CRMs enable you to track sales from beginning to end. Frequently, however, companies do not use their CRM systems to their full potential, or they do not have a proper CRM strategy in place.

It doesn’t matter if you recently invested in a CRM or you’ve had it for a while, a CRM is most effective when used strategically at every stage of the sales process.

Why are sales funnels so important?

Sales funnels are vital to any online business. This is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy, since it represents the customer journey – what turns a qualified lead into a customer. A sales funnel is the most important tool for the sales manager.

In a sales funnel, there are many stages, and each stage is vital for the funnel to work. When you take analytics into account, you’ll find that you can always improve the stages of your sales funnel. Based on conversion rates from your funnel, you can calculate how many prospects you need to find to reach your sales goals.

The best way to make the most of it and enhance your customer journey is to rely on a reliable CRM platform.

In a CRM funnel, there are four stages, which are similar to the stages in a sales funnel.

i. Awareness= Prospecting

Social media platforms are likely used to generate customer relationships. CRM social media integrations can be used to track customer interactions.

Leads can be generated from every customer interaction (live chat, email marketing, cold calls, etc.). Customers’ questions, complaints, and feedback can also be used to find out what’s important to them. This information can be fed into the CRM software, and your sales team can use this data to identify upsell opportunity or ask for referrals.

A CRM organizes prospects so they can be reviewed and contacted easily. Using CRM, prospects can be segmented into categories that fit their characteristics (e.g., region, industry, role, profitability). In this way, you can create marketing campaigns and custom communications for specific customer segments.

ii. Interest= Qualifying leads

Determine which leads are most likely to become customers before you spend time marketing to them. Lead scoring is the process of ranking leads based on their potential value and likelihood of becoming potential customer.

Lead scoring is dependent on your business goals. Not all leads will qualify after scoring. Determine why they were not qualified using your CRM.

Track interactions with leads in the CRM. Assess how often a lead has contacted someone at your company, their reasons for making contact, and what questions or concerns they raised. The CRM can be integrated with your email account so that you can track those interactions and filter key metrics (e.g., email opens and replies). Monitoring lead communications will also help you identify useful information, such as the key decision-makers in a company, the prospect’s budget, and the value of your product or service.

iii. Decision= Quoting prospects

The CRM contains a lot of information about the customers and prospects who have reached this point. To uncover useful insights and personalize your customer experience, review your CRM data (such as the customer profile and recordings of your calls with them) before making an offer or discussing pricing.

By setting reminders for specific dates and times, CRM software will improve your efficiency. Follow-up tasks and reminders can be set for specific leads, and tasks can be assigned to leads or contacts. Check off completed tasks, set quotes deadlines, and adjust them if prospects do not respond by a given date.

Publish sales activity reports to monitor quotes sent out, sales opportunities missed, calls and emails made, appointments made and concluded, notes taken, appointments with prospects, and more. Sort activities by groups, review email and call outcomes, and figure out which sales reps are (or are not) moving deals forward.

iv. Action= Closing the deal

The CRM sales forecasting report allows you to track the progress of deals in your sales pipeline. Assess each deal’s estimated close date and probability of closing. When you understand why a deal is unlikely to close, you can identify potential solutions to help it close.

Evaluate how effective the sales funnel and the CRM process is. Determine where deals get stuck or canceled. Analyze the stage duration of deals using the CRM’s funnel analysis feature. Using your historic data on successful and failed deals, calculate the chances of closing a deal. Create reports to identify sales reps whose close rates are low.

Using a sales funnel analysis report, for instance, you can compare the number of closed deals with the number of deals you expected to close. As a result, you can improve your results when closing deals in the future.

Once a deal has been won or lost, use CRM metrics to uncover insights into your results (e.g., win rate, average sales cycle, lead conversion rate). Using this method, you will be able to determine which activities performed well and which ones failed.

How Zoho CRM works in sales funnel?

A sales funnel illustrates  the various sales stages that leads go through before becoming customers. Having knowledge about your sales funnel is an asset that allows you to plan your sales strategy.

With Zoho CRM software, you can track the progress of your customers through the sales funnel, improving the customer experience from prospect to buyer.

• Zoho CRM funnels track leads and helps in converting leads into customers.
• Zoho CRM’s sales funnel help sales reps stay on top of client needs and behavior by automating the closing of a sale.
• It is possible to improve efficiency and drive more sales by automating sales at each stage of the CRM funnel.
• Lead data that is contextualized helps sales and marketing teams convert leads to customers.
• This blog posts is for business owner interested in improving their sales funnel with Zoho CRM software.

Tips for improving sales funnel using Zoho CRM

Companies use the sales funnel process to identify the stage of the customer journey a prospect is in and what actions can move them forward.

96% of visitors to your website are not ready to make a purchase immediately. 

This does not mean that they will never convert. This requires effective nurturing. A well-defined sales process can help you deliver the right message to your audience at the right time.

Visual representation of your sales funnel can help you understand how prospects move through it. By knowing how many leads progress from one stage to the next, you can allocate your time and resources effectively.

