Despite the rise of digital channels and consumer fatigue, phone calls and SMS remain effective sales tools in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). In fact, the increasing number of ad blockers and opt-outs can actually benefit businesses by helping to identify genuinely interested prospects.

This blog explores leveraging this opportunity by integrating phone and SMS capabilities into your CRM. We’ll delve into specific dialer CRM options, provide step-by-step setup guidance, and share best practices to optimize your call and text sales outreach campaigns for maximum impact.

How To Make Calls and Send SMS Messages via Pipeline CRM

Our SMS integration allows for seamless two-way communication with your customers. This means you can build and maintain relationships in real time directly from your Pipeline CRM dashboard. 

Once integrated with Pipeline CRM, you can send SMS messages from various points within the platform, such as contact, deal, or business card profiles. Simply click the “SMS” icon to start a conversation.

The SMS messenger window will open from the bottom. If you have any SMS history, it will be displayed in the message window. From there, you can send SMS messages to your customers. 

Once you’ve set up your call and SMS providers, you should see:

• Options to create click-to-call and click-to-text buttons
• Options to make and receive calls, track missed calls, listen to voicemails and call recordings
• Options to generate an automated LeadCaller
• Your recordings and voicemails
• A list of calls as well as inbound and outbound CRM text messages
• Depending on your provider, you can also monitor call quality, usage, and device status and set alerts

Which Phone Call App Works With Pipeline CRM?

Pipeline CRM has native phone dialer integrations that work with several caller apps, including Aircall, CallRail, and RingCentral.

Don’t see your phone/SMS provider on our phone integration list? With Zapier, you can connect more than 277 different phone/SMS providers to Pipeline CRM. 

6 Benefits of Phone and SMS CRM Integrations

Integrating phone and SMS capabilities into your CRM can significantly boost your win rate. Let’s explore how.

• Increase prospect engagement: By engaging customers through various channels, you can boost conversation rates and improve sales outcomes. SMS, with an impressive 98% of open rate, is a valuable tool in this strategy.

• Automate prospect follow-up: With phone, SMS, and email integrations, you can set meeting and appointment reminders, send market updates, and even send automated follow-up messages to prospects still on the fence. 

• Boost your expansion rate: Multiple touchpoints lead to more data. The more data you accumulate, the better your up-sells, cross-sells, and add-ons will be. If a prospect hopes for the best in a losing position, your recommendations (based on past sales data and experience) can provide value to clients and increase sales revenue. 

• Improve client retention: Multiple touchpoints mean your clients can reach out for support using the channel that works for them. With integration, your company can be hyper-responsive to client support requests.

• Scale communication: Integrating and centralizing your sales outreach tactics, marketing communication, and customer support means you can more easily manage the growing volume of messages from your prospects, clients, and vendors. 

• Segment prospects efficiently: Are you looking to pitch clients who have invested X in the last year? Maybe you’d like to connect your best sales reps with clients who spent $$$ with your firm last year. Your integrations pool and centralize this data, making it easy to filter, segment, and search. 

The more touchpoints you have, the easier it is to nurture, sell, and close new customers. The more data you have, the more precise your targeting and sales messages. 

Learn more about the benefits of adopting dialer integration into your sales CRM system.

When Should You Use SMS or Calls in Your CRM?

Contacting your prospects by phone may put them off, especially if they’re in a younger demographic (e.g., millennials). On the other hand, if you focus your attention exclusively on SMS messaging, you may not be able to get the kind of results you aim for.

So, when do you use these tools in your CRM? According to a recent report, email and SMS serve different purposes.

Consumers rely on SMS for: 

• Incentives, offers, and deals (e.g., mortgage rates are at a 60-year low)
• Personal alerts (e.g., low balance, account updates, notifications, etc.)
• Personalization and staying in the loop (e.g., the IRS has just changed the rules again)
• Branded messages: 98% of mobile users will read a branded or business-based SMS message
• High engagement: 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes!

What about phone calls? Consumers accept phone calls in the following situations: 

• 61% of customers want to speak to a person during the purchase cycle
• 75% believe that a phone call will produce the fastest response
• Customers want to talk on the phone when they’re making a high-value purchase

On the other hand, email is used to: 

• Indoctrinate, segment, and win back clients CRM
• Educate, inform, and persuade clients 
• Offer incentives (e.g., irresistible offers, discounts, coupons, deals, etc.)
• Build, establish, and maintain community

This idea varies from industry to industry. If you want a clear answer for your organization, you must test these factors yourself. Let your data do the talking.

Increase Your Deal Win Rates With Call and Text CRM Integrations

Sending texts and having a sales call are easy ways to build meaningful relationships with prospects, customers, and vendors. With the right structure and a consistent action plan, you can maximize the deal wins, revenue, and value your CRM generates, one contact at a time. 

Try Pipeline’s dialer and sms integration CRM today. Get started with a 14-day free trial.

It’s marketing. Agencies filled with exceptional marketers are struggling to generate leads for their own businesses.

If your marketing agencies also experience the same problems, stick around. This blog will tell you about the five lead generation tools for marketing agencies, including the best agency CRM software and its robust sales automation tools. We’ll analyze each tool based on its top features, pricing, and reviews.

Why Do Marketing Agencies Need Lead Generation Tools?

Why do some marketing agencies struggle to keep their sales pipelines full of leads?

Agency Analytics found that modern agencies struggle to stand out in a saturated market, where larger agencies take the lion’s share of leads and new business. 

“The biggest challenge we are facing as an agency is consistently attracting the volume of qualified leads for our own client acquisition that we want.”

– Larry Weideman, SEO Manager, Magnyfi

HubSpot’s Marketing Agency Growth report confirms this: 60% of agencies struggle to generate leads. They’re unable to generate the quantity or quality of leads they need. 

And it gets worse. Most marketing agencies struggle to remove bad clients (28%) and keep existing clients (16%). This is an unpleasant reality. 

