Nowadays, CRM software is widely used by businesses to enhance sales, marketing, and customer service with the help of process automation, unified customer data, and advanced analytics. For both B2B and B2C businesses, CRM provides general functionality such as 360-degree customer view and workflow automation, empowering your sales, marketing, and customer service departments.
Three faces of B2B CRM
In brief, B2B CRM, similarly to B2C, provides automation capabilities for your marketing, sales, and customer service. Yet, B2B processes are usually longer and more complex than in B2C. They involve building tighter relations with your customers and collaborating with multiple stakeholders within marketing sales, and customer service activities. Gladly, B2B CRM is up for the task.
#1 Marketing
While in B2C, businesses usually focus on generating as many leads as possible, B2B businesses care more about the quality of leads and attracting those who will potentially stay loyal. B2B CRM attracts leads through targeted and personalized marketing campaigns with the help of email marketing, ads, and other means.
#2 Sales
Once the lead got qualified, your sales team starts a conversation with it. This stage is likely to involve multiple stakeholders from your customer’s side. To keep the conversation effective, B2B CRM stores all the contact information of each respective representative, as well as notifies you of important sales milestones and activities, like quota deadlines, meetings, etc., up until the deal is closed.
#3 Customer Service
While B2C and B2B customer service processes have a lot in common, in B2B, customers tend to stay with your brand longer. Thus, in B2B, it’s important to maintain your customers’ trust and loyalty by personalized in-depth help.
B2B CRM core features
- Customer journeys
To design your sales process and plan your customer interactions across all stages of a customer lifecycle, from a prospect to a contract.
- Marketing and sales workflow automation
To automate your marketing and sales repetitive tasks and streamline content delivery with various templates, including emails and landing pages.
- Sales and marketing performance analytics
To track sales and marketing teams’ progress and timely spot opportunities for improvement.
- Lead and opportunity scoring
Via advanced analytics based on your sales data and AI-based predictions on how likely you are to close the deal with a particular customer.
- 360-view of a customer
Unifies all customer data, including all the decision makers’ contacts, requests, and interactions at every stage of the customer journey.
- Omni-channel outreach
For the wide coverage of marketing campaigns and extended collaboration opportunities during the sales process and after.
- Case and knowledge management
To set automated case assignment rules and provide your customers with documentation and fulfillment of customer’s inquiries through the use of customizable templates
Best CRM software for the B2B market
Suitable for businesses of all sizes. Listed as one of the market leaders in Gartner Magic Quadrant 2021, Dynamics 365 provides the following key features for the B2B market:
- Advanced Lead & Opportunity Scoring
- Workflow Automation
- AI-power Insights and Analytics
- 360-degree Customer View
- Business Card Scanner
- Customer Journeys
- Prospects Segmentation
- Event Management
- Case and Knowledge Management
- Omni-Channel Outreach
Sales strategies work best when everyone is on the same page, and Zendesk Sell is the right tool to maximize collaboration across departments. Listed as one of the ‘leaders’ in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for the CRM customer engagement center.
Zendesk Sell’s entry-level plan is a good choice for very small businesses and solo entrepreneurs. It includes core CRM features like;
- Activity reporting.
- Sales dashboard and reporting.
- Mobile CRM.
- Automatic dialer with text capability
- Call analytics.
- Out-of-the-box integrations
- Team document repository.
- Customizable sales pipeline
- Basic reports
- Email tracking and automation
- Contact management
Suitable for businesses of all sizes. According to the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant, Salesforce yet for another year holds the position of market-leading CRM provider. To aid B2B businesses, Salesforce provides the following key features:
- Contact Management
- Omni-Channel Outreach
- Customer Journey Management
- Lead and Opportunity Management
- Reports and Dashboards
- Sales Forecasting
- Workflow and Approvals
- Partner Management
- Case and Knowledge Management
Custom CRM development
If none of the platform-based solutions seem to fit your business needs due to the nature of your marketing and sales processes, you may always go for custom CRM. You may either obtain it via deep customization of a platform-based solution or by full custom development of your own custom CRM. Both options are viable and may bring up to 123% ROI.
Get B2B CRM
For your B2B CRM to bring the desired value, at its core, it should provide the functionality to streamline your collaboration with clients on various stages, tailored to your and your client’s business specifics. If you’re looking for a CRM solution to support your CRM objectives, PositiveEdge is ready to help you choose the most feasible option and assist with its technical implementation, just let us know.