One of the fastest-growing segments in customer relationship management (CRM), is the business-to-business (B2B CRM) market. This article will give you an overview of Business To Business CRM, and highlight some of its advantages.
What’s a B2B CRM?
Let’s first define B2B CRM. The definition of the term “business-to-business” (or B to B) encompasses everything from companies that sell products or services directly to other businesses to those that are more like resellers who provide inputs for another company’s output.
Whatever their business model, regardless of whether they manufacture a product and make it available through distributors, established reseller networks, or simply act as intermediaries between buyers and sellers, B2B businesses are businesses that sell products to other businesses.
This means that in addition to the obvious fact that they have a physical presence (i.e. they are doing business in your area), you can also see how proactive they are about building relationships with customers, both current and potential.
Example: A company might sell large-ticket items such as cars and homes through a network of local dealerships that deal directly with customers. However, this doesn’t mean they don’t have a Business To Business CRM.
Maybe dealerships are their only business, and they rely on customers for referrals to sell more items. Or maybe the company buys cars from another dealer (e.g. “buying wholesale”) to resell them at a markup. Or perhaps it’s selling large quantities of electronics, furniture, and appliances directly to end-users looking for something new for their homes via the Internet. These things don’t usually require any physical presence.
Once you have identified your target market it is time to figure out how much you should spend on building a sales channel.
The benefits of a B2B CRM
These are just a few of the many benefits that a Business To Business CRM could offer companies.
1. Increased Customer Relations and Satisfaction.
An effective sales channel will allow you to identify potential customers with needs and wants that your company can fulfill, as well as those who might be interested in learning about what you have to offer before purchasing (leads).
Customers also give feedback on how fast they received their queries answered and any problems they encountered when trying to purchase.
2. It gives the business an edge – Being able to track and analyze leads can help identify customers who are more likely to become paying customers. You can be prepared for any potential problems with clients or opportunities by having information on prospects’ needs and wants.
3. Increased Productivity – A B2B CRM can also improve productivity. Salespeople no longer have to follow up on each prospective client individually; they simply have one central tool that allows them to access all their customer data.
They can also spend more time with prospects and track client data like their name, industry, and company size to help you understand where your sales are coming from.
4. Increases sales efficiency – CRM systems provide information that can be used to ensure that every prospect is properly followed up on. It also allows companies to identify potential customers quickly (i.e. those who may want or need what your company is selling).
Businesses can spend less time worrying about what they don’t know, and more time on what they do know.
5. Enhance Client Relationships – Having access to client information allows you to tailor services to best suit your client’s needs. By monitoring this data over time, you will be able to get a better picture of how satisfied customers are with each interaction.
This way, if one client is unhappy or dissatisfied with the service (e.g. slow response times), it won’t affect other clients as all information was made available to them in advance. Businesses can also improve their relationships with clients by giving them a better understanding of what to expect.
What role should a Business To Business CRM System play in a marketing and sales plan?
B2B CRM is a crucial component of the sales-marketing plan
Business To Business CRM’s primary purpose is to allow companies to communicate effectively with potential clients. It can be used by businesses for both outbound and inbound communication. These are discussed below:
1. Inbound Communication – Your B2A customer relationship management (CRM), system allows you to add leads to your database. This will allow you to know who is interested in you before they become customers. Access to the name of a potential client will also allow you to address any concerns that they may have about buying from your company.
2. Outbound Communication – Once potential clients have been made aware of your company through inbound communication they can use their CRM to get in touch with you. The information they have will enable them to make an informed decision about whether or not to purchase or sell your product.
This is particularly useful for new businesses, especially those that aren’t well-known or have little online presence. Using B2B CRM systems increases customer trust because they are familiar with your business.
These systems can also be used to identify the most qualified leads and keep track of who has been added to your customer database. This allows businesses to make better hiring decisions and determine the right type of employees to hire to meet their customer’s needs.
HubSpot CRM: The Best Free Plan with Upgrades
HubSpot CRM can be used by both small and medium-sized businesses.
It makes it easy to manage your contacts and sales pipeline, campaigns, and opportunities and provides smart insights into all activities to improve decision-making.
