It takes a lot of time and energy to collect clean and relevant data. It's basically one of your most important investments. Therefore, data simply belongs in a place that everybody has access to and can be viewed and used for different business purposes. This is not only important for marketing, but equally critical for virtually all of your business processes.

In today's age of information, data is the most valuable commodity. The problem is that it out-dates really fast unless it is continuously updated by everyone. This means that notes from meetings, phone logs, emails received/ sent, and any other piece of information about each contact belongs into the CRM so all can benefit from it.

Whether a new decision maker is added or another competitor has been detected, everybody involved in the business development process must have access to this information so your opportunities are processed through your sales funnel as swiftly and effective as possible.

There’s no better place than the CRM solution for that. Not only do you ensure that everybody uses the same templates and uses the same language, but it is also easy to perform mail merges and similar functions directly out of the CRM solution.

In essence, any business task or function that is repeated over and over is classified as redundant and must therefore be automated. This will not only free up your team's time, but ensure and provide consistency and harmony across your marketing, sales, and business functions so your business comes across as the professional organization that it is.

Imagine you're in a meeting with a prospect to discuss a hot sales opportunities. Not only do you have access to previous points of contacts, but you also have all related files (such as proposals, etc) available at the tip of your fingers. How cool and productive would that be?! This is the way to close a deal right there and then!