5 Best Marketing Agency Tools for Generating Leads

Marketing agencies need a specific set of tools to generate a consistent volume of high-quality leads. Notice that the tools in this list are focused on lead generation, not on the other aspects of agency business (e.g., project management, design and development, etc.). Agencies tend to have one or two of these tools; it’s rare for them to have all of them. 

• Pipeline CRM: The best agency CRM software for lead generation

• Bidsketch: Proposal software to easily create and manage proposals

• Copilot: Client portal software to streamline administration work

• Pitch: Presentation software to free up time for creating sales pitch decks from scratch
• Verk: AI digital workforce software to conveniently mine leads from trusted sources

1. Pipeline CRM: The Best CRM for Marketing Agencies

What’s the best CRM software for agencies? We may be biased, but we’ll say it’s Pipeline CRM.

At first, you may be tempted to assume that a CRM is a CRM—they’re all the same. That’s a mistake. The best CRM for agencies should help you generate leads, cultivate relationships, and win new clients.

If you want to solve your lead problem, you need an operational CRM, one that’s built to drive sales revenue. Agency CRM software can automate tasks, improve agency workflows, track deals from RFP to kick-off, and more. That’s where Pipeline CRM comes in. Pipeline’s Agency CRM software does all this, providing your team with the important reminders, tools, and support needed to close deals. It’s made by salespeople, for salespeople. 

Why You Need Pipeline CRM for Lead Generation for a Marketing Agency

One thing marketing agencies struggle with is follow-up. It’s a difficult thing to maintain a consistent relationship with prospects over the course of three to nine months. Even if you know that you need to follow up, what do you say? These are details that need to be addressed ahead of time. 

With agency CRM software from Pipeline CRM, you can create your own document library and provide your account executives with instructions on when and how to use the content and templates in it. This could include questionnaires, case studies, review profiles, samples, and references.

Not only that, Pipeline CRM empowers you to manage and nurture leads seamlessly. Capture prospects’ interests, needs, and behaviors through our customizable contact management. Then, leverage Pipeline’s Drip Email Campaign solution to send targeted messages that resonate. Automate and track the entire lead nurturing process—all within a single, powerful agency CRM software.

Here are some of the key features of Pipeline CRM:

• Multiple sales pipelines: this allows you to manage several pipelines simultaneously while tailoring each pipeline to match your client’s needs.
• AI email assistant: write and rewrite emails with a single click to save time and effort.
• Custom deals: attach multiple contacts to one deal, tailor each deal stage names, and establish user permissions.
• Automatic task assignment: automatically assign tasks and update leads as they move through the sales pipeline.
• Rich integration options: from email campaign integration with Mailchimp to accounting integration with QuickBooks and more, Pipeline has it all.

Pipeline CRM Pricing

• Start plan: $29 per user per month
• Develop plan: $39 per user per month
• Grow plan: $59 per user per month 

Reviews

• 4.4/5 star rating on G2 (904 reviews total) 
• 4.4/5 star rating on Capterra (616 reviews total)
• 9.8/10 score via TrustRadius 
• 4.2/5 star rating via Gartner (41 reviews total)

2. Bidsketch: Proposal Software for Marketing Agencies

Creating proposals can be discouraging and time-consuming.  Your prospects reach out to you and ask you to bid for their projects. Most of the time, this is an unfair request. You know that your prospect probably already has a preferred candidate in mind. They’re simply looking for a price they can use as leverage to get more deliverables or lower the cost. It can be an exhausting experience to respond to RFP after RFP (request for proposal).

Why you need Bidsketch

Bidsketch makes the proposal creation process simple. Here are some of their top features:

• Real-time email notification: receive an instant email notification whenever the client opens the proposals, helping you close the sale as soon as possible or plan a follow-up action.
• Built-in electronic signatures: there is no need for third-party tools like DocuSign to get essential signatures.
• Customizable proposals: easily add content and fees and change the proposal designs to match your brand’s style.
• Capture revenue instantly: get deposits secured immediately upon client sign-off with approval messages.
• Welcome and guide new clients: these messages appear instantly after signing, providing clear instructions for the next steps.

Pricing

• Starter: $15 per month – single user, limited features
• Solo: $29 per month – single user 
• Team: $79 per month – up to 3 users
• Business: $149 per month – up to 8 users

Reviews

• 3.6/5 star rating on G2 (11 reviews total) 
• 4.3/5 star rating on Capterra (25 reviews total)
• 8/10 score via TrustRadius (11 reviews total)
• 4.1/5 star rating via SpotSaaS (56 reviews total)

3. Copilot: Client Portal Software

Handling the various facets of client administration can take a lot of work. Let’s say that your client, via someone in legal, requests a copy of version three of your statement of work. Can you find that specific file? Is this the file that you’ve sent, or is it the one with their signature? Is it the initial draft or the version with their requested changes? 

Your client made several requests via email to Steven, your account manager. If Steven deletes the emails your client sent to him, do you have a record of the messages sent from your client? You should. 

Why you need Copilot

Copilot provides marketing agencies with the tools to onboard clients, deliver services, and accept payments. It’s a client portal that integrates with the tools you’re already using. Some of Copilot’s top features are: 

• Messaging portal: allows you to communicate privately and securely with clients. 
• Easy billing: create invoices, subscriptions, and other payment options for clients. 
• Contracts organization: manage all of your contracts in a centralized location. 
• Create and record forms: streamline data collection and inbound communication from clients. 
• Advanced file sharing: share, organize, and manage data securely with internal and external teams.
• Help desk: provide clients with ongoing support via your very own help desk/support portal

Pricing

• Starter: $29/mo. (Per user)
• Professional: $69/mo. (Per user)
• Advanced: $119/mo. (Per user)
• Supersonic: Contact for a quote 

Reviews

• 4.8/5 star rating on G2 (139 reviews total) 
• 4.9/5 star rating on Capterra (19 reviews total)
• 4.9/5 rating via GetApp (19 reviews total)
• 5/5 star rating via Software Advice (19 reviews total)

4. Pitch: Presentation Software

Marketing agency clients have a reasonable request. They want you to pitch them. Here’s the unreasonable part of their request: their expectations from the pitch tend to be fuzzy, implicit, or unrealistic. 

