Revolutionize Your Sales Strategy with CRM Automation

Keeping track of every lead is impossible. Period.

Luckily, we’re living in a world of endless software solutions help you do it. A customer relationship management system–or CRM– is one of those solutions. 

CRM software works like a digital filing cabinet. It will help you arrange all of your rich data into a single place. You can then use that same system to reduce costs, strengthen customer relationships, gather market information, and grow revenue.

Sounds pretty amazing, right? 

CRM software is now the biggest software market in the world. It has a projected value of $80 billion in revenues by 2025. Nearly 75% of businesses use a CRM. With a statistic like that you’d expect massive business growth, right?

What’s alarming is that the reality leads us to a CRM implementation failure rate hovering around 44%. Why? Because, more often than not, companies view CRM software as a solution rather than a tool. 

At its core CRM software is meant to support your sales teams. Automations can help you eliminate repetitive tasks from your sales team’s to-do list and aid in filtering customer support. Moreover, it can help strategically integrate your marketing and sales activity to maximize return and provide metrics to evaluate the success of those efforts.

In this article, we’ll look at how you can avoid becoming one of the companies in that 44%. We’ll go over: 

• Choosing the right CRM software for your Gym or fitness center
• Optimization and best practices for implementing your strategy
• Measuring your success with a CRM

How to Implement CRM Automation in Your Sales Strategy

CRM automation incorporates multiple functions across sales, marketing, technology, and finance to help your employees organize their work. Of course, the scope of your automation will depend on your business needs and preferences.Some of the common benefits of integrating CRM automation with your sales process include: 

• Lead generation and management
• Increased sales conversion
• Reduced manual activities and errors
• Better data and data consolidation
• More successful marketing campaigns
• Improved customer relationships

Selecting the Right CRM Software for Your Business

When it comes to choosing the right CRM software for your business, there is a lot to think about. The best software for you will help you achieve today’s goals and help you anticipate tomorrow’s. 

For example, If you’re prioritizing marketing activities right now, you’ll also need to have CRM software that is capable of managing all of the leads you’ll gain from your marketing efforts. After that, you’ll want to ensure that you have a competent onboarding platform for when those leads turn into members. 

Let’s look at a few CRM software solutions for your gym or fitness club and their key features. 

Gleantap

Key Features: 

• Automation
• Lead pipeline customization
• Two-way messaging
• Touch-point tracking
• Rich information profile creation
• Analytics

GloFox

Key Features: 

• Lead management
• Lead pipeline customization
• Ad Retargeting
• Social Media Marketing Integration
• Check-in kiosk
• Analytics

Salesforce

Key Features: 

• Cloud-based operating system
• Automation
• App creation tools
• Analytics
• Lead pipeline customization
• Lead management and tracking

When choosing software, flexibility, integration, and support are good adjectives to keep in mind. Also, considering your budget and needs vs. wants will help you gain a more clear understanding of the best CRM software solution for your gym. 

Integrating CRM Automation with Your Sales Process

How many hours do you or your sales team spend completing menial or repetitive tasks? CRM automation integration can help cut that time down significantly. Let’s look at a few examples of how automation can support your sales process.

Lead generation

Leads are the start and end of the sales process. Without them, you have no business. There are two types of lead generation methods– inbound and outbound– that can be automated. 

Inbound leads are cultivated from organic traffic to your website. In most cases, inbound leads will give you their data and opt into texts, sign-up for newsletters, join your Facebook page, or provide you with another way to stay in contact with them. 

From this provided information, you can automate texts, newsletters, etc., to motivate your lead down the sales pipeline. 

Outbound leads are a little trickier and significantly more time-consuming, luckily you’re here to learn about automation. CRM automation allows you to acquire information about appropriate leads by simply finding them on social media. 

Lead nurturing

Once you have your leads, you need to remind them of who you are. With automation, you can send customized emails, texts, push notifications, and more to every single lead you’ve ever had with the click of a button. 

