There is a saying that you “can’t manage what you can’t measure” – and for a Business or Professional Practice that sells to other Businesses (B2B) that is certainly true if they wan’t to increase their new business.

A Quick Illustration

Let’s say your average client is worth $1,000 p.a. and you want to increase your sales by $10,000 per annum then its a fairly easy calculation to say I just need to get 10 new clients.

So all you need to do is see ten potential prospects and sign them, right? But you and I both know it’s not that easy. Even if you talked or met with 15 or 20 prospects, maybe only 10 of them would become a client. So you really need to talk or meet with 20 new prospects to get those 10 new clients, right?

But you aren’t able to get a meeting or have a phone call with every potential prospect for a variety of reasons. They are not ready to meet yet, they don’t know you (that’s where content marketing comes in) or a variety of other reasons. So you may need to have a “pool” of 100 or more potential prospects who want to meet or talk to you over the phone.

Now all of a sudden you have 100 contacts not 10 to manage. And in addition when some of those 100 say “you’re not for me” or turn out not to be potential clients, you need to top up your “pool” of potential clients.

This is what I call a “sales process” or how a potential client goes from not knowing you, to making initial contact, to meeting you, to proposing a solution to what the client needs to winning the business

That’s where a CRM system helps

A simple CRM system allows you to track where your individual prospects are in the Sales process. Maybe you have not contacted them yet,  they have downloaded a free guide, attended an event, get your newsletter, connected with you on Linkedin, you have had a phone call with them, provided a quote etc etc.

That means you always know where you need to focus your efforts. It could be securing more meetings to get more proposals, it could be to change your approach because you are not winning business when you have a meeting or maybe you need more contacts.

So which CRM?

There are a huge range of options out there but I would start with a “cloud-based” system like Salesforce.com, Zoho CRM or Nimble CRM.

All are relatively low-cost subscription-based packages, that have lots of users, online support and have a free trial so you can find what suits best.

If you would like some no-obligation assistance to help you find the right CRM package for your Business or Practice please contact us on 1300 676 448 or email us at [email protected] and we would be happy to help.