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How to build a revenue engine with CRM at the heart

Written by Alex Howard on 29th March 2023

There’s a new concept floating around the world of business at the moment that may have caught your attention – revenue enablement. We think it’s going to be important, in both the world of CRM and beyond.  

Revenue Enablement is all about coordinating your customer service, marketing, and sales efforts to maximize revenue growth. By taking this all-inclusive approach to driving revenue, you’ll make all revenue-generating activities more productive and efficient. 

What’s in this blog? 

Key revenue enablement advantages at a glance

Consistency

Of messaging, tools, techniques, shared goals, and identified USPs 

Alignment

Increased efficiency and effectiveness by streamlining processes

Visibility

Shared data, reporting, and targets

Improved performance

More sales and a faster sales cycle

How to build a revenue engine with CRM at the heart

A person from each team (sales, marketing, customer success and support) putting the pieces of the puzzle together

In more ways than one, CRM IS a form of Revenue Enablement. By incorporating a CRM system into a company’s Revenue Enablement strategy, organisations can gain a more complete understanding of their customers and improve the effectiveness of their revenue-generating activities.  (Want a refresher on what CRM is, check out our blog!)

So, what practical steps can each team take, with the help of a CRM like Gold-Vision, to boost revenue and improve customer experience? 

A man ticking off items on his revenue enablement preparation journey

Preparation is key

  • Define your business goals and KPIs or OKRs
  • Identify your buyer personas
  • Map out your customer journey and think about your ideal buying journey
  • Identify your potential revenue-generating teams
  • Define your sales process with the buyer personas and journey in mind
  • Implement the above and agree on how you will measure success (more on that later)
Image demonstrating the crossover between sales and marketing team efforts

Align your sales and marketing efforts

  • Use web analytics to qualify leads and create targeted marketing campaigns that focus on the right people at the right time
  • Personalize content to engage potential customers and move them through the sales funnel
  • Report on progress through live dynamic data – there’s no need to update reports to send to management teams when you have live dashboards. Ensure dashboards are up to date, and use them in all business meetings!
  • A 360 view of customer data for sales and marketing teams will ensure a professional customer experience. This visibility can help upselling and cross-selling! 
  • Set new business targets that align with marketing and sales goals, and use reporting dashboards to track progress and ensure that both teams are working towards the same objectives
ERP integrating with a CRM system and the CRM system serving automated reminders

Account Management and customer success can really go hand in hand

  • Grow your existing customer base through review calls, and set automated reminders from your CRM
  • Post account updates online from positive customer engagements – this can be done by anybody in your organisation who is an account manager, building referral business
  • Have an account management follow-up process to generate growth with existing customers. Follow-up based on the outcome!  
  • Set “existing business growth” targets, ensuring you can visibly measure this growth through your CRM forecasting
  • Integrate your finance system and or third-party tools to boost account management efforts
Livechat integrating with crm system to show transcripts within your crm view. Customer support portal to help customers self serve by raising tickets

Empower your customer service team

  • Arm your customer service team with a live chat tool for ease of communication with existing customers and prospects alike. Providing communication choices makes contact simple
  • Provide access to a process that enables your team to sell and make recommendations, upselling and cross-selling services where applicable

Finally, measure your success 

You’ve got a clearer picture of the steps required to improve the effectiveness of your revenue-generating activities, but now you need to measure whether it’s working or not. The answer lies within customer metrics. 

There are four main types to consider: 

  • Customer Retention – The loyalty of a customer over time  
  • Referrals – Existing customers recommending your product or service to prospects 
  • Upsells – Offering a customer a more expensive or upgraded version of what they have 
  • Cross-sells – Offering a customer a related or complementary product or service to what they already have 

With the help of Gold-Vision reports and dashboards, you can easily keep track of these customer metrics and how successful your efforts are over time.

By incorporating even just some of the above, you will be well on your way to building an effective Revenue Engine for your organisation.

Is it worth your time? 

We understand that you might be sitting there thinking that all of this Revenue Enablement stuff sounds like a lot of work but we are confident it’s worth your time. Let’s have a look at a couple of examples:

Sales team

Shifting to a customer-centric mindset from just a sales-centric one can make an enormous difference in the journey of that customer, increasing their satisfaction and the likelihood of further business. This highlights the importance of effective communication at every step.

A salesperson should be checking in with a new customer to see how their project is going post-sale, periodically offering further help, or even being involved in the handover or implementation process of a given project.

Advantages

  • Increases customer satisfaction
  • Increases the likelihood of further business
  • Gains valuable feedback to improve future sales and customer experiences


Projects & customer success team

What if, instead of stopping after a customer’s problem is solved, a member of this team was to make valuable recommendations throughout their conversation with the customer, or even after the fact? A great place to start would be to ask themselves:

  • Is there an existing product or service that your company offers that could improve the customer’s overall experience?

OR

  • Have they noticed anything an existing customer could be missing?

Advantages

  • Builds customer loyalty
  • Boosts customer gratification
  • Identifies pain points that may have gone unnoticed otherwise

THIS is Revenue Enablement in action. 

Revenue Enablement helps build trust between you and your existing customers, making your company appear much more approachable. In turn, this drastically increases the likelihood of increasing existing business, and your existing customers recommending your service.  Word of mouth is powerful. Use it to your advantage! 

Key takeaways

  • Capitalize on every opportunity  
  • Every customer touch point supplies a chance for some form of revenue-generating activity
  • Know your customer and their pain-points
  • Consistent communication is essential

The bottom line  

All businesses want to see a positive change to their bottom line and customer satisfaction, and we believe that, with the help of a CRM tool like Gold-Vision, these goals are very much within reach.

A CRM tool is essential to implementing and measuring the success of your revenue enablement strategy by offering all of the advantages above. By using CRM to implement your strategy and measure against your business goals and targets, you will be able to prove how effective it is and increase its effectiveness over time. Not to mention the positive impact it will have on your customer experience!

Kick-start your Revenue Enablement journey with the help of Gold-Vision

Arrange your personalised demo

Before you go, here are some other quick reads we think you’ll enjoy:

eBook | CRM return on investment: It’s payback time

Infographic | 5 steps to sales focus

Blog_use dashboards to beat targets

Blog | How to use dashboards to beat your sales targets

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