Two-way messaging

Part of elevating your customer experience–one of the main reasons you bought a CRM–is being there when they have questions. By automating two-way messaging, you can field some of your member’s common questions or concerns. 

This helps alleviate the need for a huge customer service team. It also helps to strategically organize customer concerns for more efficient help. 

Reputation Management

Your online reputation plays a huge role in generating inbound leads. 86% of consumers read reviews. Studies have shown that replying to reviews (both positive and negative) results in better ratings. 

Enter Automation. 

Automation can help you create personalized responses to reviews, saving you hours and earning you better reviews.  

Streamlining Lead Management with CRM Automation

Using lead management automation bridges the gap between sales and marketing. Over 75% of marketers use automation in some capacity to increase conversions. 

As you probably already know, lead management has many stages that can vary based on your goals and your customer. Using simple, intent-based communication can help you optimize automation to drive conversions. 

Here are a few common ways that you can use automation to streamline lead management for your gym or fitness club. 

• Link email to text opt-ins directly to your email list
• Set up lead capture forms to sync with your sales pipeline
• Personalize targeted emails and texts
• Automatically assign leads to sales team members
• Create, send, and store waivers and contracts
• Automate abandoned cart and post-purchase communications

Improving Customer Relationships with CRM Automation

For gyms and fitness centers especially, this step in the sales pipeline is critical. This is where you really begin to build a loyal membership base. And, much of the heavy lifting can be automated! 

Beyond creating happy members, you now have opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. This helps you further build your reputation and your customer’s personal investment in your brand. 

Post-sale automation gives you a greater capacity to be available and involved in your customer’s journey.

For example, you can create an automated workflow that notifies you when a customer hasn’t been in for a while. From here, you can automate a text or email to check in on them. 

You can also automate membership renewal notifications, send out surveys, customize website text chat responses,  and create follow-up workflows to ensure that a customer’s needs are completely addressed.

When used effectively, CRM automation makes maintaining existing customers’ investment simple.  

Enhancing Sales Team Collaboration with CRM Automation

Historically, sales and marketing operate separately. Marketing criticizes sales for not following up on leads. Sales might suggest that marketing doesn’t understand the reality of the field. 

CRM automation can help alleviate the tensions to create a more collaborative strategy inter and intradepartmental. 

Standardize your language

Use templates for automated functions like email or text message touch-points to help to standardize communication with leads. 

This ensures each lead receives the same treatment, regardless of if they’ve been assigned to your top-performing sales rep or someone else. Furthermore, it allows your sales team to have a benchmark for their efforts.  

Automate assignments

When a new lead comes onto the scene, automatically assign them to a sales team member. This helps to shorten the sales pipeline and increases your odds of making a sale. 

Increased visibility

CRM automation offers a certain level of visibility between team members to help with task allocation and data reporting. Additionally, automation can help teams work and manage projects through customizable dashboards. 

Optimizing Sales Forecasting and Reporting with CRM Automation

When it comes to optimizing sales forecasting and reporting, automations can be a huge help. Many CRM solutions are capable of: 

• Analyzing A/B testing results
• Lead scoring to help identify high-intent customers
• Campaign success analysis
• Profile building
• Social media integrations to help identify high quality leads

CRM automation is a powerful tool for collecting and interpreting data. It can alleviate hours of painstaking data transfer and analysis. This leaves you with more time to focus on adjusting your strategy for maximum success.

Measuring the Success of Your CRM Automation Strategy

Implementing a CRM automation strategy and not measuring its success would be like handwashing your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher–pointless. 

Luckily, most CRM software has automated tools that can track your success can vary. There are 4 main metrics you’ll want to look at to understand the success of your automation strategy:

Value Metrics

This is a broad metric that mainly looks at the overall effectiveness of your program and how that relates to your bottom line. This may include your ROI and percent of closed sales from each campaign. 

