged. A CRM creates structure and makes it easier to identify and prevent bad data. This alone can justify the cost of investment in improved customer retention.

Cost management

Implementing a CRM can also create numerous cost saving opportunities.

Here are a few basic possibilities:

System overlap reduction

CRM vendors are constantly developing new features and apps that meet the evolving needs of their customers. From integrated marketing automation to project management to customer service and integrations, CRMs support a variety of use cases that allow businesses to simplify their tech stacks and reduce overlapping software costs and training costs. Be sure to be continually looking for upgrades to your system as your business needs evolve.

Process enhancement

Automated workflows present limitless possibilities for reducing (or reallocating) monthly expenses. For example, does it really make sense to have a freelancer spend 20 hours per month on record management if your CRM can handle most of the work? Wouldn’t that freelancer deliver more value if reassigned to higher impact activities? When you choose a flexible, customizable CRM, you can set up workflow automation at a level that makes sense for your team and business – regardless of if you have a small business, mid-sized operation or an enterprise.

Process elimination

A CRM may even be able to eliminate costly inefficiencies and bottlenecks in your business. Integrated web-to-lead forms, for example, collect website inquiries and create matching lead records on your behalf. In addition, Insightly users rely on the integrated email client feature to rapidly save contacts, organizations, and related data from their inboxes—with zero manual data entry.

Collaboration & productivity

Beyond revenue growth and cost reduction, consider the intangible benefits of a CRM. Even a marginal improvement in the following areas can have a lasting, positive impact on your ROI calculation:

Enhanced information sharing

Reliable, actionable information is what your people need to perform their jobs. Guaranteeing reliable, actionable data is difficult, however, when your organization is plagued by silos.

A CRM overcomes data silos by centralizing all of your most important customer, project, and business intelligence into a single, collaborative ecosystem. Team members can instantly search, filter, and view data from any web-enabled device—rather than digging through countless documents, spreadsheets, and network folders.

Integrated task management

Projects aren’t the only thing that require accountability tracking. Sometimes you just need proof that a sales rep actually followed up on a major deal as promised. CRMs that offer built-in and flexible task management capabilities provide more control to ensure everyone—including sales—stays on track. Accountability leads to productivity, and productivity leads to success.

Intuitive record-linking

To build new relationships that align with your corporate vision, you should carefully examine the existing relationships that have led to your current success. That’s hard to do on a whiteboard or in a spreadsheet—especially if you have hundreds or thousands of client relationships.

A CRM provides a flexible way to track and view all of your business relationships. Linking records together is especially useful to serve existing customers.

Your total investment

Any discussion about ROI must also consider the “investment” side of the equation. When properly implemented, a CRM should far outweigh the upfront and ongoing costs. Here’s a list of costs to consider:

• Subscription costs: monthly or annual fees paid to the vendor
• Consultant fees: data migration, system customization, etc.
• Training and onboarding: in-house opportunity costs to train and onboard users
• CRM administration: staffing required to manage data, users, CRM integration and customizations
• Other costs: additional user licenses, data integrations, and record overage charges

Obviously, these categories can vary based on your feature requirements, in-house technical capabilities, and vendor pricing. That’s why it’s important to do your homework and select a vendor that offers the features and support you need at a reasonable price.

A modern CRM like Insightly is affordable, easy to implement and easy to customize, so be sure to ask questions during your selection process and look for alternatives to legacy CRMs like Salesforce.

At the end of the day, calculating return on investment for your CRM is a multi-faceted endeavor. When measuring CRM ROI, consider all of the ways that your CRM impacts revenue, expense management, and productivity. In doing so, you will likely find that the benefits outweigh the cost.

Webinar Recap: improve ROI from your CRM

To delve deeper into CRM ROI and what it means today, Insightly CMO Chip House invited two real world experts to join him on a webinar. He welcomed Vanessa Hunt, CRM & Marketing Consultant and owner of Vanessa Hunt Consulting to be a panelist.  She has over twenty years’ experience in training, marketing and CRM implementation and she is dedicated to sourcing and implementing the best Marketing Automation, CRM, CPQ and ERP solutions for her clients. Chip also welcomed Andy Kodner, VP of Global RevOps at Bazaarvoice. Andy brings a foundation as a quota carrying seller, and spent 2 decades across the funnel in operational roles supporting businesses scale. The webinar was co-presented with online B2B growth community RevGenius.

