5 tips to improve your sales follow-up

Essential to your business, sales follow-up is a fundamental element of a successful company. From finalising sales to accelerating the conversion of leads, sales follow-up is still the best way to get ahead.

Faced with this problem, which is inherent in the majority of company directors, it remains important to improve, but above all to provide the best possible sales follow-up.

With this in mind, we'd like to offer you our 5 pieces of expert advice on how to provide a service and sales support that are worth your while, and that will play an active part in your company's growth.

See all software Customer relationship management

Tip 1: Use a powerful CRM tailored to sales

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, enables anyone to manage customer relationships and interactions within a company. That's why it's important for every company to have this kind of software. Not only to facilitate commercial follow-up, but even more so to provide a high-quality customer service.

As a tool for targeting and managing your list of prospects and customers, CRM needs to be tailored to your business, but it also needs to enable you to evolve, particularly if you want to grow and scale.

In this vein, and to benefit from optimum sales follow-up that will bring you sales, but also positive social proof - via reviews, for example - you need a powerful CRM.

And while there are many CRMs out there, you should first and foremost weigh up the pros and cons, and also study those used by your competitors. Not only to avoid wasting time and money, but also to provide better sales follow-up than them.

These are essential points that will enable you to establish a precise framework for commercial follow-up, through an organisation that is often automated, but also human. A must for any business owner looking to move up a gear.

Tip 2: Centralise and share customer information

This is another aspect to consider: sales follow-up must be placed at the heart of your business. In other words, the targeting, the customers, their habits and all the information accumulated should be centralised so that it can be passed on to the various departments under the aegis of confidentiality.

It is essential for a company to work together when it comes to commercial follow-up. All departments must be able to understand who the prospect is, why the prospect is a customer and, above all, what the prospect wants.

All this information will enable the sales, marketing and management departments to direct their campaigns, editorial lines and products. It is therefore essential that customer information is not only centralised, but also shared so as to harmonise the company's overall vision and, above all, the customer experience.

Tip 3: Automate your operations

As part of the same growth strategy, any company looking to expand and scaling up will need to automate its processes. It's vital to automate as many processes as possible. Not only because economies of scale will enable you to move up a gear, but also to create a partly freewheeling business. This is essential if you want to retain some room for manoeuvre.

So administrative, tax, commercial and organisational tasks will have to be automated. This means using CRM and/or ERP systems to automate some of these processes.

Management will be done via software, usually SaaS, which will allow you to pre-fill certain forms, eliminate repetitive tasks by automating them, and also analyse customer information in the best possible way. The advent of artificial intelligence means that business owners can automatically create groups of customers and sort and organise their various prospects.

These are all aspects that, when put together, will enable you to create a semi-automated business that not only makes economies of scale, but also allows you to concentrate your workforce on work that cannot be automated, such as direct customer relations.

Tip 4: Make responsiveness a sine qua non

Just as importantly, responsiveness remains one of the fundamental factors in customer relations and sales follow-up. In the age of the Internet and automated processes, prospects' expectations have changed: they want everything, right away.

With this in mind, it is essential for companies to provide a customer service that is fast, appropriate and, above all, direct. In other words, you can no longer leave your customer alone or waiting for 5 minutes: the sooner you respond, the better off your company will be.

It's along these lines that a number of media have been developed, including direct chat with an advisor. And all in less than a minute. In other words, a customer's query can be resolved directly, and with minimum delay, using chat.

Responsive support is essential, and the best companies have understood this. They all have chat/email/phone support, which often responds within minutes of the request being made. This is an undeniable advantage over competitors who may take several days to respond, and run the risk of losing the lead or customer.

See all software Customer relationship management

Tip 5: Set up a customer portal, which is essential

Setting up a dedicated portal is still a must. Chats, emails and telephone services will never replace a customer portal.

This type of portal initially reassures the customer, and provides indirect support with the help of an FAQ, as well as various services enabling them to find the solution to their problem on their own. This saves time for the customer and money for you, because direct support costs money.

The customer portal is the link between your company and your direct support. It's an essential feature that you'll find in all the market leaders, and one that's essential if you want to present a serious image to the majority of your customers.

What's more - and this is the key point - this type of portal is highly scalable. Durable over time, easily translatable, and above all produced at a very low cost, the customer portal is proving to be the number one ally of the modern company with an inherent desire to grow.

Sponsored article. The expert contributors are authors independent of the appvizer editorial team. Their comments and positions are their own.