Efficiency Metrics

When it comes to automation success, efficiency is an important metric to look at. This metric may measure the percentage of qualified leads, the average time a lead spends in the sales pipeline, or even the length of the sales cycle. 

Response Metrics

Response metrics give you insights about open rates, click rates, and unsubscribe rates. These can be especially helpful when creating A/B tests or deploying new automated campaigns. 

Activity Metrics

Activity metrics make sure your emails are being received. These metrics report how many emails, texts, or other personalized campaigns were deployed that week and how many of them lead to campaign fulfillment. 

Best Practices for Maintaining a Successful CRM Automation Strategy

Automation is a powerful tool to keep in your back pocket. In order to successfully implement a CRM automation strategy, it is important to establish some best practices both for yourself and for your team. 

Here are some guidelines to help you maximize the impact of your gym sales strategy” 

• Automate repetitive tasks

• Personalize content

• Cleanse your contact list regularly

• Measure, analyze and adapt

• Provide training

• Dont spam your contacts

Overcoming Common Challenges with CRM Automation Implementation

Remember that 44% failure rate we mentioned earlier? In order to avoid becoming a part of the statistic, here are some of the major challenges you may have to overcome.

Treating your CRM automation as the solution rather than a tool

There is a tendency among businesses to see a CRM as a means to an end. While automation is a great tool to lean on, it cannot fully replace your sales team. The human touch is a critical commodity in the sales pipeline. Be discerning when it comes to where and hope you implement CRM automation. 

Lack of training

To build a house, a carpenter needs to know how to use his tools. The same goes for the sales team. Providing your sales team with comprehensive training will that mistakes are reduced and that they are using CRM automation to its maximum potential. 

Disorganization

Yes, a CRM is supposed to help you with organization, but in order to reap the full benefits you need to be clear about your goals, your leadership, and where you will be implementing solutions. CRM

Future Trends in CRM Automation and Sales Strategy.

Technology is rapidly evolving and CRM software is no exception. WIth all eyes on the developing CRM market, the potential for innovation is high. Here are the top trends to watch out for as you build your CRM marketing automation strategy.

AI

The future of CRM automation is incomplete without some sort of AI. Even now, we’re beginning to see more IVA’s (intelligent virtual agents) and they’re nearly indistinguishable from actual, live agents. We’ll begin to see CRM strategies that include tracking comments, voice technology, and social media insights. 

Customer Experience

Most businesses already revolve around their customer experience, but CRMs are quickly becoming the tool of choice for the customer service sector. We will see CRM systems begin to focus more on interfaces that are easy to use and data that is easier to analyze. 

XaaS: everything as a service

The explosion of XsaaS, a.k.a. Everything as a service, will lead to more companies seeking cloud solutions in conjunction with their CRM. This will likely lead to a prioritizing of CRM accessibility from a network of both mobile and stationary devices. 

Closing thoughts

The fitness industry is projected to grow upwards of 171% within the next five years. With such rapid development, it is crucial that you are prepared for growth. Having a CRM automation strategy in place is the best way to do just that. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how automation can revolutionize your business, look no further. Gleantap is a leader in CRM automation technology. But, don’t just take our word for it. Sign up for a free demo now to see how Gleantap can revolutionize your business.  

FAQs

How does CRM automation help with sales?

CRM automation can help sales by taking over repetitive tasks, improving customer relations, and bolstering collaboration between sales and marketing teams. 

What types of businesses can benefit from using CRM automation?

All businesses can benefit from using CRM Automation. Nearly 80% of U.S. companies use CRM automation. 

What are some popular CRM automation tools available in the market?

Two way text, touch-point tracking, customer profile building, and market metric and analysis are a few popular CRM automation tools available on the market. 

How can I implement CRM automation in my business?

There are several softwares on the market that can help you implement a CRM automation. Gleantap, Glofox, and Gymdesk are a few. 

Get the full story here:

• Choosing The Right Gym CRM Software For Your Club
• The 10 Best CRM Softwares for Boosting Membership