Customer relationship management (CRM) can provide a goldmine of data about the customers of any business and their experiences. By utilizing your CRM data, you can learn how to better serve your customers and improve your sales funnel.

Most CRM platforms can provide deep information and metrics about your customer’s journey, but accessing and analyzing the information contained within the system is where many businesses falter. Knowing what information to look for, where to look for it, and knowing what to do with it once you access it makes a huge difference in your business success. 

To learn your customers’ preferences and buying habits, and to ultimately obtain more leads and sales, consider these metrics:

• Sales closing rate. This metric is used to determine how well your marketing and sales tactics are working. Your CRM system gathers the number of leads you have obtained in a specific time period and calculates the number of sales to determine your closing rate.

• Marketing campaign ROI. How successful are your marketing campaigns? Similar to the closing rate above, CRM data helps you calculate the return on investment of your marketing campaigns with these statistics:
  • The number of acquired leads
  • The number of potential clients that were converted into customers
  • The amount of money generated by the sales in relation to the cost of the campaign

• Customer retention rate. When you are successful in obtaining a lead, you don’t want to lose a potential sale. It’s important to know if customers are remaining customers, or if they are going elsewhere. To learn your customer retention rate:
  • Subtract the number of new prospects you gained during a specific time frame from the number of customers you had at the end of the period
  • Then, divide this number by the total quantity of clients you obtained at the start of the period

• Length of sales cycle. The sales cycle is how long it takes before a prospect buys a product or service. Most businesses prefer a shorter sales cycle, of course, because a quicker sales cycle means quicker sales.

• Lifetime client value. To measure this rate, examine a prospective customer’s purchasing patterns and the amount of time they remain engaged with your business. A more engaged customer can mean added sales, so identifying this type of customer and targeting them for special incentives can be a great tactic.

Using your CRM metrics to learn about your customers and potential customers is one way to customize your sales activities to the client. Customer metrics are only helpful, however, if you use the data the right way. Data alone isn’t going to improve your customer experience or increase your sales. It requires insight, deliberation, and the ability to give the situation a close, hard look.