You can flush out these poor expectations by making them explicit and discussing them with your prospects. Do some digging and take the time to find out why this specific objection is important to your prospect. This helps you identify (a.) which objections are flexible and which objections are rigid, (b.) why these objections are important to your prospects, and (c.) how to integrate their adjusted expectations into your pitch.

Why you need Pitch

Pitch comes pre-loaded templates perfect for with marketing agencies. This includes templates for presentations, pitch decks, sales decks, team meetings, and board decks. 

With these fully customizable, pre-formatted templates, you can quickly create, format, and structure your pitch deck, slides, or presentation in a short period of time. Use their content library to find assets and creative content that’s agency-specific and ready to go.

Pricing

• Free: forever free
• Pro: $25 per month – up to 2 users
• Business: $100 per month – up to 5 users

Reviews

• 4.4/5 star rating on G2 (41 reviews total) 
• 4.5/5 star rating on Product Hunt (160 reviews total)
• 9.6/10 score via TrustRadius 
• 4.9/5 star rating via Capterra (30 reviews total)

5. Verk AI: Digital Workforce Software

What’s the biggest expense for agencies? 

It’s people. When you win new clients, your headcount (and expenses) skyrocket—salaries, benefits, bonuses, licenses, accounts, taxes, etc. It’s a balancing act that’s difficult for many agencies to manage. When you hire new employees, you must undergo a lengthy onboarding process before they’re profitable.

Then there’s the cost of a mis-hire. 

According to Bradford Smart, Ph.D., a mis-hire costs six to 27 times an employee’s salary. If they can’t perform, they’re using your agency as a stepping stone to a preferred opportunity, or they’re unable to maintain the pace you need, it will be expensive. It’s no surprise why AI is so appealing. 

Why do you need Verk?

Verk provides marketing agencies with human-like, AI-powered digital workers. You can get an AI Sales Rep, AI Graphic Designer, AI Market Researcher, AI Marketer, etc. With Verk, you can get 24/7 support in a specific area of your agency at a fraction of the cost. Here are some of the use cases: 

• AI Sales employees that prospect and mine leads from a database of 275M+ verified contacts. Your digital sales rep verifies and cleans up prospect data, sends outreach emails, and pitches for new businesses 24/7.
• AI Designers that create personalized and compelling graphics for your brand.
• AI Market Researchers to conduct market research on various topics for your agency.
• Combine Verk with Agency CRM Software like Pipeline to generate a steady flow of leads all year long.

Pricing

Verk AI Assistants start at $350 per month. It offers the following solutions: 

• AI-Data Analyst
• AI-Influencer Marketer
• AI-SEO Analyst
• AI-Product Designer
• AI-Performance Marketer

Reviews

• 3.2/5 star rating on Google Play (30 reviews total) 

Pipeline CRM Is the Best Lead-Generation CRM Software for Agencies

Lead generation is one of the main issues faced by many marketing agencies. Smaller agencies struggle to stand out in a saturated market, while larger agencies take the lion’s share of leads and new business. With the right approach, you can attract new leads, nurture relationships, and win new clients. 

But it starts with the right toolset. When you find one, your marketing agency can generate the quality and volume of leads you need to grow consistently year over year.

Adopt Pipeline CRM to help generate and nurture high-quality leads. Our seamless Gravity Forms integration, for instance, will automatically send user-submitted data from the form as leads in Pipeline CRM. Our robust sales pipeline allows you to monitor the status of each deal. This way, your salespeople have the information they need to prioritize their activity and reduce dry spells.

Sign up today and enjoy a 14-day free trial of Pipeline CRM!

That said, preventing every client from leaving is almost impossible—but proper application of manufacturing sales CRM software and implementing churn management strategies can help reduce customer attrition. 

A dedicated CRM for manufacturing companies offers real-time insights into what’s causing your clients to bail out on their contracts. This way, you can eliminate bumps in the customer journey, turn unhappy customers into loyal clients, and reduce customer churn.

In today’s article, we help you craft some CRM strategies that reduce customer churn rates and keep the profit scale high for the long run.

What is Customer Churn? 

Customer churn measures the percentage of customers who stopped using your service in a given period. 

Let’s say you start the quarter of your manufacturing business with 500 customers and have 440 by the end of it. Your churn rate for the said quarter is 12%, meaning you lost 12% of your total customers.

If losing some customers is almost impossible to avoid, why are we giving it so much priority in the first place? 

Because acquiring new customers is far more difficult and expensive than retaining existing ones. Plus, with more ex-customers switching to your competitors, you’ll lose your market share. 

6 CRM Strategies to Minimize Customer Churn 

Delivering high-quality products isn’t enough for a manufacturer who wants to retain customers. Improving service efficiency and maintaining healthy customer relationships are just as crucial. They reflect customer appreciation, foster loyalty, and convince them to have a long-lasting business relationship. 

But how to do it properly? Here are some customer relationship management strategies that will help you reduce churn.

1. Analyze the Root Cause of Customer Churn

If your customers are considering leaving, there has to be some issue with your service. So, the first thing you must do to reduce customer churn is to find out what’s causing it. 

Be diligent in measuring customer turnover by gathering relevant sales data from your manufacturing sales CRM software. This includes past interactions, complaints, support requests, purchase history, etc.

Then, pinpoint patterns, such as reduced purchasing frequency, increased customer complaints, or declining engagement, and monitor customer journeys regularly. Set up analytics that delivers real-time reports on customer retention and business health. 

Additionally, set up exit surveys. As shown below, personally contact the churned customers to find out what made them leave your company. 

