Many owners & managers are spending even more time focusing their organisations on customers - investing time, money, and resources into customer engagement activities. How, then, do you then translate these gains into sales?

Here are three simple & effective ways you can increase sales in your business.

1. Rethink sales leads

Quality sales leads aren't just opportunities to make a sale:  They represent a relationship—and relationships are far more valuable for sustainable growth: Customer-centric businesses manage their leads like contacts - for life, not just a pipeline statistic. This recognition of value should translate to the customer as a better and more fulfilling experience. Even more importantly, it frames today's sales opportunity as an investment in tomorrow’s success.

2. Empower your sales people with information

All time is precious - yours & your customer's. Make sure you aren’t wasting any by searching for contact information or order history during conversations. Customers will gladly take their business to your more efficient competitors if you are seen to be disorganised & a time waster. Having access to accurate customer information allows both sides to benefit from an improved customer relationship and to focus, faster, on outcomes - whether that’s providing immediate answers or resolving complex issues with supportive data. And that makes customers more likely to bring their business back to you.

3. Use CRM to manage sales activities

While priorities may change as a business grows, one remains constant: profitable growth. To you, that may mean one or many different things: Improving sales initiatives, boosting marketing or managing prospect information. Solutions like ours, Sage CRM, can collect valuable data from customer interactions and make them visible and accessible right across the company. With greater collaboration - for managers to sales, marketing, and customer service functions —business can focus on what customers need & translate that information into smarter, faster decisions for growth.

• Leads can become stagnant—contacts can last forever
• Leads are short-term in focus—contacts require a long-term view
• Leads require a campaign—contacts require a conversation

A customer-centric business

A customer-centric business is driven by information—the better your information, the easier it is to focus it into strategies that improve conversations. Deploying CRM solutions are the real key to success here: not only does CRM increase visibility and company-wide access to information, it also enables teams to use analytics, better target campaign activities and personalise conversations. Integrating CRM with your accountancy and business management software maximises this access by providing one centralised view of your business. 

[based on an article originally penned by Matt Groom]