Guide to Getting Started with Zoho CRM Features
If you are interested in sales, have a knack for selling absolutely anything to people, or work in the sales department of a company, then you would identify with having that desire to be a smart sales representative at work.
Winning the sales game has a lot to do with using a sound CRM system to its full potential. For example, with the Zoho CRM features, your sales can be automated entirely, leaving you to focus simply on customer interaction and closing deals.
In this blog, we will be seeing the features of Zoho CRM that can help you become an efficient sales representative who knows how to ace customer relations and be one step ahead. Keep reading to see and understand these features one after another.
Use Zoho Mail Integration
Sales have a lot to do with being prompt with the customers. If you are a sales representative, you cannot afford to miss out on an important email from a customer. Let’s imagine running through all of your emails and replying to them simultaneously.
However, you realize that you ignored an important email from a hot lead by evening. The probable reason for this could be a cluttered inbox with many emails. Missing out on this important email may not be by intention, but the fact is that as a sales representative, you cannot afford something like this for your business.
It is important for the sales representative to attend to all the leads as soon as possible and for doing the same, there needs to be a filtered view of all the prospect emails. One of the most used Zoho CRM integrations, called Mail Magnet, allows you not just to receive emails but also get a filtered view of your prospect’s emails as well.
With this email integration, you will not need to keep checking the emails all the time. Every time you receive an email from a prospect, you will be notified by the mail icon that pops up right on the Zoho CRM home page. Remember that MailMagnet will be available with the Zoho Mail Integration only, so ensure that you ask your Zoho consultant to enable it and configure the email account with Zoho CRM.
Organize Emails According to Sales Priorities
Another essential thing to remember while dealing with customers is that the most recent email is not always the most important. For example, if a lead has emailed asking about the price of a product or negotiating on the price of a product, these emails must be immediately accessible. This can save considerable time and effort.
Naturally, you will be organizing the sales activities based on the pipeline and the level each deal is in. What’s notable is that you can similarly manage your emails using Zoho CRM features. For example, using the SalesInbox, you can access columns, filters, folders, and columns that can show your sales priorities and allow you to stay at the top of the emails that matter.
SalesInbox functions smartly by organizing all emails according to how you have set up your CRM. For example, even though the regular email clients allow you to filter emails based on a sender's address, SalesInbox enables you to filter emails based on the sender’s email address and sales parameters.
For instance, if you get emails from customers offering you deals of more than 1 lakh, that can be specified with the name Top Leads. Using SalesInbox allows you to create many folders and shows them right on the side of the folders you have.
Using SalesInbox, you can also automate the lead creation in your inbox, get automatic reminders, and work with helpful information.
Monitor Customer Activities
One of the most critical aspects of ensuring sales success for all sales representatives will be timing. SalesSignals gives you an immediate notification about what the prospects are up to. You will also know if the lead that you have been chasing has opened your email or not. An alert will be sent to you as soon as the email is opened.
Remember that the prospects and customers can reach out to you from different channels. They can visit your website, fill out surveys, raise support tickets, and post on your social media. To improve customer relations, you will have to be consistent and prompt. SalesSignal helps you track all customer activities by displaying them in an organized way.
SalesSignal will give you a prompt when your leads send you an email, open the email sent by you, click on the links in the email, or when the email gets bounced. You will also be notified when missed calls are received, surveys get filled, new tickets, comments, and responses are received, missed chats are received, or the support tickets are overdue or escalated.
Leverage Social Media for Getting Leads
Being an intelligent sales representative, you must convert every like, reshare, or comment from your prospects into an asset. You can effectively convert the social media conversations into actionable leads by lead generation automation through a workflow. All you have to do is configure your social media channel properly.
If someone tags your organization’s replies to your social media posts, you can add this person as a lead and assign the lead to a sales representative. Likewise, anytime someone messages you on social media or comments on your posts, you can also add that person as your contact and assign this contact to another sales representative.
Customize Templates
All sales professionals do not like manual data entry. However, there are times when entire days get wasted in typing emails while leaving only a little time to do what you are actually hired for, and that is selling. Email Templates is one of the Zoho CRM features that can help get rid of this.