Some common causes of customer churn in manufacturing include:

• Delayed delivery
• Better offers from competition
• Poor onboarding 
• Lack of quick customer service

Knowing the most prevalent reasons behind the churn will help you craft strategies targeting those issues and improving customer retention. 

2. Identify Customers at Risk of Churning

Don’t wait for customers to leave, but be proactive in identifying those considering exiting. In fact, this strategy is the most popular churn reduction tactic used by 85% of B2B businesses. That’s why some CRMs for manufacturing companies offer high-risk customer tracking features, including Pipeline CRM.

Pipeline’s CRM for manufacturing companies lets you set up filters to track clients at risk of churning. By monitoring their sales and communication activities, you’ll be notified about those who remain in the high-risk category for more than seven days. 

You can add the following fields in the filter to make the identification process more efficient: 

• Days since the last activity
• Total Pipeline or Won Deals value
• Next Milestone Due or Next Milestone Status
• Other custom fields

Consider using the same field in the deal list view. It will help your team detect underlying customer health issues and contact them before they churn. 

3. Standardize the Customer Journey for Each Lead

The first step is to map out the entire customer journey, from the moment they discover your website to after-sales support. This map should detail all touchpoints, such as website visits, inquiries, quotes, order placement, production updates, and customer support requests.

Once you understand the customer journey, identify key activity patterns at each stage. Leverage your manufacturing sales CRM to set up automated triggers that deliver personalized communication based on the customer’s needs and progress. This ensures timely engagement and tailors the experience for each individual.

For instance, you can leverage the email drip campaigns within your manufacturing CRM to deliver relevant resources based on customer queries or their position in the sales pipeline. This keeps them informed and engaged throughout the process.

Additionally, you can ​​automate data entry to quickly and accurately capture customer contact information, requirements, order size, and timeline, as well as automate contract and invoice delivery. This way, you save time and ensure efficiency throughout the customer journey.

Pro tip: Check out Pipeline CRM and QuickBooks two-way data sync to help you convert proposals to invoices in just one click!

4. Personalized Onboarding 

A customized onboarding experience makes your customers feel valuable, helps them achieve their goals with your manufacturing services, and sets them up for success. It improves their experience, leading to loyalty and enhanced customer lifetime value—all essential elements to reduce customer churn.

Use your CRM for manufacturing companies to analyze client data and understand their needs and pain points. Segment your leads based on factors like industry, company size, or specific challenges. The CRM’s contact management features become even more valuable, allowing you to attach personalized notes like special requests and deadlines for each client.

Now, leverage your manufacturing sales CRM’s automation power. Create customized onboarding workflows for each customer segment, ensuring a targeted and efficient experience. But don’t stop there! Use the CRM’s automation features to send out onboarding surveys, collecting valuable feedback from your clients.

Asking clients for feedback shows your commitment to their success. By understanding “what could have been better” (and acting on it!), you demonstrate a genuine willingness to go the extra mile for their satisfaction. This feedback loop strengthens your relationships with clients and positions you as a service provider truly invested in their success.

5. Offer Incentives

Have you ever received “We Miss You” messages from brands you have stopped purchasing from? If yes, you know most of them are likely ignored. 

But do you know what customers notice? Rewards. It shows you value them, making your customers feel appreciated and boosting their loyalty. 

Keep in mind that the incentives don’t have to be grand, but they should be personalized enough to entice customers to stay.

Therefore, offer incentives that align with your customer’s current stage. For example, if your contract with one of your customers is about to end, you can offer a discounted deal renewal rate to prevent that client from moving to another manufacturer. 

Set up different triggers in your CRM for manufacturing companies so that you get real-time notifications when a client moves from one stage to another in their customer journey.

Add notes to each contact to keep track of their personal details and use them to customize incentives. A small discount for placing the first order with your manufacturing company or a gift voucher on your client’s birthday can go a long way. It’s the thought that counts!

6. Stay Competitive

One reason customers may want to part ways with you is that they get better offers from your competitors. So, always strive to promote your unique selling points (USPs) to existing and potential customers. 

That said, don’t just talk about how you are different. Instead, show customers your services can evolve according to their changing needs. Analyze competitors, tally their offerings with yours, and see where you are lacking. This will uncover what can detract your customers from their brand and let you add that competitive advantage to your service before the customer churns. 

Choose a sales CRM software that sends real-time customer analytics data. Figure out your USPs, and change your offerings and charges to stay competitive. Subtly mention your competitors on sales calls and show what your clients will miss out on if they decide to end their journey with you. 

Top tip: Learn how to appropriately compare your offerings with your competitors without talking bad about them in this sales guide.

Decrease Customer Churn Rates with Robust Manufacturing Sales CRM Software

Retaining every customer you have ever had is unrealistic. But with solid, data-driven CRM strategies, you can retain your most valuable clients and cultivate life-long customer relationships. 

Before we conclude, here is a TL;DR version of the most important CRM strategies to reduce customer churn: 

• Assess the root cause behind the churns 
• See which customers are about to cancel their deal with your manufacturing business
• Follow a standardized process for every customer’s journey 
• Offer personalized onboarding to start the partnership on the right foot
• Start an incentive program 
• Flaunt your USPs and maintain your competitive edge

If you’re looking for a manufacturing sales CRM that can streamline your customer churn management strategies, Pipeline CRM is an excellent choice.

As one of the best manufacturing CRMs, Pipeline CRM has everything you need to retain your customers. Get real-time customer data to monitor client health, access past sales communication records to analyze what made customers leave, and automate email campaigns to re-engage disinterested customers, among other things. 

Want to reduce the customer churn for your manufacturing company to close to zero? Choose your Pipeline CRM package today!

In most companies, sales is still an unstructured and highly variable process. As it involves a more people-driven approach, the integration of AI may seem unconventional. However, when implemented through a reliable sales pipeline CRM, it can reshape how your company interacts with customers, improving revenue. 

