You are a sales representative and you have thousands of
lines of customer files in your Excel workbook, and / or in your email box and
/ or on your laptop. This precious contact file corresponds to customers that
you sometimes had trouble convincing but faced with your sales talents, your
sales techniques , your unadorned argument, your reminders and your
perseverance, you have succeeded in transforming these prospects into
customers. and thus obtain all the information you need to feed your database .
A relationship is then established between you. And as one
customer calls out to another (word of mouth is a formidable lever when
customer satisfaction and experience are there), and the number of information
and contacts increases, your Excel workbook begins to show. signs of weakness
and you waste precious time, not only for you but also for those who wish to
exploit it (sales assistant, marketing, ADV, customer support etc.)!
Does this scenario remind you of a daily life that you no
longer want to live in 2021? Rest assured, we are going to give you some
information that may help you manage your client portfolio, while adopting 2.0
codes.
Indeed, the distance selling becomes unavoidable for the
year 2021 , at a time when the health crisis continues. This is a major change
for many companies, but one that is essential to sustaining the activity this
year. According to CRM publisher Hubspot: 64% of sales managers with a distance
selling strategy (and the tools that go with it to manage your portfolio) have
met or exceeded their revenue goals in 2020.
The client portfolio: definition
Before getting to the hearts of the matter, let's review
together what a client portfolio is: it is a document or file generally
corresponding to a set of clients managed by the sales representative, the team
of which he is a part, or sometimes , by the Society. This file contains all
the information concerning the customer, namely his contact details (more or
less up to date), his projects, challenges and objectives and all kinds of
information concerning him: history of visits, emails sent, volume of
transactions carried out, turnover etc.
Rich data, especially if it is used before and after sales
for loyalty, upsell (upmarket) and crossell (cross-selling).
Managing your client portfolio involves assimilating several
important information in order to set up personalized actions and develop a
more precise , targeted, increasingly personalized offer that directly meets
the expectations of each client.
In addition, setting up a segmentation of the customer
portfolio is essential to categorize your customers since they do not
necessarily have the same needs, the same challenges or the same objectives.
Whether you are a small, medium or large company, managing
your client portfolio is essential and even more so in the digital age with the
rise and development of efficient tools such as CRM, which make your daily task
easier. .
Why is daily and rigorous management essential?
Know that it is easier to convince an already acquired
customer to buy back, than to convince a new one, which is why your customer
portfolio is a gold mine to be exploited to establish effective marketing and
sales strategies , and to put set up ad hoc action plans.
In addition, the better you will manage your customers, the
more you will be able to segment them and offer them personalized services.
Today we are talking about account based marketing.
A good knowledge of your customer base is not always easy,
however, because the more it expands, the more information accumulates and
leads to errors.
The management of your customer portfolio is then strongly
impacted, which could result in the loss of the customer. In order not to
achieve such a result , CRM tools, task automation and recording your data in
real time are no longer reserved for large groups.
Manage your customer portfolio with digital tools
Let's be honest, digging through the folders or the many
(too many) Excel files that are scattered here and there is not very
productive. This time (and money) that you waste in your research is time that
you do not spend doing tasks with higher added value and in the first place:
selling, being close to your customers….
This is why to manage your customer portfolio, it is
essential to set up efficient, secure, reliable, simple and powerful tools.
3.1 CRM
Are you wondering what could help you optimize the quality
of the customer relationship, build loyalty and maximize turnover (Recency,
Frequency, Amount and upsell / upscaling + cross-selling / cross-selling)? Do
not search anymore ! The CRM (Customer Relationship Management or CRM tool for
Customer Relationship Management) is to work for you.
If accountants have their management software, HR their HRIS
software, production their ERP, does it make sense that your salespeople and
marketers are still working without tools in 2021?
With a CRM (used, but that's another story), all of your
employees can centralize all customer information in real time and obtain
optimal commercial follow-up.
A CRM allows you to manage all the multi-channel
interactions (email, telephone, website, etc.) of your customer portfolio and
to have a view of the activity of sales representatives in real time.
