How To Use Zoho CRM For Sales

Trying to run a successful sales team without a good CRM system can feel like delivering a class presentation with no clothes on.

In other words, a recurring nightmare.

You can never find the information you need, you’re losing track of leads or letting them go cold, and trying to work out a client’s contact history involves speaking to several people and doing some minor detective work.

But don’t lose hope just yet – there is a better way.

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Enter Zoho CRM. It’s one of the most well-known CRM solutions on the market, with a suite of integrations that make it super customisable. We’re willing to bet its reputation is what brought you here, right?

But when software can do this much, where do you even begin? 

Don’t worry – we’re here to talk to you about how to use Zoho CRM for sales..

Let’s get started.

Introduction to Zoho CRM

First of all, what the heck is Zoho CRM?

Zoho One is a cloud-based, out-of-the-box customer relationship management, or CRM, system. 

Whoops. Jargon alert. ⚠️

Translation: Zoho brings together your sales, marketing, and customer support activities into one dashboard that can be accessed anywhere, with no need for complex on-site installation. 

Neat, right?

Zoho CRM can be used by both B2C and B2B businesses, and it has a bunch of awesome benefits:

1. It streamlines your processes using automation software

Did you know that a third of all sales tasks can be automated using a CRM? That’s a lot of time that can be freed up for selling!

2. It gives you better oversight of your data.

74% of CRM users said their CRM gave them improved access to customer data by putting it all in one place.

3. It improves forecast accuracy because your processes are more precise across the board, and they all feedback into the same system.
   
4. It allows for easier collaboration between teams because everyone’s got access to one system.
   
5. It saves you money on overhead by cutting out unnecessary manual tasks.
   
6. Finally, and most importantly, it helps you make more money on sales – speaking of which…

Why use Zoho CRM for sales?

We’ve covered the basics of why Zoho CRM is such a useful tool for businesses generally, but what can it offer to your sales team?

Well, not only can a CRM help you cut out boring manual tasks – earning you serious Brownie points, by the way – but it’s been shown to increase sales by as much as 29%.

Here are some of the ways that Zoho CRM’s features specifically impact sales teams.

Zoho One features	Advantages for sales teams
Cloud-based CRM	Data can be accessed from anywhere in the world, including on mobile
Contact management automation and omnichannel communication	Automatically associates communications with customer records, even when they come through different channels, so your sales team are never caught short on calls
Telephony software	Enables cloud calling and incorporates call data into contact management
Social media integration	Ability to schedule social media marketing in advance, track social leads and analyse social media efficacy

Now you know why you should use Zoho CRM. Let’s get into the “how”.

Using Zoho CRM For Sales in 5 Steps

Don’t worry, this part won’t be too complicated. Zoho One is one of the best CRM systems out there because it’s so easy to use.

We won’t bore you with a step-by-step of how to set up your account. 

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1. Capturing the right lead information 

Almost half of marketers say that web forms are their highest-converting lead generation tool, so this seems like a good place to start.

Zoho One offers a no-code web form tool, making it easy to install and optimise webforms on your site even if you’ve never touched a line of code.

Just go to the Developer Space in your Zoho CRM settings to start setting up your webforms. Choose which module it feeds the information into, and then use the drag-and-drop fields to start constructing your form.

Here’s a tip from us: research shows that webforms of 5 fields or less are the highest-converting, so make sure to choose just a few high-value questions that will help you not only contact the lead but qualify them in your system.

2. Setting up a sales funnel

A good sales funnel is an invaluable tool. It should show you the different stages that customers move through as they transform from prospects into paying customers and allow you to process key data at a glance, for instance

• The drop rate in each stage 
• The number of leads currently in each stage
• The conversion rates for leads from different sources

So, how do I create a sales funnel in Zoho CRM?

Easy. First, go to your Analytics tab and add a new dashboard, then select the “Funnel” option.

Create one or more funnels to show you the key sales metrics for your business, for example:

1. The total contract value of the deals in your pipeline
2. Close-ratio
3. Sales velocity

The final step is to reap the benefits of your improved oversight, which can be pretty huge. 

The smart cookies at Harvard Business Review found that companies with effective pipeline management policies had significantly higher growth rates than those without – go figure!

Let’s say you have $200,000 worth of contract potential in your pipeline and a sales target of $20,000, but your Zoho CRM sales funnel tells you your close rate is only 5%. 

You now know you’ll need to convert twice as many leads as usual to meet your target, and you can look to your funnel for pointers on how to do this.