From processing mountains of customer data to improving sales training, you can use generative AI in CRM to: 

• Make your sales operation more efficient 
• Segment customers and drive better personalization
• Prepare for risks and adjust strategies
• Close leads faster
• Improve customer experience

In short, generative AI in CRM can help your sales team assess, understand and connect with your target market. 

Wondering how? Let’s dive into how your sales team can use generative AI and drive business growth. 

What is Generative AI?

Generative AI is a variant of artificial intelligence that can learn from existing data sets and resources to produce new data. This includes images, videos, audio, code, text, and even simulations. A notable example of generative AI is OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Compared to the more task-specific traditional AI models, generative AI offers more flexibility. It also doesn’t need any operation-specific programming to produce results, allowing almost everyone to leverage this advanced technology in their daily task, including in B2B sales work.

7 Ways Sales Teams Can Use Generative AI to Increase Sales

According to a McKinsey report, 50% of companies adopted AI in at least one business area, sales being one of the three fields with the most revenue effect from it. But how do these companies use generative AI in sales? Let’s find out.

1. Email Writing Tool for Sales with Generative AI

A study shows that salespeople spend 31 hours a month on emailing. That’s more than 4 full working days dedicated to emailing rather than selling.

To cut down on time, you can ask the generative AI tool to write the emails. However, this workflow is still not 100% efficient as you still need to switch between platforms (the AI and the sales CRM software).

To fully leverage the power of AI, why not use an AI email writing feature that is offered within your CRM software? Pipeline CRM, for instance, offers a built-in AI email writing assistant that allows you to write or rewrite emails with just one click. You can select the email purpose (e.g., book a call or say thank you), edit the emails (e.g., more engaging or rephrase it), and even change the text format directly from the Email editor system. See the examples of how to use Pipeline’s CRM AI email writing assistant here.

When you combine this with your customer data, you can easily create different email purposes tailored for each customer segmentation. Such efficiency lets your sales team create personalized outreach emails as soon as leads come into the pipeline.  

Related: Download ready-to-use email templates for cold outreach, demo requests, and follow-up emails in this CRM guide.

2. Sales Forecasting with AI

One notable reason behind falling sales performance may be inaccuracies in sales forecasts. When forecasts are off the mark, it becomes difficult to gauge the true picture of market trends. This leaves your sales team flying blind, unable to effectively scale their operations to meet upcoming demand.

Sales pipeline CRM with generative AI capabilities can ease the process and make your sales forecasting more precise and automated. It can analyze customer responses and historical data and create predictive models. 

Such an artificial intelligence-backed system captures real-time sales data and represents the accurate conditions of the market. You can uncover patterns, trends, and their correlations and recognize demand changes based on seasonality, customer preferences, and the bandwidth of your sales team.

3. Workflow Automation with Generative AI

Performing repetitive tasks like data entry or assessing previous customer interactions takes up significant time for sales teams.

Powered by generative AI, reliable custom CRM software offers sales automation, freeing up your team’s time to focus on tasks that drive conversion. These tools can sync your customer contacts in a single, easy-to-use dashboard, which is extremely helpful for companies scaling their customer base. 

Your sales reps can use natural language prompts to enter the data into the AI tool to analyze the customer interactions and schedule follow-ups with the leads. Then, you can add the action points to your sales pipeline CRM. This will allow your sales reps to refer back to past interactions quickly and personalize sales calls better.

Additionally, you can also leverage the abundant information the generative AI has to generate new leads. For instance, your sales reps aim to target the Manhattan area to sell your cloud-based communication tool. To identify potential customers, they can ask the AI tool to find the top companies in the area. 

4. Lead Scoring with Generative AI

Scoring your leads is important for efficient resource allocation. It measures the lead’s quality and ensures that your sales reps prioritize those most likely to convert.

But as your company grows, so will the number of leads in your pipeline, making manual lead qualification demanding. Plus, traditional lead-scoring methods depend on subjective data points and judgments. It can often lead to inconsistencies and missed business opportunities—and that’s where generative AI comes in. 

A sales pipeline CRM platform integrated with artificial intelligence can assess large volumes of customer data quickly and accurately. It can identify the traits of your best users in granular detail and match your leads with your ideal buyer profile. 

This way, your sales team will only focus on leads most likely to convert, enhancing operational productivity. Your lead-scoring system will improve continuously over time as the AI system learns each time it handles fresher data. 

5. Sentiment Analysis

Understanding customer feedback is essential for any business to survive in the long run, as it helps drive continuous product and service improvements. Sentiment analysis can help companies uncover the most intricate details of each user’s feedback and align their services accordingly. 

Generative AI can accelerate this process by analyzing every customer response in detail. It can detect particular patterns in user complaints and point out the most prevalent customer challenges. This can eliminate roadblocks in the customer journey, enhancing the customer experience. 

Assessing the sentiment behind words in customer reviews also identifies customers at churn risk, giving you enough time to resolve the issue, re-engage, and retain them.

6. Sales Strategy Optimization

In rapidly evolving markets and changing customer needs, even your best strategies today may not drive the same results tomorrow. So, every business must monitor their sales performance and optimize the framework regularly. 

Generative AI can provide real-time market updates on how customers respond to your product and sales techniques. You can automate surveys, run A/B tests, and let artificial intelligence determine which parts of your strategy don’t align with current customer needs. This allows you to make immediate modifications to better cater to customer preferences for higher sales performance. 

7. Sales Training with Generative AI Tools

Applying generative AI lets you tailor coaching experiences for your teams and accommodate different learning styles. You can create sales call simulations for your reps to practice with, which will enhance their ability to adapt quickly to different customer needs and challenges. 

Furthermore, generative AI can identify your sales reps’ strengths and weaknesses. Based on these insights, it can generate customized training modules focused on helping your reps become more well-rounded salespeople. 

You can use artificial intelligence to create automated feedback loops, offering specific pointers on areas of improvement. It can also generate real-time sales performance metrics, enabling your teams to track progress and adjust their approach more effectively. 