In addition, it also allows you to segment your customers
and follow prospects in their purchase journey and in their life cycle,
including after-sales service. This tool will also allow you to collect and
store a volume of important information so that the objectives set with the
sales and marketing teams are achieved.
3.2. The CRM connected to your mailbox
Did you know that a salesperson spends most of their time
(70%) on administrative tasks?
Often CRM solutions and messaging tools are used separately,
which does not allow the salesperson to be efficient in managing his time and
tasks.
However, there are tools directly integrated into mailboxes
and offering full functionality. These solutions allow:
• automatically
save data
• to make
personalized and automated emails (models, sequences, etc.)
• follow
leads in their pipeline
• to
synchronize their agenda
• to allow
prospects and customer to schedule appointments on free market niches , which
increases productivity
Real-time task monitoring will allow users to organize
themselves in the management of priorities and their time. Thanks to a solution
directly integrated into the mailbox, it is possible to consult the tasks with
their different statuses , to assign them to other people in the company, to
manage the commercial offers and to plan the next actions , and all this in the
same tool. With of course personalized and automated reports.
The ability to have a complete solution at hand on the salesperson's
smartphone or tablet is an essential mobility solution. Having a solution at
hand will prove to be a major asset in the management of their customer
relationship (no loss of information between the appointment and the meeting
report, planning the next live meeting ... ).
A CRM like HubSpot (voted best CRM on the market with a
powerful free version) and its Hubspot Sales module can be connected to Gmail
and Outlook. A visualization of the contact files of the interlocutors while
being on your mailbox is proposed by this tool.
In addition, an additional feature (starter or pro version)
allows you to control all email openings, clicks, document visualizations
(quotes, T & Cs, etc.) and downloads. Hubspot also offers to create
standard email templates, which can be linked to the activity carried out by
the client or prospect on the company's website, allowing the salesperson to
offer targeted and personalized communication.
3.3. Sales automation: the sales automation tool
After marketing
automation which automates marketing tasks and actions, here is Sales
automation which automates sales reps' tasks.
The objective: to gain efficiency so that salespeople devote
their time to customers, not sure of important tasks but with low added value
These are devices, software or techniques allowing the
automation of a series of actions leading to an optimization of its commercial
actions. It is possible to automate the sending of commercial e-mails, sms,
segment contacts, change the phases of transactions, send internal alerts, do
lead scoring ...
Automation also makes it possible to optimize sales by doing
cross-selling (cross-selling) or even upsell ( upmarket). Marketing and sales
automation also give you an accurate view of your return on investment.
3.4. Collaborative tools to better communicate with your client portfolio
Digital has transformed companies, their working methods and
their processes, including the use of collaborative tools which has gradually
become the norm . These tools make it possible to facilitate exchanges between
employees but also customers if you work in BtoB (or even in B2C in certain
cases).
In addition, the internationalization of exchanges and
teleworking which is increasingly topical with the recent crises (yellow vests,
Covid-19) are events which have only strengthened and accelerated the use of
these collaborative tools. Here is a non-exhaustive list of some tools that
will allow you to be more efficient in your exchanges with your employees and
customers:
• Google
drive
• Teamwork
• Teamgantt
• Dropbox
• Microsoft
Teams
• Trello
• Slack
• Hubspot
CRM
• Zoom
The advantage of using collaborative tools is that you will
start a project more quickly , the exchange of information with the teams in
real time without having to travel and the possibility of modifying files no
matter when or where you find yourself, will save valuable time in the
advancement of projects and facilitate decision-making. These tools are built
to facilitate teamwork . However, it is essential to support its teams and
customers with these tools in order to guarantee a good grip.
Be present online to manage your customer portfolio and converse with your
customers.
4.1. Social Selling
Your customers are “omnichannel” and therefore most likely
on social networks. As interactions become more and more complex, you can also
manage your portfolio on them, monitor them, while trying to glean new
prospects.
