What is CRM for the Beverage Industry? Who Uses It?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing your sales and marketing team’s relationships and interactions with key customers. This process originated with a pad of paper and pen, and progressed to a Rolodex in the 1950’s. Databases of information began to be stored on computers, but it wasn’t until the mid-90’s that CRM was defined and software installed on individual computers. Leading up to the present, we’ve seen the emergence of cloud-based storage and the development of mobile computing, both of which helped free up time to focus more on interactions with customers.

Overall, the goal of CRM is to strategically improve your relationships to grow sales and market presence. A CRM system helps your team stay connected to customers, streamline processes, and in turn drive profitability.

What is CRM? The goal of CRM is to strategically improve your relationships to grow sales and market presence.

CRM Systems

When people talk about CRM they are usually referring to a CRM system, a tool that helps with contact management, activity management, sales management, goal management, and more. CRM tools drive value for suppliers, distributors and agencies to manage customer relationships, account planning and activities for their sales teams, brand managers, promotional managers, customer service, order desks, and digital commerce teams, among others. The system provides a better, more strategic, and methodical way to manage interactions and relationships to drive favorable outcomes.

GreatVines is a beverage alcohol industry-specific CRM solution built upon the global CRM platform leader Salesforce.com. As an official AppExchange Partner of Salesforce, we leverage the power of the best CRM platform available to deliver a custom solution to best fit our industry’s needs. We marry CRM with segmentation, targeting, and strategic goaling to drive effective activity management and workflows, all in a mobile-ready platform.

As an official AppExchange Partner of Salesforce, we leverage the power of the best CRM platform available to deliver a custom solution to best fit our industry’s needs.

We all know the 80/20 rule is alive and well in our industry, making your CRM system a useful tool to help you segment and prioritize key accounts and activities. Your time is valuable – ensure your team is getting the best results they can with the resources at their disposal.

Who Uses CRM in the Beverage Industry?

CRM is for organizations that want to improve sales outcomes through more methodical strategic execution. Results include increased productivity and efficiency, especially during times of immense change and competition in our industry. Now, more than ever, we must be targeting the right accounts with the right products and deliver the right ongoing support to secure long-term placements and sales growth.

CRM can help companies of all sizes drive business growth, and it can be especially beneficial to a small business, where teams often need to find ways to do more with less. Utilizing technology that is built specifically for your use case will bring your business added efficiencies and deliver more strategic execution and increased sales.

The GreatVines Solution

Our CRM system lets you apply segmentation and other important attributes to customers as well as capture contact information, identify sales opportunities to work against, collect survey data, and record sales driving activities, all while tracking against goals in one central location. GreatVines goes further than most other CRM systems by integrating and leveraging all transactional sales data alongside embedded reporting, giving sales teams actionable data at their fingertips while executing in the field.

GreatVines goes further than most other CRM systems by integrating and leveraging all transactional sales data alongside embedded reporting, giving sales teams actionable data at their fingertips while executing in the field.

With everything in one solution, it’s easier to collaborate and increase productivity. Your team can see how customers have been engaged, what objectives are being worked on, their sales history, and so much more.

Learn more about CRM and its origins by checking out this comprehensive infographic from our partner, Salesforce.com.