After establishing that the CRM must be the single source of truth for your business, Chip opened the discussion so Andy and Vanessa could share seven ways to multiply your CRM ROI. (Note: find details on the full webinar here, watch on YouTube with the link below, or read on to skim the major takeaways.)

CRM ROI boost #1: Onboarding the right way

The onboarding process plays a pivotal role in the success of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementations. While there is conflicting data, the disputed CRM failure rate ranges from 18 percent to 69 percent, but CIO Magazine suggests that it’s around 33%. During this segment, Vanessa emphasizes the importance of aligning onboarding strategies with the proposed vision to enhance success rates. Effective onboarding proves to be the key to a successful CRM implementation, with the goal of achieving a faster go-live time translating into a shorter time to ROI. 

CRM ROI boost #2: Use automations to their fullest

Leveraging automations to their fullest potential is essential for optimizing the functionality of CRM systems. Traditional automation is built on if/then logic. These methods are augmented with Artificial Intelligence (AI), suggesting next actions and elevating CRM usage beyond mere data input. By integrating automations effectively, users can extract more value from their CRM, focusing on outcomes rather than just data input. Constructing automations that generate activity sets (or groups of actions that are triggered) as a deal progresses to a new stage streamlines processes, saving valuable time spent on repetitive task creation. For instance, upon the creation of an opportunity, automated tasks for email correspondence and demo calls can be generated automatically. Another illustrative example involves a closed-won deal triggering actions such as informing accounting or converting to a project, seamlessly eliminating the need for manual task creation and mitigating the risk of errors or oversights in the CRM workflow.

CRM ROI boost #3: Using lead assignment rules to avoid delays in responding 

Utilizing lead assignment rules in CRM systems is a strategic approach to eliminating delays in response time, a critical factor highlighted by Jay Baer’s research in his book The Time to Win. Jay’s data shows that customers are willing to pay up to 50% more if they can avoid waiting, with 53% expressing a willingness to spend more for the fastest brand. 

Notably, chatbot software Drift has research showing that lead response rates are slow. It’s a stark reality, as only 7% of companies respond within the first 5 minutes, while a concerning 55% take 5 or more days, or worse, do not respond at all. 

The takeaway: it’s imperative to stop making leads wait for manual processing. Efficient lead assignment via your CRM involves various strategies, such as geographic location, company size, round-robin allocation, and custom field criteria. Vanessa emphasizes the importance of automated follow-ups, coupled with ready-to-go templates and collateral, enhancing responsiveness. Meanwhile, Andy highlights the efficiency gained by avoiding time lost in manual information searches, thereby ensuring prompt and effective lead responses in CRM systems.

CRM ROI boost #4: Email + sales intelligence integration

Integrating email with your CRM is a game-changer in enhancing the efficiency of sales representatives, considering that email is a central tool for most reps. On average, sales representatives spend a substantial 21% of their day crafting emails, sending an average of 36 emails daily. Installing an email integration in your CRM system is crucial for seamless workflow. For example, the Insightly CRM Sidebar for Chrome enables a one-click process to create a contact in the CRM directly from an email in the inbox. This integration allows reps to work seamlessly in their inbox or the CRM without the need for constant switching, saving both time and the hassle of double-entering data. 

Furthering this point, Andy emphasizes the importance of reducing time lost due to having numerous applications open by strategically placing tools where the team already operates. Incorporating sales intelligence apps like Gong or Chorus into the CRM further streamlines operations, ensuring that valuable insights seamlessly feed into the CRM for a more cohesive and productive workflow.

CRM ROI boost #5: Relationship linking data 

Establishing relationship links within your CRM can help build personal relationships (and avoid social missteps!) Particularly for mid-sized businesses, aiming to understand the intricate connections between individuals in the context of deals can be a difference maker. Relationship linking functionality in your CRM not only enhances the value of the CRM for Account Executives (AEs) but also ensures a comprehensive understanding of relationships, thereby preventing embarrassing oversights.

 In platforms like Insightly, the utilization of pre-set ‘relationships’ configured by system administrators or the ability to define them in user-specific terms provides flexibility in capturing diverse connections. Vanessa furthers this point during the webinar when she highlights the strategic importance of linking contacts to referrers and other relevant individuals or companies, offering a more holistic view of the intricate web of relationships within the CRM. This feature not only boosts the effectiveness of CRM usage but also enhances the professional image of AEs by showcasing their connectedness and attention to detail.