You can personalize the emails for every activity and send these emails to individual prospects. In addition, you can also send mass emails to a list of leads. For example, if you have imported leads from market research and wish to engage prospects, you can send thank you emails. All that you have to do is choose the list of leads and send a mass email.
To customize the templates, you have to design your template with the help of text, images, and tables; merge fields to your template, and add headers and footers to the templates.
Track Email Performance
You can also monitor how your emails have performed. Remember that you will not be able to send better emails in case you do not know how they have performed. Hence, an innovative sales representative must be able to consistently send engaging emails that can grab the attention of prospects get them to read and respond as well.
There are smart insights available on how the templates are performing, and by using these insights, you can get closer to writing better content. The email insights can also get you weekly and monthly reports on the emails' open, click, and bounce rates. In addition, the dashboards can tell which email templates have the best open and click rates.
Keep in mind that you can use the templates with the highest open rates, update existing content, and create new templates. In case you have been sending the email template, your job is done.
Complete Sales Activities On the Go
The sales representatives work while also being a part of customer meetings, events, and conferences. While managing so many meetings altogether, there must be something handy to update the activities, keep the team in sync, and do important things on the go. Zoho CRM features solve this problem by coming into your pocket.
With Zoho CRM Mobile, you can add leads, create tasks, receive email notifications, find customers, etc. You can locate all prospects near you using Map View and locate leads, contacts, and prospects in any area while scheduling meetings on your trip. In addition, you can log in all your visits so that your team knows about all locations that you have visited.
In addition, you can also record your takeaways from a recent meeting with a customer effectively. Again, there is no need to type out lengthy notes; you can just record the voice notes when walking and driving, associate the audio files with the records, and download them for reference.
Use AI-Based Sales Assistant
This assistant keeps track of when the prospects participate in surveys and posts on social media and based on this information. It tells you the correct time for reaching out to the prospect. If you know the best time to get in touch with your customers, you will get more replies from them at the right time.
Automate Actions
Being a sales representative, you will follow a fixed set of actions while contacting leads. For example, if you target to reach 40 leads a day, and 30 of your calls get answered, you can leave an email or voice message for the other ten leads.
After you complete your daily activities, you will update the tasks done. However, there is no need to manually follow a similar routine because you can automate these actions with macros. You have to choose the records and run the macro so that the repetitive tasks are taken care of automatically.
The Zoho CRM features know that a large part of your day includes a standard set of actions, which prompts you automatically with a suggestion to run a macro. For example, if you call a lead, send that lead a follow-up email, and create a task, Zia can suggest the same list of actions as a macro the next time. All that you need to do is run the Macro if it suits your needs.
Use CRM View for Activities
The workday of a sales representative is full of multiple events and activities that could be anything from visiting a prospect, demo shows, task creation for calling a prospect, or following up with customers after visiting a website. How can a sales representative know which task needs to be taken first on priority?
The CRM View for Activities lets you prioritize all sales activities by being available for tasks, calls, and events in the Activities module. In addition, the interface uses a view that lets you plan who should be followed up on that day. This view is divided into the categories called Customers, including all tasks associated with the customers; Open Deals including all tasks associated with deals in the pipeline, Leads including all tasks associated with leads and contacts; and Others including all other records.
Streamline With Tagging
You will need unique identifiers associated with your CRM records to help you effectively search, sort, categorize, filter, and segment the records. The tags can help you clearly prioritize all records and contact them as well. For example, if you have some leads in your account that must be prioritized, you can tag these leads as Important and filter all of them easily from other leads in the Zoho CRM account.
Conclusion
If you use all the fantastic Zoho CRM features listed above, you will see your productivity go very high. You can use Zoho CRM to maximize your potential as a sales representative, but you need to understand all the features offered by it. And now you know all the basics :)
If you need further support in implementing Zoho CRM, you can get in touch with our expert Zoho consultants. They come with years of experience that can lead them to help you maximize your potential.
Topic Participants
Abhishek - Zoho Partner
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