4 Ways to Use Your CRM During the Holiday Sales Season
Your CRM solution offers an invaluable collection of tools and features that you can leverage successfully in your business all year-round. However, when a seasonal rush hits your company (likely making up a large portion of your revenue and new business each year) it’s important that you don’t neglect CRM use or overlook the critical functions it provides to make the most of your increased sales activity during the holiday sales season.
Your CRM is perhaps most important during the busy times your business has during the year, and you can use the CRM tools available to capture and tend to new leads and customers, create a memorable, positive customer experience during a traditionally hectic shopping time, and boost customer retention all year long by analyzing sales with a careful eye on how customer interactions went during the holiday sales season.
Here are four of our favorite ways you can use your CRM software for a more successful, efficient, and profitable holiday sales season.
1. Run special holiday campaigns (and track the results for future marketing efforts).
Holiday sales campaigns can be very impactful on your profits by driving a lot of interest and bringing in new customers quickly with a creative or attractive lure of a sale or a special promo for the holiday.
Integrated CRM marketing tools help you gather key details through email, custom webforms, and social media that you can then use to craft highly targeted marketing materials that will resound with your consumers. This can be particularly powerful if you own a small to medium-sized business because it can help you gain deep insight into your customer’s preferences and demographics much more quickly and easily, which will make your marketing dollars much more effective.
2. Keep customer retention as a top priority as you serve holiday leads and new customers.
A positive customer experience is one of the biggest drivers of customer retention. If your business experiences large sales spikes at the end of the year or during certain points in the holiday season, then you have a huge opportunity to build a larger pool of loyal customers. The holiday shopping season is typically marked by a chaotic rush and many companies struggle to keep up with the influx of customers. If a customer has a bad experience after their first holiday purchase, they aren’t going to continue supporting your business throughout the year. If they have an exceptional experience though, during a time that is known to be busy, then you’ll secure more loyal customers and up your retention percentages. All of this means more profit for your business during and after the holiday rush.
Your CRM solution can be integral to your holiday customer experience. You can store sales data, customer information and feedback, and ensure that all of your employees are always working with updated, relevant data when dealing with customers and clients. This will mean a seamless, quick experience for customers and will help shape a good first impression of your company and how you perform.
3. Incentivize customer care agents with holiday contests.
Making the busy season fun for employees (and infusing a bit of friendly competition into the workplace) is a great way to increase productivity and give employees extra incentive to perform well despite the hectic nature of the holiday season. You can create sales contests or do giveaways to your top agents or employees each week by tracking certain elements of customer or client actions or interactions all in your CRM system.
4. Allow employees and agents to work remotely.
During the holiday season, you can improve productivity and create a surge in employee happiness and satisfaction by allowing your teams to work at home or remotely. Removing commute times and giving your employees more flexibility and comfort during a busy season will help them approach their work with more focus.
Remote work is a very real possibility with cloud-based CRM software tools. In fact, it’s quickly becoming the workplace choice among many businesses year-round. Your customer care agents and sales teams can update your CRM solution remotely with an internet connection and can access the system easily to serve customers and clients during your holiday hours.
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