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3. Adding contact information

One of the biggest ways to streamline your processes with Zoho CRM is to make use of its sales automation features, one of the biggest of which is its contact management automation. 

55% of sales data entry was eliminated in 2020 using sales automation. 

When you consider that 72% of salespeople spend up to an hour a day on data entry tasks, that’s a significant time saving!

Integrating Zoho CRM with your email and phone systems will enable you to automatically populate your CRM when you receive a new communication.

Thanks to Zoho CRM’s omnichannel communication features, this is true even if the message comes from an existing contact via a different channel, eliminating wasted time re-entering data. 

4. Building out a sales cadence 

Sales cadences refer to lead nurturing: outlining the series of sales touches (calls, emails, and social media outreach) that gently and lovingly nudge a prospect closer to being a paying customer.

Aww, sales.

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In reality, we know sales success is less about the language of love and more of an exact science. 

InsideSales crunched the numbers, and they found that the optimal sales cadence for outbound leads was 7 contacts and that when these were exceeded, the ability to contact that lead dropped by 67%.

So you’d better work out your optimal sales cadence, and fast! 

To do this, you should incorporate industry best practices alongside data-driven decision-making using Zoho analytics.

Once you’ve decided what it should be, you can use Zoho’s automated workflows to set up cadence prompts, or use integrations like TruCadence in the Zoho Marketplace to automate these touches.

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You know what this means, right?

It means that once you’ve set up your automated touchpoints, Zoho takes care of lead nurture for you while you focus on other important tasks.

This is a game-changer for sales teams.

No more letting leads rot in your CRM or touching base at the wrong time.

With Zoho’s automation tools, you’ll reach out to EVERY lead at the PERFECT time to initiate a response.

5. Creating template emails 

It’s easy enough to do something right once, but we’ve all sent at least one copy-pasted email with an embarrassing typo in it. 

Or, worse, saying the wrong name…

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Imagine if you could personalise every single email, accurately, without having to type each one from scratch?

Zoho CRM’s email templates are your sales team’s new secret weapon.

You can create these email templates so your sales team has access to well-written emails fit for every purpose – from cold outreach to lead nurture, marketing a new product, or even to say happy birthday!

By building a goldmine of email templates, your whole team can:

• Always be on-brand with tone
• Send unlimited emails to leads
• Save and replicate emails that get the most open rates
• Send targeted messages to groups of leads

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Mistakes to avoid when you use Zoho CRM for sales

It all sounds peachy so far, but we’ve seen companies really butcher their business processes by implementing a CRM the wrong way. 

Here are the mistakes you should avoid.

Trying to use automation to replace people 

When we say that a third of all sales tasks can be automated, it doesn’t mean that a third of your sales team is redundant, it means that outdated processes are holding them back from 100% efficiency.

Just think of all the amazing things they’re capable of, compared to all the boring tasks outdated systems force them to do:

Low-value sales tasks ripe for automation	High-value tasks that can’t be automated
Data entry  Routine follow-up emails  Meeting scheduling  Manual dialling	Creative decision-making Sales conversations  Relationship-building Prospecting

In fact, the CEO of InsideSales warned against over-automation, instead stressing the importance of applying human intelligence to the process of tech transformation.

We couldn’t agree more. Applying human creativity and sense to the process of tech transformation is what we’re all about – that’s what makes our business discovery workshops so successful.

Forgetting after-sales engagement

The best sales teams understand their job isn’t over when the customer pays.

Oh, no no no. That’s only the start!

Customers expect exceptional service long after they’ve whipped out their credit card:

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If you still need convincing, try this on for size: increasing retention by 5% can increase your profits by as much as 95%. 

A CRM like Zoho gives you the best chance of minimising churn and continuing to delight customers long after their first purchase.

With Zoho CRM’s email integrations you can send personalised sales follow-ups to customers and even implement loyalty, referral, and contract renewal schemes to keep customers engaged.

Conclusion 

Alright. After all that, you’re probably eager to get started with Zoho and see your sales skyrocket.

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Slow down, mate. 

Putting all these strategies into action and adapting your team is a big job – especially if you’re a big company with existing processes that are a bit, well, clunky.

That’s where we come in. 

Human Pixel can manage the switch to Zoho CRM for you, building a fit-for-purpose CRM structure around your existing processes so you can make the most of the features we’ve listed above. Trust us, it’s worth it. Contact us today to get started.