Not only that, but using generative AI for sales training is also much more cost effective than traditional training methods. There is no need to create individual training plans for every team. You can use virtual training environments and let your sales teams participate from different locations.

Adopt Generative AI-Powered Custom CRM Software To Boost Your B2B Sales Performance

Although sales is a people-approach action, artificial intelligence can still help in many ways. Here is a rundown on how generative AI can help your sales teams: 

• Custom CRM software with generative AI can help you create personalized content for outreach emails without investing lots of hours.
• Automate tasks, predict customer behavior, create buyer personas, score leads, and forecast accurate sales.
• Dig deep into customer feedback and understand their sentiments.
• Analyze sales strategy and track its performance to create the most effective sales workflow.
• Enhance sales training sessions with AI-generated simulation, virtual training environments, and customized modules.

Seeing these immense benefits, Pipeline CRM integrated the power of generative AI, powered by OpenAI, to create a custom CRM software solution with a built-in AI email assistant. This innovative tool empowers your sales team to craft compelling emails in seconds, leading to faster closing times and freeing up your sales reps to focus on building relationships that matter.

Ready to strengthen your sales team with generative AI and hit and exceed your revenue goals? Choose your Pipeline plan today!

The competition for new customers in the construction business is aggressive and cutthroat. Customers today are educated, demanding, and price-conscious. If you want to nail your construction sales pitch and win new customers, it starts with construction lead management. 

What makes construction lead management so important? How does this improve your sales pitch? This blog will answer these questions and give tips on leveraging CRM data to improve your construction sales performance.

How Construction Leads Quality Impacts Sales Pitches

Let’s take a look at the data. According to Startup Bonsai:

• 53% of marketers spend at least half of their budget on lead generation
• Nurtured leads produce 20% more sales opportunities
• Nurtured leads generate 50% more sales at 33% lower costs

This is all great news. How is any of this a problem? 

In the ‘How to create sales workflows that close deals 3x faster’ blog, I shared research breaking down your lead flow. Here are some key numbers:

1. Only 3% of your prospects are ready to buy at any given moment
2. Another 37% need to be nurtured
3. A whopping 60% are unqualified leads; they’re not willing to buy

If you’re like most construction companies, you’re spending a significant amount of money on your leads and sales processes. However, only 3% of those leads are active buyers.

To overcome these challenges and improve your construction sales process, you’ll need to apply the following:

• disqualify prospects quickly
• identify prospects who need to be nurtured
• identify the prospects who will be the most profitable for your business

How are you supposed to find this out? The easiest and most accurate way is to use a CRM for construction. But, before we go there, let’s learn how to create a solid construction sales pitch.

Construction Sales Process: The Anatomy of a (Successful) Sales Pitch

The Structure of a Construction Sales Pitch

What does a successful construction sales pitch look like? Well, for starters, it’s targeted and relevant. 

Building a successful sales pitch depends on a few important assumptions. They form the building blocks you’ll need to craft a compelling sales pitch that resonates with your construction prospects. Let’s take a look at these assumptions. 

• You know what your prospects want
• You’ve qualified your prospects
• You’ve avoided predatory prospects
• You know which prospects need to be closed or nurtured
• Your construction sales pipeline has the precise workflows you need to win more deals

We can create a successful sales pitch formula if we agree on these assumptions. This sales pitch will have the following elements. 

1. The prospect’s problem or dilemma (e.g., if we don’t fix this now, the cost will triple later)
2. Specific and relevant examples of prospects with the worst-case scenario 
3. Your solution to your prospect’s problem
4. Case studies showing how you solved a prospect’s problem 
5. About your company

This is independent of your quote or proposal. If you’d like to add a quote or proposal to this framework, add it where it makes the most sense. 

Examples of a Construction Sales Pitch

Here’s what a construction sales pitch looks like:

Hi Prospect, 

When we spoke on [date], you mentioned that you were dealing with the following issues: 

• Project delays: You need this project completed within 13 months, no ifs, ands, or buts. If we don’t meet this deadline, we can’t afford to finish the project. However, if we don’t commit to this project, the cost will triple later. 
• Cost overruns: The last time you repaired your roof, the cost was 75% cheaper. Thanks to supply chain issues, all of the other contractors are telling you the cost has increased dramatically by another 33%.
• Meeting expectations: Construction site compliance is an important must-have for our project. Our previous contractor used subcontractors who refused to follow the rules, creating a disaster and unnecessary OSHA violations. 

Follow-up Actions for a Construction Sales Pitch

If things go well, you’ll just acquire a new client for your construction business. But what if things don’t go as planned? What happens if these issues aren’t resolved? Send a follow-up email.

Below, you can find two email options. You can either send one of them, or send both. Don’t forget to send the email telling a bit about your construction company, what you can do for them, and what you’ve accomplished so far.

Email Option 1

Story of ABC Corp.

One of our suppliers shared this story about your competitor, ABC Corp. They’re facing the same challenges outlined here.

Just one difference. 

They didn’t resolve the problem. They procrastinated, and all of the issues you mentioned you’re worried about, your worst fears, came true for them. Their project was delayed by an additional 24 months, leading to a 317% cost overrun. Their project failed to meet expectations, and many of the employees responsible for managing the project lost their jobs. It was a complete and total disaster.

Based on these, here’s what I propose. 

First, we have to meet your 13-month deadline. If we don’t, very bad things will happen. We’re going to restructure your project, focusing exclusively on necessities. Extras or nice-to-haves in your project will be treated as secondary. 

Next, we need to prevent cost overruns. This means maintaining strict financial controls over your project. Aggressively pushing for refunds and credits, using financing, and substituting materials and supplies are all important.

Finally, we’ll prioritize realistic expectations ahead of time. If we’re going to meet your deadline, this means we’ll need to avoid fuzzy, implicit, or unrealistic expectations. We need to focus on slashing and burning expenses across the board to meet XYZ’s 13-month deadline. 