It tracks activity across multiple facets, including customer conversations, potential customer engagement (elevating cold calling conversation to a higher level), target demographic profiles, and sales analytics reports. This allows for a clear understanding of the top customers and their sales teams. Most businesses in B2B sectors use HubSpot CRM as an extension of their email marketing strategy.
ActiveCampaignCRM: Marketing & Workflow Automation
ActiveCampaign CRM, a powerful Business To Business CRM system, has been included on this list due to its usefulness. This tool makes it easy to manage your marketing campaigns and workflows, as well as view all sales-related information in one place (e.g. leads, contacts, etc.). ).
Active Campaign’s powerful features are built around collaboration. They encourage businesses to share their experiences using their platform.
Active Campaign offers advanced analytics and simplifies data management. It also encourages business growth by automating processes such as campaign tracking and automated email follow-up.
Freshsales CRM: Automation & Forecasting
Freshsales CRM can automate your sales and marketing processes. The drag-and-drop design of Freshsales CRM makes it simple to create new campaigns or workflows. This allows you to manage all aspects of your business from one platform.
FreshSales’ powerful forecasting tool allows you to predict when leads will turn into customers quickly. This allows you to concentrate on the most likely prospects and sell in real-time. Live reports make it easy to share best practices with colleagues in office environments.
FreshSale CRM offers integration tools that make it easy to connect with major account management systems as well as other business applications.
Pipedrive CRM: Visual Pipelines
Pipedrive CRM allows you to create multi-step visual sequences for sales and marketing campaigns. Flexible reporting pages allow you to track any information about each stage of the pipeline. This makes it easy for customers to ask questions like “Which leads are at which stage?” Or “How long does a campaign take?”
Pipedrive provides extensive analytics tools that allow you to identify performance metrics that are driving business growth via automation.
What are the drawbacks of using a B2B CRM system?
Although Business to Business CRM is more expensive than other options, there are many advantages. You can create custom solutions to fit your business processes and marketing strategies. Additionally, you get data-driven intelligence via automated dashboards and reports.
B2B CRM systems have another advantage: they can be integrated with other key applications, such as the accounting suite or social management tools. This allows for powerful analytics to help you understand which tactics are most effective in driving sales growth. What are the differences between CRM systems?
Although there are many ways CRM tools can be classified, the easiest way to understand them all is through their purpose. When talking about B2B sales & marketing automation solutions, there are three key buzzwords that you will likely hear: SaaS (Software as a Service), and MSA (Managed Services Agreement). Marketo, HubSpot’s platform, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud are some examples.
These platforms offer all the functionality you’d expect from a CRM but also include additional integrations and automation features that make it easier for other applications to be integrated.
You can also categorize B2B CRM software by the type of information collected. There are three types: On-Premise (SaaS), and SaaS (MSA)).
The data stored and the customization required will affect how each one differs. Marketo’s Marketing Cloud is the most popular example. It offers powerful analytics and integration capabilities via its Adobe Connect platform.
Hubspot CRM is also suitable for small B2B businesses.
The following options are common for smaller B2B businesses:
- Data warehouse
- An Excel spreadsheet
- A CRM system.
There are many ways to create and manage your cloud services, whether public or private. However, if you don’t know what to do with business-related data, it’s best to start small.
Hubspot Marketing Cloud’s built-in integration capabilities make it easier to connect Salesforce with other business applications. This is a great benefit for smaller teams. HubSpot Marketing Cloud can integrate with CRM systems such as Marketo and Oracle Service Cloud to help you manage leads from different teams.
Marketo’s marketing platform allows companies of any size and industry to create effective email campaigns. Examples include discounts, emails about new products and services, and emails about upcoming events (both interned & externe). Marketo customers use Adobe Connect, Salesforce Lightning, Microsoft Dynamics, and many other tools.
HubSpot makes it easy to stay in touch with customers through automation, emails, and other tools that make the process of sending personalized messages & collecting feedback as simple as possible.
HubSpot Marketing Cloud is a great option for those who don’t yet have a CRM solution. It’s also a good alternative to larger enterprise solutions that may require professional help to set up complex systems.
