48. The Importance of a CRM - Every cleaning business needs one
Plus a sample sales pipeline
A CRM system - Customer Relationship Management - is the bedrock of your sales process.
It allows you to build a sales pipeline, automate key tasks and analyze all your sales efforts in one place.
I can count on two hands the number of cleaning business owner’s I’ve spoken with that have a CRM.
Only two of those actually used it.
When you’ve worked hard to get leads, each one should is a valuable asset.
They are an opportunity to improve your conversion rates and boost your top line.
To do this you need a well organised, always updated CRM to serve your cleaning business.
Agenda
What is a CRM
How to organise your CRM
The Golden Rule of using a CRM
What is a CRM?
A CRM is a system where you to track all the important information about your prospects and clients.
It allows you to store, organise and share customer information throughout your business.
Email addresses, contact numbers, call dates, follow up reminders, call notes go into your CRM.
You can establish a sales pipeline and place each lead at different stages of your sales process.
Your CRM will help you stay organised, follow up and avoid leads falling through the cracks.
Everyone on your team should have access to the CRM. They need to be able to review customer information and add their own inputs.
As a result, you can co-ordinate your sales efforts and track the position of every lead in your pipeline.
How to Organize Your CRM?
Your CRM is only as good as the information you put into it.
That’s why it’s important to try and keep your prospecting list as clean as possible.
Only add leads to your CRM once you’re confident that their contact information is accurate.
Once added you should filter the lead into your sales pipeline:
Prospecting
Every new lead should enter your CRM as soon as it’s acquired.
Logically, that lead will be placed into a category titled “Prospecting” or “New Lead”.
All new leads are gathered here after they have taken action - responded to an email, paid ad or found your business online.
Every lead should have a note about where it came from so you can identify the marketing channel that provides the best leads for your business.
Lead Qualification
Every new lead should go through a discovery and qualification process.
That means picking up the phone and asking prospects questions to gauge whether they are a good fit for your business.
Lead qualification should only take one phone call. But, it might take a few follow up attempts to get the prospect on the phone after becoming a new lead.
Remember to follow up more than once to maximise your opportunity with every lead.
Site Visit
After qualifying leads, the natural next step is arranging a site visit.
A site visit gives you an opportunity to see meet the prospect and see what needs cleaning.
You can ask questions, take pictures, make notes and collect all the information necessary to prepare a proposal.
Make sure you add all this information to the prospect’s entry on the CRM.
Proposal
On completion of your site visits, leads move to the proposal stage in your pipeline.
This stage is where the lead is more likely to take action. You should prioritise the leads in this column as they are closer to making a buying decision.
You also want to understand how many proposals or hot leads you have in your pipeline every week. This column helps you measure your sales efforts if you’ve set clear sales goals.
Negotiation + Commitment
In an ideal world, we would like clients to accept our proposal in it’s original form once it’s submitted.
The reality is that there’s always a negotiation period. Price, service levels, service requirements, start dates, staff, are discussed until a final agreement is reached.
When your proposal enters this stage, there’s an increased chance of you winning the contract because negotiating terms is a good buying signal.
Closed Won
Every contact added to this column has become a client and contracts have been signed.
Closed Lost
Contacts added to this column means the bid was lost to a competitor. Your job now is to follow up with the prospect every quarter to see if they are happy with the provider they selected.
Not all leads will be ready to act straight away. That doesn’t mean you should write them off. Add them to a nurture campaign so they receive regular content from you. A newsletter, podcast episode or YouTube video allow you to add value and promote your cleaning business.
Prospects become more informed about your business and the benefits of using your service.
You can also schedule quarterly follow ups with contacts in your nurture campaign and find out if they are ready to engage your cleaning business.
All this can be set up and managed in your CRM.
3. The Golden Rule of Using a CRM
To maximise the use of your CRM, it always needs to be used and updated.
It’s not the sort of software that you log into once a week to try and update everything that happened.
This approach isn’t sustainable. You’ll find yourself falling behind, which leads to inaccurate information and makes the CRM useless for your business.
Instead, always have your CRM open, ready and waiting for when you need to update the information and status of a lead.
Content to check out
In this week’s episode of The Growth Lab podcast, I have a chat with James and Angel DayPorter + The Profitable Cleaner Podcast about how to sell more commercial cleaning contracts. Listen here.
Prefer watching over listening? Check out The Growth Lab podcast on YouTube.
Need More Help?
Email me with the growth strategy for your cleaning business. The more details you provide, the more personal I can make my response.
Want to 3x the growth of your cleaning business over the next 12 months? Book a call.
Thanks for reading!
Matt @ The Growth Lab
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