CRM ROI boost #6:Drive critical business when you create and share dashboards

Unlocking the full potential of your CRM investment involves more than just acquiring data; it requires creating and sharing dashboards that provide real-time insights. If you find yourself extracting data and resorting to spreadsheet manipulations despite having a CRM, you are likely missing out on maximizing your ROI. Dashboards are not just a convenience but a necessity, offering up-to-the-minute executive visibility and saving valuable time that would otherwise be spent preparing for meetings. The collaborative nature of dashboards enhances productivity by providing comprehensive insights into various aspects of the business, ultimately reducing the time spent on searching for scattered data. In essence, embracing dashboards is a strategic move that not only drives critical business decisions but also ensures that your CRM is an active contributor to the overall efficiency and success of your operations.

CRM ROI boost #7: Integrate with a marketing automation platform

Integrating your CRM system with a marketing automation platform has quickly emerged as one of the most valuable integrations to establish for your sales and marketing team alignment. The synergy between the CRM and marketing automation is pivotal for overall business growth, as highlighted by a recent Ascend2/Insightly survey indicating that when Go-To-Market (GTM) teams are aligned, significant growth results. Astonishingly, 36% of companies showcasing alignment in technology across their GTM teams experienced a substantial increase in revenue, compared to a mere 14% for those with less alignment. The marketing automation-CRM integration fosters a seamless connection between sales and marketing, ensuring alignment and awareness. Sales teams gain insights into ongoing marketing campaigns, and marketing teams gain a live look into the deals in progress. The symbiotic relationship not only enhances collaboration but also reaps numerous other benefits for both departments, ultimately contributing to the overall success of the organization.

CRM ROI from the analyst perspective

Why does the opinion of an analyst firm matter? Analyst firms specialize in market research, industry trends, and technology evaluations, providing valuable insights that can inform strategic decision-making. These firms conduct in-depth analyses, assess competitive landscapes, and offer unbiased perspectives on various market dynamics. Engaging with analyst firms helps companies stay informed about emerging trends, benchmark their performance against industry standards, and gain a better understanding of customer needs. Additionally, the endorsement or recognition from reputable analyst firms can enhance a company’s credibility and visibility in the market, aiding in the building of trust with clients and investors. Overall, partnering with analyst firms enables companies to navigate complex business landscapes with more informed and data-driven strategies.

Insightly partnered with Go-To-Market Partners for a recent study of the ROI of CRM. The firm used data from actual CRM customers to determine how major CRMs perform.

Some high level takeaways that the firm found about Insightly CRM: 

• Is easier to use than other CRMs 
• Molds to your business  
• Is the best CRM for project delivery
• Doesn’t require admins or IT
• Makes the reporting process simple  
• AppConnect (Insightly’s no code/low code integration tool) easily connects CRM with your business tech stack Is the best CRM for project delivery  
• Enables better customer relationships & improves productivity

After the initial assessment, GTM Partners focused on two key factors: go live time and perceived price. The results were powerful:

Insightly outperformed HubSpot and Salesforce with a significantly shorter time to ROI – as little as half. This was fueled by a faster go live time and faster time to ROI both leading to increased ROI. Common CRM use cases were also listed in the report showing that Insightly shines in features like Sales Pipeline Management, Workflow Automation, Customization, and Project Management. That data showed that Insightly is a powerful alternative to Salesforce and to HubSpot.

Take control of CRM ROI

Insightly CRM was designed to help teams build lasting customer relationships through a modern, affordable platform. The ROI comes quickly via transparency, better decision-making, and a seamless end-to-end customer experience.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, watch a demo on demand, or request a personalized demo to see how it can help your company achieve its business goals. 

What is sales operations (SalesOps)?

Sales operations plays a crucial role in the success of any sales team. It encompasses various tasks and responsibilities aimed at optimizing the sales process and supporting sales representatives in achieving their targets. Some typical duties include:

• Analyzing sales data
• Synthesizing sales data for reports and presentations
• Developing and implementing sales strategies
• Implementing sales processes
• Selecting and implementing software platforms
• Evaluating effectiveness of software platforms 

The types of software platforms that may be managed by a sales operations professional include Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms, sales automation platforms, sales intelligence platforms, business database platforms, and more. 

Skills such as data analysis, forecasting, and platform management are vital to this role. A successful sales operations professional will have the skills to demonstrate the ability to effectively support the sales team and ultimately drive revenue growth. 

Sales operations FAQs

What’s the difference between sales operations and sales automation?

The term sales automation typically refers to a software platform that automates repetitive tasks for sales people. This could include sending emails, scheduling follow-ups, and creating tasks as leads move through a sales funnel. 