[…]

Email Option 2

Case Study: XYZ Inc. comes in $253K under budget

The Overview 

XYZ Inc. needed to finish its roofing project in 13 months. As a property developer, they had several projects on the horizon that they needed to complete. They needed to close the book on this development project so they could begin four new development projects in the pipeline. 

The Problem
A looming recession meant XYZ needed to get its risky development projects out the door. If this project continued past the established deadline, they could lose as much as $334K monthly. Cost overruns with their previous developers meant they were behind schedule and over budget. 

The Solution

When we were hired, our project deadline was six months away. We needed to work within the budget and time constraints XYZ established. A cost overrun would jeopardize XYZ’s four subsequent projects and create a devastating and ongoing financial loss. We instituted strict financial controls to keep costs low. We found creative ways to finish the project in the required timeframe. We prevented a cost overrun by aggressively pushing for refunds on excesses, pushing for credits, using financing where available, and substituting materials and supplies.

The Results

We finished XYZ’s project with one and a half months left. We narrowly avoided a cost overrun after taking the project over from a previous developer. Using the insights we learned from this tough project, we found an additional cost savings of $2.3 million for their four upcoming development/roofing projects. Here’s what Alton James, Project Manager at XYZ Inc., had to say about our work on their project. 

“We came to you guys out of desperation. Our previous contracting team pulled out mid-project. Cost overruns became a very real concern. We weren’t going to be able to finish our project within the 13-month timeline. The financial loss and the employee turnover would have been devastating. When Stacy, your PM, told me you could dig us out of the hole, I laughed.

Four months later, here we are. Our project is actually profitable. That’s just wild.”

[…]

Email Ending

About Your Company

We have a guarantee.

Let us manage your project from A to Z; we’ll come in on time and under budget. Guaranteed, or we’ll pay you 25% of your project price. Our team is among the top 4% of all contractors in North America. Our workers are consistent, highly trained, and certified. Our roofing products come with:

• A 50-year product warranty 
• A 10-year workmanship warranty
• Limited Lifetime warranty on siding 

Here’s the team that will manage your project.

[…]

Now you know how to find and nurture promising leads. The next step is creating a successful construction sales pitch. 

How Pipeline CRM Transforms Your Construction Sales Game

Pipeline CRM helps companies like yours decrease time-to-close, increase productivity by 50% or more, and boost sales by as much as 10x. Don’t take our word for it; let us show you how Pipeline CRM can help you attract, win, and retain customers.

Effortlessly Find Promising, High-Quality Prospects

Which prospects get your attention? 

This is an important question. If you spend your time with 60% of prospects unwilling or unable to buy, any construction sales pitch you present will fail. On the other hand, if you spend time with the 37% of prospects who have a need but aren’t yet ready to buy, your construction sales pitch will also fail.

What does this mean then?

Your salespeople need to spend the majority of their time closing deals. They need to spend their time with the 3% of prospects who are willing and able to buy. That’s great, but who are these people, and how do you find them? Your will CRM tell you. 

If you’re in construction sales, you know customers want a few things: 

• The best contractor their money can buy
• The best service for their money
• The lowest price for their project 
• The fastest turnaround/least disruptions for their project

This is helpful information; if you add these details to Pipeline CRM, you can use these data to segment and disqualify your prospects. This is how you optimize your construction sales pipeline and close more sales.  

Pro tip: This guide explains how to measure lead quality, allowing you to focus more on promising prospects.

Foster Effective Lead Nurturing

What about lead nurturing? The same thing applies here. 

If your prospects respond to content that outlines why your company is the best, you can tailor your offers around that. If they’re looking for the lowest-price contractor (and you want to cater to that), you can segment your prospects that way. Allow your prospects to self-identify. 

This is why good documentation – using your CRM – is important. As prospects make their way through your construction sales pipeline, you’ll find you’re able to determine several things:

1. Whether you need to close or nurture your prospects
2. The anatomy of a sales pitch and closing your prospects
3. How to nurture your sales prospects 

Now you know how to find and nurture promising leads. The next step is creating a successful construction sales pitch. 

CRM Software Feeds a Winning Construction Sales Pitch

General contractors face an uphill battle filled with heavy competition, low margins, and skyrocketing supply costs. Customers today are educated, demanding, and price-conscious. If you want to nail your sales pitch and win new customers, it starts with construction lead management. 

As prospects make their way through your construction sales pipeline, you’ll find you’re able to determine several things:

• Whether you need to close or nurture your prospects
• The anatomy of a sales pitch and closing your prospects
• How to nurture your sales prospects 

This is how you create a compelling construction sales pitch, nail it, and close more sales.

Use the data from your construction CRM to segment and disqualify your prospects.

Pipeline CRM helps construction companies like yours decrease time-to-close and boost productivity. Learn how Rainier Custom Homes reduces the sales cycle by 53%, cutting it from 130 to 62 days with Pipeline CRM. 

Sign up for a 14-day free trial, and see how we can help you attract, win, and retain customers.

Other notable reasons why logistics companies struggle with lead generation include: 

• Inefficient internal sales processes
• Lack of strategic agility
• Poorly curated value proposition 
• Lack of technological adoption

Methods to Help Boost Lead Generation for Logistics Companies:

1. Create a Formal Sales Process

The first step in elevating your lead generation process is to build a definite sales process. This way, your entire team will be focused in a unified direction and have a well-defined framework to follow. Break down your sales pipeline into basic parts:

• Lead generation channels: decide on the channels you will be using to generate leads. This could be a mix of email, content, social media marketing, cold calling, industry trade events, etc.
• Lead evaluation: not every lead is worth pursuing. You need a proper scoring system in place before your sales team takes them up. The best way here is to opt for reliable logistics CRM software with lead management features.
• Evaluation of client needs: constantly assess customer data to stay on top of changing customer needs. Train your reps to understand a lead’s challenge and offer solutions accordingly.
• Proposal: make a formal presentation describing the services you offer, showcase your USPs, and take questions. It should build a strong base for deal negotiation. 
• Deal closing: this is where you prepare contracts with the agreed-upon terms, close the deal, and offer your client a smooth onboarding.  