1. Manage Your Leads Effectively

There is no such thing as a perfect sales funnel. It is important to make adjustments to sales funnels over time, which is one of the reasons. What’s working right now might not work in two or three months.

When confronted with various challenges, your funnel becomes an exercise in flexibility and agility. This means that you must constantly work to give your sales team more opportunities to increase conversions.

However, how can Zoho CRM software benefit your business and help you make better decisions?

Lead management is one of its features. Furthermore, you can prioritize leads that is relevant to your business and industry.

Imagine being able to find and target leads with the highest probability of buying from you. This means going after your hottest prospects, which is a good thing to do. When you target hot prospects, you maximize your resources and get the best return. In a competitive market, it’s even more important.

Effective lead management can also free up your time to work on other stages and elements of your funnel.

2. Monitor Lead Interactions

Each time you interact with a lead, you’re entering into discovery conversations. That means your leads are trying to figure you out, and you are trying to figure them out.

In order to interact with your leads effectively, what are the things you need to consider?

How do you find out if the prospect has the budget to work with you or make a purchase? Is there a decision-maker on the other side that you are trying to identify?

How do you determine the value you can provide your prospects based on your product/service and its benefits?

These are common topics to discuss whether you are cold calling or sending an email. These questions must be answered.

The question is, how do you incorporate them into your funnel?

The answers to lead qualification questions need to be collected and cataloged. This can be done through Zoho CRM system. Connecting your email account with your CRM can be as simple as allowing constant access to conversations.

If you can’t qualify specific leads, analyze the data to improve the process.

Perhaps your scoring isn’t correct or you aren’t using the best lead sources. In either case, CRM can be used to collect the necessary data to optimize lead interactions, strengthening your sales funnel.

3. Unlock Upselling or cross-sell Opportunities

Many of the fastest growing businesses rely on upsells for a significant portion of their revenue. Upselling should be a priority in an effort to achieve and sustain accelerated growth.

What is the biggest challenge with upselling?

If you don’t have the right product or service, you can’t do it. However, getting enough customer data is more important.

Zoho Customer relationship management software tracks customers’ history and purchases. Remember that this information is also relevant to your niche and business. Through CRM software, sales representatives are able to predict the most likely purchases per customer.

Zoho CRM helps bridge the gap as well as find new upselling opportunities. Identifying recent sales can help you follow up and offer upsells.

Consider all the suggestions you get when making a purchase or when filling up a cart – accessories, warranties, high-end products in the same category, etc.

This extra attention to detail makes customers feel like you’re looking out for them. Essentially, you anticipate their needs in order to save them some time and money.

Upselling can have a significant impact on your bottom line quickly. Your goal as a sales professional is to fill your business with loyal customers.

4. Automate Mundane Tasks

Did you ever think that customers could experience a long journey in a sales funnel? It may be necessary for you to set aside plenty of time to work on things, depending on your space or target audience.

A sales funnel requires a great deal of mundane tasks. Imagine the effort involved in manually entering data. If you want to avoid wasting time and have more energy to focus on more important things, try automating more of the funnel. By automating routine tasks earlier in the funnel, it can help fuel your sales efforts.

As an example, here is one.

Imagine having to create new tasks every time you add a new contact to your CRM. Zoho CRM can automate all of those administrative tasks.

The adoption of Zoho CRM can open up new opportunities for small businesses – having a small team may not stand in the way of identifying opportunities, completing tasks, or managing contracts.

Additionally, certain logistical tasks are mundane in certain industries. The good news is that Zoho CRM automation lets you focus on nurturing relationships with prospects by taking some of the burden off your shoulders.

5. Understanding and Tracking Stages

Depending on your industry, your sales funnel may need to follow a specific blueprint.

It’s possible that you don’t know where your prospects are in the funnel if you haven’t built sales funnels before. It is fortunate that Zoho CRM software can provide you with the data you need to identify every stage in the process and what you need to do to improve results.

That prospect may lose interest and pick one of your competitors if you don’t act fast enough. Conversely, moving too quickly can alienate prospective customers.

In order to build an effective sales funnel, CRM software is crucial. A sales rep can use this data to determine where they are in the buying process and when to act.

6. Real-Time Performance Monitoring

Due to the fact that you can’t automate your entire sales funnel, certain roles within your business will have to handle particular tasks. The efficiency of your sales funnel is also impacted by your team. That’s why you want them to perform at their best.

A Zoho CRM system ensures that you remain in touch with your team.

Using a real-time dashboard, you can track everyone’s progress. View your team’s various tactics for converting leads. There are some that work admirably, while others don’t, and are causing your sales pipeline to slow down.

As you identify issues, you can devise solutions and quickly implement them to get back on track with your funnel and hit your sales target.

Key takeaway

With Zoho CRM, you can manage your sales funnel, as well as so much more for your company. The best way to grow your bottom line is to remove as much manual work as possible from customer relations, sales, and retention. As a result, you have a greater chance of converting qualified leads into deals or business opportunities.

Our team can provide a demo to find out what Zoho CRM software can do for your business or organization and confirm which options work best for you. Contact us for more information.