Sales operations may include operating sales automation platforms, but will also include data analysis, developing sales strategies, implementing sales processes, and operating/managing other sales applications.

What’s the difference between sales operations and sales?

Sales operations is a functional line under the umbrella of a sales team. Your sales operations professionals will be a part of the larger sales team. Rather than selling, however, they will serve in support of the sales team by managing platforms and applications, analyzing data, reviewing and implementing processes, and reporting to leadership. 

What’s the difference between sales operations and CRM admin?

Your sales operations team members will likely be your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform administrator, or work very closely with that person. Since CRM is crucial to a sales organization, it is one of the core applications used by the sales operations team. The sales operations team will regularly pull reports and dashboards from the CRM, so it is important that it is up to date and operating smoothly. 

How to learn sales operations

Sales operations education isn’t common in a traditional sense. For example, this is not typically a major at a university or a degree at a college. It is common for someone with a general degree in sales, marketing, business or even computer systems to specialize in sales operations once they start a sales career based on their skills. 

For instance, an entry level salesperson on a larger sales team who shows capabilities in application management, data synthesis, and project management may be encouraged to move into a sales operations role. 

Once individuals embark on a sales operations career path, companies often invest in sales operations certification or courses to ensure those people have the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively execute on the day to day responsibilities required in this role. These types of courses are offered by sales associations and software providers. 

A sales operations course is a valuable opportunity for individuals looking to enhance their skills and knowledge in the field of sales operations. The courses are designed to provide comprehensive training and education on topics such as sales process management, data synthesis and analysis, application management, and revenue tracking. By completing this type of course, participants will gain the necessary expertise to become a certified sales operations professional (CSOP) or a Sales Operations Certification Program (SOCP). This certifies that a given professional is equipped to manage the various tasks and responsibilities of a sales operations professional.  These courses are typically offered online, allowing participants to learn at their own pace. In addition to online courses, it can be beneficial for a marketing operations professional to join an online sales operations group and to attend sales operations conferences and events. 

Sales operations salary

The sales operations salary can vary depending on the specific role and location. An entry-level sales operations position typically starts at around $45,000 per year. For a sales operations analyst, the salary can range from $60,000 to $90,000 per year. A sales operations associate may earn around $45,000 to $60,000 annually. As you move up into higher-level positions such as a sales operations director or manager, the salary can range from $100,000 to $150,000 and above. Glassdoor reports that the average salary for sales operations is around $75,000 USD.

Sales operations team structure and roles

Sales operations titles encompass various roles within an organization’s sales operations team structure. These titles generally highlight the responsibilities and focus areas of the individuals holding them. Some examples of sales operations titles include sales operations manager, sales operations analyst, and sales operations coordinator. Having a well-defined sales operations team structure with carefully designated titles is crucial for optimizing sales operations and driving overall sales success.

Additionally, remote sales operations jobs offer the flexibility to work from anywhere. Salary information for sales operations jobs can vary depending on factors such as experience, location, and company size.

Sales Operations Specialist or Sales Operations Coordinator job description

A sales operations specialist will be responsible for providing analytical support to improve sales processes and drive revenue growth. The sales operations job description often includes tasks such as forecasting, sales data analysis, and optimizing sales systems. This person may be part of a team asked to assess and implement new sales technologies and platforms. They may also be tasked with implementing and managing new sales processes. Distributing leads and managing lead routing will be a recurring task as well.

Sales Operations Manager job description

A sales operations manager is responsible for overseeing and optimizing the sales process, ensuring efficient and effective sales operations. This job position involves a diverse range of responsibilities, including analyzing sales data, developing sales strategies, implementing sales tools and technologies, and managing sales performance metrics. This person may lead a team tasked with assessing and implementing new sales technologies and platforms. They may also be tasked with designing, implementing and assessing new sales processes. This person will likely oversee the distribution of leads (e.g. lead routing) to the team.

A sales operations manager is expected to possess a strong skill set, including excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, proficiency in sales tools and software, and a deep understanding of sales operations. They should also have the ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams and possess strong leadership and communication skills. 

Sales operations managers can find job opportunities in various industries. To excel in this role, it is important for a sales operations manager to continuously enhance their skills and stay updated with the latest industry trends.