The selling social is in fact a process that you need to put
in place sooner or later.
It consists of using social networks such as Linkedin,
Twitter or Facebook to prospect, make a sale or even chat with customers.
According to a recents study conduct by Linkedin ,
salespeople using social networks increase their chances of exceeding their
goals by 3.
Provided of courses that they have a more interested than
interesting approach. Such an approach is built over the long term, by
providing value, in particular through the content shared and exchanged.
Thus, in this sense, the concepts of social selling and
inbound marketing go hand in hand, because they make it possible to increase
the visibility with your customers, your prospects and other market players. It
is imperative that each salesperson appropriates these new methods and makes
good use of them since they are essential acquisition levers today.
4.2. Interact with your customers through your customer newsletters
The newsletters reserved for customers are not outdated as
some companies suggest, quite the contrary! It allows you to create strong
links with your portfolio at a ridiculous cost.
To use the newsletter effectively, however, you should not use it just
any old way. It must communicate information likely to interest your audience,
it must therefore provide added value and must not be a copy paste of content
already visible elsewhere such as on your blog for example. Its sending must be
regular, but not intrusive.
You can finely segment and personalize more and more to
offer exclusive content such as VIP invitations, discounts for an event that
concerns them (birthday, party, etc.), promotional codes to take advantage of
an event, a service or an exclusive product… In short, be original in your
newsletter creation and adapt the speech to your target, as here with our
example of a monthly newsletter.
4.3. Measure loyalty
Many companies make the mistakes of investing heavily in
acquisition campaigns, with random results, to the detriment of their existing
customer base.
And yet, retaining a customer costs on average between 5 to
10 times less than acquiring a new one (source: Harvard Business Review).
Implementing a measure such as the NPS score can, for
example, help detect dissatisfaction, improve your brand image or create
ambassadors and increase your turnover
To go further, we invite you to discovers our page dedicated
to loyalty or download the guide for free.
The benefits of effective management of your customer portfolio (marketing
and sales alignment)
A satisfied customer is no longer enough. He must have an
experience beyond expectations if you want to keep him for the long term.
Digital tools (CRM, automation) make it possible to put the
customer back at the center and in fact oblige to set up a perfect alignment of
sales and marketing .
The feedback received from both sides by the sales,
marketing and customer service teams in the same tool also allows:
•
eliminate non-buyers and other curious people
• better
analyze potential buyers to better understand your customers.
So be sure to keeps in touch with them, they are potentially
your best ambassadors and therefore salespeople for your brand! To do this, be
responsive, available and have an irreproachable after-sales service (see
below). Also keep a blog by sharing content that responds to their problem.
Customer service: the circle is complete
Long sidelined, after-sales service or customer support was
mistakenly considered to be a cost center.
That time seems to be over as customer support is
modernizing to transform itself into a profit center, where upsell and cross
sell are mingled.
Customer service is an integral part of the customer life
cycle, which is one of the reasons why it must be integrated into the sales and
marketing process, as a whole and therefore in the same tool.
A successful support service understands that there is no
better opportunity to talk to a customer to understand the reasons for their
dissatisfaction , their challenges and their new expectations.
The goal is thus to improve your products, your processes
and to transform a dissatisfied person into a better ambassador.
It's not for nothing that business innovators like Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Apple, Google
are prioritizing customer experience and getting ahead. They make their
customers feel unique and manage to touch them emotionally with increasingly
personalized attentions.
As you will have understood, managing a customer portfolio
by using digital tools has become essential. To do this, it is first necessary
to harmonize the marketing, sales and customer service departments so that the
data collected is properly exploited. using automation tools such as CRM,
marketing and sales automation, to deliver personalized content, provide
solutions to customer problems and ultimately build customer loyalty.
If you plan to put an efficient CRM in place (or replace
your own that no one uses), do not hesitate to download our selection guide .
You can also make an appointment for your free demo of the HubSpot tool (best
CRM 2018 according to Gartner, and CRM that we use for ourselves and for our
customers).
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