How sales teams benefit from a CRM strategy + examples

What is a CRM strategy?

CRM stands for “customer relationship management.” Most business leaders know about CRM software that helps them connect with customers.

A CRM strategy, however, is more like a plan for better managing customer relationships. Many teams develop a CRM strategy when they start using the software.

You don't have to have a sales CRM to adopt a strategy, though. A strategy is just a plan for improving how your team members connect with your customers.

CRM strategy examples

There are quite a few different ways to improve customer relationships. As a result, there are different CRM strategy examples you can adopt as your own to generate the results you’re looking to see.

The best CRM strategy examples we've seen use a multi-pronged approach. That is, you’re not going to focus on automation and automation alone. It might be one part of your overall CRM strategy, but you’ll likely have several pillars.

Common CRM strategy examples include:

• Personalized communication and targeted marketing
• Team integrations to improve customer experience
• Effective use of data and technology
• High-value content publishing
• Employee empowerment

You can choose one or many of these CRM strategy examples to create a unique strategy that suits your news publishing business.

For example, employee empowerment may go hand-in-hand with team integration. The focus here is on allowing your team members more leeway in how they perform their duties. This improves end-to-end service for your customers. It also boosts employee morale. Your team members feel more empowered to go the extra mile for any given customer.

Many of the common CRM strategies listed here overlap with each other. For example, publishing high-value content might overlap with personalized communication. Better use of data analytics and automation can inform these strategies as well.

A CRM strategy gives your sales team the tools to sell

Sales enablement is big business these days. It’s not surprising, given that 57 percent of sales reps miss their quotas in any given year (MarTechAlliance). Business leaders across the board are asking, “What can we do to help?”

One big part of sales enablement is ensuring your sales teams have the tools they need to succeed. This could mean making sure they have the right content to share with a customer at any point in their buying journey.

It might also mean adopting technology to help reps keep track of when they were last in touch with a customer. Automation tools can help: Your customers get the emails and the content they need at the right time, and your sales reps free up time.

Truly enabling your sales team goes beyond just technological tools though. Better team integration means putting other people at the sales team’s disposal. The sales team can field questions or get help from experts in other departments when they need it.

Finally, empowerment is a powerful tool for sales teams. Allowing them to play the role of customer service or use marketing’s content can help them meet all the customer’s needs.

Getting the insights your team needs to sell the smart way

Another benefit of a CRM strategy and examples is the focus on data. Data-driven selling is the new reality for most media teams in the midst of digital transformation.

Why are data-backed insights so important for sales teams today? First, it helps them identify customer types. Buyer personas can tell your reps a lot about how best to approach a local business and which ads would best suit them, whether in print or online.

Data can then help your reps identify prospects and their needs as well. Tracking online customer behavior and interactions provides more information about the customer. Using sales intelligence tools in your sales process, for example, can help you identify a local business’s online marketing gaps and recommend the products and servies that are most likely to help them succeed.

Data can also showcase ways to improve the selling process. The strategy can help you identify different ways to quantify sales rep success. From there, you can create a selling process that helps keep reps on track toward digital sales.

Customized analytics and reporting dashboards help your team filter out the noise too. They get the insights they want and track the metrics that matter most to them.

Deeper understanding of your local business customers

A CRM strategy gives sales reps more insight into individual customers. That knowledge lets them better support the customer at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

The buyer’s journey is more complicated than ever. The average B2B deal involves between 6 to 10 decision makers (Forbes). There are many stages, and people can move back and forth between stages. They might have researched a service before they talk to your reps, but they then decide to do some more digging.

With deeper understanding, your media sales team can support them every step of the way. The team makes smarter, more insightful decisions about when to follow up and what information to share. Data even makes it easier to select the right deals and offers, whether that’s a Google search text ad, an eblast placement, or a print placement.

This also contributes to more personalization, which is something today’s customers crave. They want digital consultants who offer handpicked ad placements and digital marketing services based on their needs.

With the deeper understanding a CRM strategy brings, your reps can offer what customers really need from their local business advertising. From there, it's easier for them to close the deal.

Boosting sales, retention, and satisfaction

From all this, you can guess that one of the major benefits a good CRM strategy has is the ability to boost sales.

A CRM strategy can increase customer retention and satisfaction, which means people keep coming back. Since they’re happy, they also tell other people, who can become leads and customers.

A CRM strategy also gives your team members the insights they need to qualify leads and support them, while also prioritizing tasks. Finally, it can give them access to the tools they need to close more deals.

That translates to more deals for your reps—and more sales for your media company.

Support local business customers with a CRM strategy

The end goal of customer relationship management is to create better relationships with customers. As part of your CRM strategy, data-backed analytics and reporting, automation, personalization, and high-value content can help your media sales team strive to build those better relationships.

No matter which of the CRM strategy examples you choose, your sales teams will be in a better position to help customers at every stage of the buying journey. They’ll get the support they need to do their jobs more successfully.

With all that in mind, it’s easy to see why adopting a CRM strategy makes sense for your sales team, your customers, and your business.