Sales Operations Director job description

Just like the sales operations manager’s responsibilities, the director of sales ops will oversee tasks, analyze data and direct the implementation of sales technology solutions. At this higher level along the sales operations career path, however, the director will serve as a leader on the sales team, producing reports, seeking areas to gain efficiency, and managing the relationships among the sales leaders (e.g. SDR lead, AE lead, Sales enablement lead, etc.). This role reports to the Chief Sales Officer (CSO) and may be asked to present data and findings at the that will be presented at the company leadership level.                                  

The next step up on the sales operations career path might be a role in revenue operations or RevOps, where you have responsibility for sales operations as well as marketing operations. Read more about the revenue operations role. 

Sales operations qualifications

What makes a good candidate for a sales operations role? Who should get on a sales operations career path? Often people start in sales in a general, entry level role and move into sales ops when they find an affinity towards the technology that sales teams use. With this type of background, the sales ops professional understands the concepts and jargon common in the industry. Another indication that someone might be a good fit for sales ops involves having an analytical mind. A lot of sales operations is the practice of data analysis. For example, you will be asked, “What are the conversion rates on lead type?” and “How long will it take to show ROI on this platform” A good sales operations professional will be tuned in to data and being able to report on it are vital skills. Lastly, an intense level of attention to detail is required. The click of a button in sales operations can send thousands of leads to the sales team and create a bunch of excellent sales opportunities or completely clutter every rep’s CRM view. As such, it is vital that this person understands the impact their actions have.

Start on your sales operations career path

A CRM can easily be under the direct supervision of a sales operations professional, so the Insightly team is intent upon making the sales ops team as successful as possible with excellent support and service teams. Insightly’s modern, scalable CRM  is a sales operations manager’s dream.  Want to learn more? Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, watch a demo on demand at your convenience or request a personalized demo today.

Every company needs customers to survive—whether you sell software to Fortune 500 companies, accounting services to local dental offices, or meal plan subscriptions to health-conscious consumers. 

That’s why customer retention is such a priority for today’s business leaders. But earning your customers’ long-term loyalty is no small task, especially when almost every market is crowded with competitors.  

That said, conventional wisdom tells us that the cost of acquiring new customers is four to five times higher than retaining existing customers. So customer churn is a problem you literally can’t afford to ignore. 

What is customer churn and why does it matter?

Simply put, “churn” is the metric that measures customer attrition—whether they cancel their subscription, leave your company for a competitor, or simply stop using your product. Customer churn rate is a valuable metric for assessing company growth, and it’s relatively easy to calculate. 

# of customers at the start of the time frame — # of customers at the end of the time frame

——————————

# of customers at the start of the time frame

For example, if you start the year with 1,000 customers and you close the year with 850, your churn rate is 15%. You can measure churn rate annually, quarterly, or even monthly, depending on your reporting needs.

Of course, some attrition is inevitable in any business. But when customers are leaving your company at a high rate, there may be significant negative consequences, including:

• Short- and long-term revenue loss
• Damage to company reputation
• High cost of acquisition efforts to replace lost business (marketing, advertising, sales, etc.)
• Decline in employee morale and productivity

Fortunately, there are plenty of steps you can take to improve customer satisfaction, increase retention rates, and ultimately reduce churn rate. But first, you need to understand why customers leave. 

Following are five of the most common causes of customer churn—along with our recommendations for making sure customers want to stay with you for the long term. 

Top 5 reasons why customers churn

1. You’re attracting the wrong customers in the first place

It’s surprising how often customers buy a product or service without fully understanding it. After the purchase, they may quickly realize that it doesn’t actually meet their needs—and that’s when “buyer’s remorse” sets in. When a customer regrets making a purchase, it probably wasn’t a great fit for their needs—and they’ll likely correct that mistake as quickly as possible, either by returning the product, canceling their subscription, or leaving you for a competitor. 

How to avoid attracting the wrong customers:

• Ask the right questions. Preventing fit-related churn requires a deep understanding of your customers’ needs. Make sure you’re collecting enough customer preference information in the early stages of the sales cycle. Sometimes that’s as simple as asking, “What is your biggest pain point?” or “What problems are you trying to solve?”
• Be clear about your value proposition. Your promotional materials need to be enticing, but they should also clearly explain what your product or service actually does. Setting realistic expectations will help to ensure buyers are satisfied with their purchase.
• Make sure your product/offer aligns with their needs. It’s easy to lose sight of what the customer wants when you’re trying to make a sale. But closing the deal won’t help your bottom line (at least, not for long) if you end up with an unhappy customer. 

