What is B2B CRM?
B2B CRM stands for business-to-business customer relationship management. B2B CRM system provides a strategic approach to meet your customer needs and build trust along the way. This will help you close more deals with lower marketing costs. These systems offer contact management, lead management, opportunities and pipeline management, tasks tracking, and customer support modules. The right B2B CRM can help you grow your business profitably and drastically improve client retention.
Why is B2B different from B2C?
B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) are two different types of business models. In B2B, a business sells products and services to other businesses. While in B2C, a business sells its products or services directly to end consumers. Some of the key differences are:
• B2B sales involve longer sales cycles when compared to B2C sales.
• B2B transactions involve many decision-makers unlike B2C transactions
• B2B sales are ongoing and long-term, while B2C sales are transactional and short-term.
• Unlike in the case of B2C, B2B strategies go beyond just sales transactions and are focused on building trust and long-term partnerships.
Therefore, B2B and B2C companies need to follow different approaches for customer relationship building.
Why is CRM required for B2B Business?
B2B businesses are unique and complex. They need a CRM system to automate and transform their end-to-end client operations. These include operations across sales, lead management, order management, quotation management, service operations, customer support, account receivables, customer success, workflows, etc.
CRM is very helpful in analysing organization-wide efforts and monitoring combined progress across departments. This helps in revising strategy from time to time and improving one-on-one customer interactions.
Specialized B2B CRM systems can be an important tool to nurture business relationships which can in turn help B2B businesses grow and succeed in the marketplace.
B2B Relationships & Life Time Value of a Customer
The lifetime value of a customer (LTV) is a measure of the total value that a customer can bring over the course of their relationship with the company. It is an important metric for assessing the potential value of a relationship with a customer.
Calculating LTV can involve multiple factors like the value of the initial sale, the potential for repeat business, the potential of upselling and cross-selling, and the potential for referrals. Some businesses may also consider the cost of acquiring the customer and the cost of servicing their account in their calculation of LTV. LTV can help prioritize efforts in business development and customer relationship management.
It is advisable for companies to segment their prospects and clients based on the LTV. They can then have a differentiated focus on these segments for better results.
How will B2B CRM capabilities help you
B2B CRM (customer relationship management) systems provide a plethora of features and capabilities to help businesses grow profitably through long-term client relationships. Some of the ways that B2B CRM can help in building long-term client relationships include –
Account and Contact Management
In a B2B CRM system, users can manage and organize client information, contact information of all stakeholders, communication history, details about them and their roles, and notes on past interactions. By doing this, businesses can remain organized and easily access the information they need to maintain and strengthen client relationships.
Opportunity & Pipeline Management
B2B CRM will help your sales teams to manage all the details about the deals and opportunities in one place. Visibility into their sales funnel or sales pipeline will help them stay focused on their key objectives and deal progress.
A good B2B sales CRM will help them manage deal values, closure dates, closure probability, sales stages, etc., accurately in one structured place for further action. This helps in accelerating sales velocity with the ability to measure and improve critical sales KPIs like average deal value, sales cycle, win rate etc. Expected opportunities from existing customers, can be easily converted into sale in a proactive way when you have strong customer relationships.
Activity & Task Management
Efficiency in managing all tasks and activities go a long way in improving your team’s efficiency and productivity.
Aspects like notifications, reminders for follow-ups, activity assignments and tracking are very essential to improve a company’s ability to execute their sales strategies. When internal processes are streamlined, customers get a better experience at every touchpoint. They feel happier about your company and recommend it more.
Account Receivables (AR) Management
Account Receivables management is an important capability required to help you manage timely collections and daily sales outstanding.
You can automate the schedule of payment cycles as per the payment terms agreed with customers. Your finance team can then assign collection activities to owners and drive accountability for collections. This leads to easier cash flow and reduced outstanding.
Workflows for Team Collaboration
B2B CRMs also provides a workflow framework to help teams collaborate better. It can be effectively used for managing processes like sales order fulfilment that would require collaboration between multiple departments viz. sales, finance, logistics, finance etc. Streamlining all processes leads to timely execution which builds trust and confidence. This builds customer loyalty towards your company and brand.
Automate Service Operations
B2B CRMs go beyond just pre-sales operations and can help you to automate your post-sales service operations as well. It requires a lot of coordination for services and breakdown operations to provide timely service. Providing prompt services can lead to better customer relationships.
They offer capabilities like –
• Installed-Base Management to maintain details about your installations, equipment, service expectations etc.
• Service Visit Scheduling & Assignment to make sure your service teams attend to client service requests on time.
• Service Activity Management & Reporting to automate tasks around daily activity reporting and visit closure reports.
• Configurable Forms & Service Templates to make it easy for reps to capture all information as per required formats
Customer Success
Customer success capability will help you measure and improve customer satisfaction levels periodically. This lets you to proactively make the right decisions to build long-lasting relationships. You can measure end customer rating and learn from their feedback This also helps in identifying newer opportunities.
Mobile App
A mobile app will allow your teams to manage day-to-day activities, customer follow-ups, and reminders effortlessly. This in turn provides better visibility for superior execution.
Mobile CRM also offers additional capabilities like easy attendance management, visit tracking, business-card scanning, expense management, offline support, etc. This article details the benefits of having a mobile CRM strategy.
B2B CRMs like HappSales also provide an intelligent assistant along with their mobile CRM. The voice-enabled personal assistant makes the app super-easy for your reps to use the CRM. This in turn helps you improve your CRM usage and adoption. You can read about this more here.
Original Source: How To Build Long-term B2B Relationships Using B2B CRM
