Saving time starts with slowing down and getting organized.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is used by businesses and enterprises to keep all information about your customers in one place.

Entering the data into the CRM system is one of the biggest reasons people dislike CRM. However, if you are someone that uses spreadsheets or sticky notes, you are missing out on opportunities to maximize your data and put time back in your day.

Here are 7 ways CRM software helps you increase productivity and save your time.

1) Access your client data quicker by searching

With a quick search in your CRM, you can access your contacts, businesses, and reports. If you are using spreadsheets, chances are that ctrl+F is your best friend. If you use pen and paper, well, we hope you have a smaller client list otherwise you will be surfing your pages for a while.

Not only does searching make it easier to get access to the data and info you are looking for, for each client, but you can also view reports in segmenting the data you have input into your CRM.

For example, if you are good about collecting client birthdays and you want to see everyone with a birthday this month, you can do this in CRM.

2) Improved customer satisfaction means less back-end work

You can improve the buying experience by ensuring you are capturing all of the most important data in your sales process with custom fields and groups.

If your business is one where if you a miss a key detail that it could cost you or your client money, or cause back-end issues resulting in time fixing a problem, you can easily see if you have all of the most relevant info in the buyer's journey documented to prevent issues post-purchase.

3) Integrate with the tools you already use

You probably already use G-Suite or Microsoft 365 for email and calendar. As your business grows, you may also use tools and apps for email marketing, accounting, appointment setting, and more.

If your CRM system does not have the ability to replace these tools, having one that integrates and talks to the applications that you use prevents you from doing the manual data entry and helps you keep your business on autopilot.

CRMs will either have a direct integration with these tools, or connectors such as Zapier or Integromat to help make this happen for you.

4) Increase your follow-up rates

Our favorite. One of the biggest reasons businesses miss out on sales is due to lack of follow-ups.

Whether you are running your own business, or a salesperson who is driven to do high volume activity in customer outreach, there can be many things going on in your days where it's easy for things to slip through the cracks.

This is where CRMs like Salesdash can help you keep your deals and your hottest opportunities in front of you in one place to make sure you don't miss a follow-up.

Having reports and lists for your tasks, email capabilities to make follow-ups quicker and personalized, and showing you your overdue tasks helps you stay in front of your clients to grow sales.

5) Build reports to identify areas to cross-sell, upsell, and sharpen ICP

Learning how to quickly and effectively run reports in CRM software is a sales and sales management superpower.

Getting access to the information or customers you strive to get through from segmenting helps you personalize your buyers' experience, increasing your close rate to win more deals.

Let's say that you sell three different services or products, and your customer chooses one to start off with. If you run a discount on one that they never purchased, or if they opted into one that they were interested in but never purchased, you can retarget them for a quick outreach.

The world of reports in CRM can get as creative as you like. Here's a simple 8 minute video breakdown on reporting.

6) Track your deals, find where they get stuck, improve your sales process

This is one of the biggest reasons people use CRM software -- deal tracking.

Let's say you believe your buyer's journey is five steps: 1) Discovery/Qualifying 2) Demo 3) Proposal 4) Negotiation 5) Decision.

Now, imagine you want to see everyone you have sent a proposal to. In CRM, you can simply view your proposal stage and see everyone that you have marked in that stage.

You can also find out where customer's get stuck with stage duration. Imagine days, weeks, or months are going by and you can see that someone has been a stage for a long time. Reach out and find why, and improve that part of your sales process.

7) See your team's progress and notes

Have you had to make the "what's going on with this one?" call, email or slack? How often do you have to do this?

Being on the same page with your team to search and access a clients record to see the communication history and the documented information saves you and your team time.

You may also have team members to join or leave your organization. Maintaining this information in the CRM helps your new team members, or the team members replacing old ones, not skip a beat if the information is in the system.

There's always more

CRM software can have so many features that you may not even use half of them.

This is what makes it helpful for your business if you can find one that is easily customizable around the way that you manage your clients, your sales process, and your follow-ups.