2. Your product or service doesn’t meet their expectations

Customers choose your company because they believe you can help them achieve a desired outcome or solve a specific problem. If your product doesn’t provide measurable progress toward success (and quickly!) they’re likely to become frustrated and start looking elsewhere. But in many cases, the product isn’t really the source of their problem—it’s your onboarding process. 

How to ensure better customer outcomes:

• Uplevel your onboarding. Customer activation is just as important as customer acquisition. A well-crafted welcome email (or email series) can help new customers feel appreciated, provide important information to get them up to speed quickly, and ensure they know where to go for assistance.
• Set them up for success. New customers often need help learning how to use your product and its key features. Self-serve resources like blog posts, demos, and tutorials can help customers understand your product better and increase stickiness. 
• Make help available. There will inevitably be questions your onboarding doesn’t address, so customer support is a must. Make sure your contact information is prominently displayed in all new customer communications. 

3. You’re delivering a poor (or inconsistent) customer experience 

In many markets, the top products or services are quite similar, so customer experience can be a key differentiator. But if your customers have trouble getting the help they need—or worse yet, if they’re treated poorly when they reach out—they won’t hesitate to start looking for another provider. 

How to improve your customer experience:

• Focus on live support. When problems arise, customers don’t want to wade through a library of articles or navigate a confusing menu of automated options. They want to talk to someone who can help. A dedicated customer service team can set your brand apart and improve retention. 

• Make customer service a priority. People remember how they’re treated. That’s why customers will often stick with a brand that provides outstanding service, even if they can find a better price elsewhere. 
• Deliver an exceptional experience, every time. Your customer service can’t be great one day and subpar the next. Inconsistency erodes confidence, so make sure you’re providing a consistent and predictable experience. This may require additional training for your support staff, as well as access to a single, shared customer data set.

4. They believe a competitor’s offering is better (or cheaper)

It’s only natural that customers want the best product or service for their needs, at the best price. If they feel one of your competitors can provide a better option, they will be tempted to switch. To avoid losing business to the competition, you need to know what you’re up against, highlight your strengths, and find the right pricing strategy.

How to head off competitive threats:

• Keep an eye on the competition. Know your top competitors and be proactive about monitoring them. Pay attention to changes in their product features, pricing, and marketing strategies so you can make adjustments as needed. And be sure your team knows how to position your company against key competitors.
• Offer timely up-sells and cross-sells. Highlighting new products and premium features is a great way to demonstrate value—and it shows you’re thinking about what your customer wants. Consider adding “related product” recommendations to various touch points, including the checkout screen, order confirmation, shipping notice, and follow-up emails.
• Optimize your pricing. Price-sensitive customers are part of today’s reality, but that doesn’t mean you have to slash your prices—or lose business to a cheaper competitor. A smart pricing strategy can help to minimize price-related churn by taking into account both the value you’re providing to customers and their willingness to pay. 

5. They don’t feel valued

Loyalty is a tricky subject, but customers are more likely to leave a company if they feel their business is not valued. To avoid this, you need to recognize your long-term customers and show you appreciate their loyalty, using tangible or intangible benefits that enhance their satisfaction.

How to make customers feel appreciated:

• Invest in loyalty or incentive programs. Offering a loyalty discount or bonus program for repeat buyers can help to strengthen a long-term relationship. Even a simple “thank you” or an anniversary email can go a long way. Depending on how they’re structured, loyalty programs can also be a valuable source of behavioral and purchase data.
• Learn from your best customers. Ask for feedback from long-term customers. Find out about their experience; ask how they use your products; learn why they choose to stay with your company. Then apply your learnings to improve the customer experience for others or shape future product enhancements. 

Boost customer satisfaction—and loyalty—with a customer-centric solution

In a marketplace crowded with competing solutions, customer expectations are higher than ever before. And if customers feel your company isn’t meeting their needs, they won’t hesitate to move on. At the end of the day, it’s simply not possible to understand what each customer wants—and deliver it—unless you have complete, accurate customer data. From basic contact information and purchase data to deeper insights like customer behaviors, attitudes, and preferences, the right CRM solution puts that data at your fingertips so you can delight every customer, every time.

Insightly CRM was designed to help teams build lasting customer relationships through a simple, scalable platform. Insightly’s unified solution aligns cross-functional teams like sales, marketing, and customer service on a single, shared data platform with a single customer view. The result? Unprecedented transparency, better decision-making, and a seamless end-to-end customer experience.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, watch a demo on demand, or request a personalized demo to see how it can help your company achieve its business goals.