2. Identify and Target Key Accounts

To ensure quality lead generation, you need to identify companies who will genuinely be interested in your services. This way, your sales team won’t waste time running after cold leads with a low chance of conversion. To do this, you must first create an ideal buyer persona/s. Assess customer data and market trends to lay down the attributes of your ideal customer. Then, compare your leads to the outlined traits in your personas. 

Make a list of companies that fit the image closely, identify their decision makers, and acquire their contact information. It’ll serve as the foundation of your outreach efforts.

3. Focus on Inbound Marketing 

Inbound marketing is a self-sustaining resource for generating a steady flow of quality leads into your sales funnel. As it brings prospects already interested in your product, the chances of conversions are much higher than outbound leads. 

Your website is your best source to pull inbound leads into your pipeline. It has to be user-friendly and SEO-optimized to maintain consistent traffic. Ensure your website content has relevant keywords and target your audience’s specific challenges.

Add clear CTAs on relevant landing pages to encourage visitors to inquire about your services. You must also ensure your website has a responsive design. 

Showcase client testimonials and promote them on your social media pages. Improve your content marketing with valuable and informative blogs, white papers, and e-books. It builds your authority in the logistics industry and boosts inbound lead generation. 

4. Automate Your Outreach 

You can’t spend hours creating emails for individual leads manually and expect a decent response rate. It’s time-consuming and leaves a lot of room for error. 

Worst part? Among all the chaos, your recipient may not even receive the communication on time. To scale your lead generation, you need efficient and agile campaigning methods — which you can enable with automation. Reports show that with sales and marketing automation:

• Lead conversion rate increases by 107%
• Average deal size increases by 40% 
• Companies reach 17% better sales forecasting accuracy

With reliable logistics CRM software, you can automate your sales workflows and engage your audience across multiple channels with personalized outreach programs. 

You can create engaging emails in seconds with the AI email assistant and automate your email marketing, freeing up your team’s time to focus on strategies and improvements. 

Related: How To Write Sales Emails With AI In Sales CRM Software

5. Use AI-Powered Lead Generation Platforms

Businesses are becoming increasingly tech-reliant in the logistics industry. If you are not one of them, you may just fail to source and manage leads properly. Opt for logistics pipeline software with features to find and target the right prospects in seconds. These platforms will collect intent data and let you create an ideal customer persona, identify sales triggers, build prospect lists, and prioritize leads. 

Make sure your chosen platform integrates with your logistics CRM software. 

It should also be scalable and easy to use. 

6. Participate in Trade Shows and Industry Events 

Build strategic partnerships with other businesses in the logistics ecosystem to expand your reach. Research shows 68% effectiveness in B2B demand generation. So, the best way to network with industry peers is to attend trade shows and corporate events. 

Here, you can meet potential clients, increase brand awareness, and even drive leads. Even if you can’t convert leads during the event, you can acquire qualified contacts for the top of the sales funnel and nurture them with follow-up communication. 

7. Cold Call High-Quality Leads

Use your key accounts list and run cold calls. Create a concise, engaging cold calling script that focuses on the value you can provide. Make sure you add your USPs to the script. Talk about the common pain points. Then, establish your services as the solution. For example, if you offer end-to-end logistics services, you can talk about how frustrating and expensive it is for businesses to handle multiple vendors. Then, tell them how you can offer every logistics service they need at affordable prices. 

The right CRM for logistics will help you keep all deal details in a centralized dashboard while your preferred dialer for further convenience. You can access their contact while running cold calls without jumping in and out of applications. 

Related: 6 Advantages Of Using Dialer Integration In CRM Software

8. Refine Sales Prospecting

Nurturing logistics leads are complex. As there is no tangible product for you to showcase, you may need to nurture the prospect across multiple touchpoints. 

Categorizing leads based on the touchpoints they are currently in helps you take the best route to nurture them. Logistics CRM software like Pipeline offers an advanced lead management feature where get lists like Leads No One Has Contacted in 7 Days, Deals Expected to Close This Week, or Deals Closing With No Next Task Set. Based on these criteria, you can refine and personalize your sales prospecting for each lead. 

9. Create Case Studies

Want to convince your audience that your logistics services can drive the promised results? Create case studies to support your pitch. They act as social proof and offer detailed insight into how you solved problems for your existing clients. 

Case studies also build niche expertise and boost credibility. 

Start by explaining the customer’s goal. Describe the logistics roadblocks and challenges they were facing. Detail how you helped them overcome the problem. Don’t forget to add tangible results you helped your client achieve and quotes about their experience with your supply chain services. 

10. Analyze and Improve

No matter how thorough your sales strategy is, it won’t create sustainable lead generation sources without constant improvements. By analyzing your sales pipeline, relevant KPIs, and your sales team’s performance, you can pinpoint gaps in your setup. 

Choose a logistics pipeline software that offers accurate analytics. Pipeline offers a reporting feature that shows real-time updates on your lead’s progress and your team’s performance across time. You can even create custom data points and generate comparison charts to see which sources bring you the best leads. 

Takeaway

For a logistics company, providing top-tier service to existing clients is a primary focus. However, ongoing lead generation deserves attention if you want to scale your operation. 

Still, overwhelmed? Here’s a TL;DR version of actionable steps logistics companies can use to boost lead generation;

• Create a mix of inbound and outbound lead acquisition strategy
• Build strategic partnerships with industry
• Optimize your website
• Create case studies and collect testimonials as social proof

Finally, opt for reliable and custom CRM software with advanced lead management, automation, and reporting features. Pipeline offers a logistics CRM with all necessary logistics sales tools to generate and convert leads. 

Elevate your logistics company from a local go-to service provider to a growing enterprise. Start with a 14-day free trial!