Having accurate and up-to-date information about your contacts makes it easier to understand their habits. Managing that information effectively is crucial to your sales success, that’s where Teamgate CRM can really help.

Once upon a time good customer contact management was defined by a bulging address book, containing no more than names, addresses, and telephone numbers.

Such was the value of this hard-sourced information, top salespeople were headhunted energetically, based on the contents of that little book.

Thankfully, the sales process has changed dramatically, and so has the technology behind it.

Source tracking, gathering, and management of valuable contact information has become an integral part of the customer sales journey. And, quality Top CRM software – such as Teamgate – are pivotal to effective sales contact management.

Contact gathering and management

The more you have of anything, the harder it is to find exactly what you want.

Closer collaboration between sales and marketing has greatly simplified the gathering of lead contact information. But, with that, comes problems.

More information, requires better management, and that management should offer intuitive filtering of real possibilities from time-wasters.

Smarter gathering; collation; management; segmentation; and filtering of those leads is key to separating the wheat from the chaff. Once the real opportunities have been identified, it’s time to start the sales process.

Common contact management problems

All stages of customer contact management bring their own particular problems. One of the factors which has made Teamgate a multi award-winning sales CRM, is the ability to adapt and foresee the contact relationship management problems of the present, as well as the future – and design with that in mind.

It’s said that hindsight is the twenty-twenty vision. If you look to the past, sales teams barely recognised that they were having sales contact management problems, until someone found a better way of doing things.

Some of the biggest headaches for salespeople in the past, were:

• Constant duplication of contact information
• Time-consuming manual input of information into spreadsheets
• Not having all the necessary information regarding a person or company
• Records of communication history were poorly managed and difficult to access
• Inability to segment and filter companies for smarter search and analysis purposes
• Tedious manual compilation of reports on selected contact groups or people

Sales contact management with your CRM

Teamgate is far more than a contacts book – recording names, numbers and addresses – Teamgate CRM software lets you track and manage all aspects of your customer relationship. Along with the most basic, and necessary, information, Teamgate gives you an overview of your contacts’ interactions; past history; won sales; preferred products; pain-points; and accordingly presents you with a visible and actionable analysis.

Addressing the problems associated with CRM contact management, Teamgate has innovated how salespeople can:

1.    Prevent automatic duplication of imported contacts – Teamgate recognises when imported contacts, from any source are duplicates – CSV or XSLX files, Google contacts, Mac address book, or directly from LinkedIn – the software will request a further instruction on how to proceed.
2.    Allow you to fully customise the information you gather on both people, and companies. Flexible customisable fields – and tags – offer clearer and more in-depth information on your contacts, and allows you search your contact management database more efficiently, using multiple criteria.
3.    Manage all communication history with contacts far more easily. Emails, files, telephone calls, meetings, notes, events, and comments are all stored, and accessible in the contact’s card.
4.    When searching files, the sales person has the ability to view contacts by status, segment, or any of a host of other criteria. All filtering options are fully customisable allowing you to create the necessary tags suitable for you, and your unique sales process.
5.    Teamgate offers you the ability to clearly visualise all deals associated with each contact.
6.    Conversations via Intercom CRM integration are all clearly visible, adding to the value of your contact communication history.
7.    The Teamgate analysis section allows you to prepare and present reports on your relationship with single, or multiple contacts, easily, and with far more clarity.

The real benefits of better contact management

The benefits of CRM contact management – which come with award-winning software like Teamgate – are evident during every stage of your contact interaction.

Here’s how:

• A clean database will simplify every task throughout your sales process. Well organised leads cards, containing all the information you may need, are always easily accessed, searchable, and containing all the knowledge you need to push your sales forward.
• It doesn’t matter which one of your sales team is working with a customer, Teamgate CRM contact management contains all the necessary information, giving the appointed salesperson all the information they need, on the go. This seamless feature allows salespeople to take over exactly where a colleague has left off, armed with all the relevant information.
• Segmentation of contacts allows for the creation of customisable sales categories – industry type, size, location, etc. – and even smarter filtering functionality. Meaning, searching for a contact among thousands can be defined by segment, or any other fully customisable criteria which suits your process.
• Knowing your contact’s past history and relationship is vital for driving that relationship forward. Really great sales contact management abilities – like those available in Teamgate CRM – helps you fully analyse the importance of valued customers, simply and smartly, and react accordingly.
• Location is no longer a barrier to contact management. Teamgate gives your sales team full mobility and access to all communication history, personal information, company information, notes, lead ownership, geographic mapping, in-app contact facility, and all from anywhere with an available internet connection.

Contact management should be uncomplicated, accessible, and burden-free. It should offer the sales team every fragment of customer information, when, and where it’s needed. And, most importantly, great contact management should actively drive the complete sales process forward.