How a Sales Database Can Help Your Team Land More Clients

When I first started out, I had a handful of clients. It was rather easy to keep track of who they were and the projects I’d done for them.

As my business grew, though, remembering all of these details in my head became harder. I needed a way to keep everything organized—so I started using a sales database. If you’ve ever used a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, they’re fairly similar.

I use my sales database to help me keep track of essential information like prospective clients’ contact information, where and how I found a lead, client communication, and how much each client has paid my agency so far.

Having all this data at hand helps me and my team land more new jobs, win back repeat clients, and improve our revenue.

If you’re working on growing your business, a sales database can help you and and your sales team:

1. Keep track of every lead
2. Conduct outreach at just the right time
3. Create longer-lasting customer relationships
4. Engage in more effective prospecting
5. Know where to find the highest-value clients

Let’s take a detailed look at each of these best practices.

1. Keep track of every lead

If you’ve ever accidentally swept a stack of business cards into the bin, you know how easy it is to misplace a lead’s contact information.

This is true for digital data management, too—if you forget where someone messaged you or you accidentally delete it, you’re missing out on potential income.

There are multiple ways that people can get in touch with me: through Upwork, my website, social media, or LinkedIn. Plus I might meet a potential lead in person at some point.

Keeping track of where and when I met these leads can be complicated, so I make sure to log each one into my sales database. Whenever I connect with someone for the first time, I record customer details like:

• Their name and company
• Their contact information
• How they connected with me
• The date, subject, and method of any conversation we had

I log every detail about a new connection in my sales database—even if they don’t turn into a customer at that time. I keep it all organized with labels and tags, such as “past clients” or “expo 2020 Dubai contacts.”

2. Conduct outreach at just the right time

Having all of this information at hand helps me know how to continue conversations with future, current, and past clients. I also set notifications to help me remember when I need to reach out to someone—or follow up again if they asked me to loop back on another date in the future.

Plus, a good database makes it easy to set up a sales pipeline. The pipeline is all the different stages that a lead may go through before or after becoming a client:

• Prospect
• Qualification
• First meeting
• Proposal
• Negotiation or commitment
• Lead won
• Lead lost
• Active or inactive client

By logging all details about and communications with leads in my sales database, both I and my team can easily see:

• If it’s time to reach out to a lead again
• How close a lead is to becoming a client
• Who on the team last contacted a client

This also helps to keep us from overwhelming a lead or a client with messages. If I reach out to someone on a Friday via email and log that communication, my business managers can see it on Monday and know they don’t need to reach out to the same contact again.

3. Create longer-lasting customer relationships

A sales database isn’t just for closing deals—it can also help you nurture and improve relationships with existing customers.

A lot of my client work has a fixed end date. I might chat with a client during a one-time consultation about a CRM, or set up an ActiveCampaign email template for them. Once my work is done, they’re all set. They might not need my help on anything else just then.

That doesn’t mean they won’t in the future, though. I want to be the person they think of when they need help with another project. So I have to create touch points that remind them of the services I provide.

My sales database helps me do this, as I can keep track of how long it’s been since I last spoke to a client or completed work for them. I can schedule time for my business managers to reach out and check in, schedule a call, or offer customer support.

And because I use a platform that has a mobile app, I can easily log contact information on the go—no more dealing with a fiddly stack of conference leaflets or business cards.

The information logged in my sales database also helps me time when I should reach out to a client and ask for a referral. Your best customers can be a great source of new leads.

4. Engage in more effective prospecting

Part of closing more deals is knowing when not to spend time trying to win over a lead that isn’t responding. Instead, you can redirect your time and efforts to nurture leads and clients that are ready to work with you.

This is extra important if you’re using inbound marketing campaigns to generate leads.

I have an open contact form on my agency’s website. Anyone can fill out this form to request a chat. When they do, they’re automatically entered into my contact database.

If the lead doesn’t respond when I reach out to them, I have to decide when to stop pursuing the lead.

There are two reasons for this:

1. They might not be interested after all, and I’ll just be wasting time chasing them.
2. The email address I have for a contact isn’t valid—so nobody’s seeing my message.

Either way, sending a bunch of emails to people who either don’t want my content or don’t exist can be problematic—it might get my domain flagged as potential SPAM. This, in turn, makes it harder for me to email the people who do want to hear from me.

So my rule of thumb is simple: If I or my team send eight emails to a lead or former client and they no longer respond, I remove them from my contact list.

I also periodically validate the emails in my customer data lists. This means that I run them through a program that checks to see if the email addresses I have are associated with real people.

If someone entered a typo when filling out a contact form, or used a made-up email address to get a lead magnet, it’ll be flagged for me to delete.

Right now, I’m using a tool called Zerobounce for this—but I’m also working on developing my own validation tool for my agency and clients.

5. Know where to find the highest-value clients

A sales or customer database can also help you win more valuable leads.

By keeping track of where I connect with leads, and the value of each client contract, I can evaluate my metrics and figure out where my highest-paying contracts originated.

I have a lot of success connecting with clients on Upwork, so when it’s time for me to seek out new business, I know that my team’s time is well spent by sending proposals to prospective clients on the platform.

Similarly, if I notice that over time the value of the leads I generate through in-person networking is decreasing, I might hold off on booking a spot at a new conference or event.

Setting up your first sales database

If you’ve started to research sales databases and are feeling overwhelmed by the options or the cost, that’s all right. Many times, all it takes is the help of a sales database pro to get you started.

At my agency, we work with clients of all sizes to make sure their sales database or CRM software is set up correctly from the first go, which creates a foundation for success. We provide support for email validation and list cleaning, too, so you’ll know you’re reaching out to real leads with potential.

I’m also available for consultations to help you better understand CRM automations or simply chat through your marketing strategy.

Don’t hesitate to reach out through my Upwork profile or get in touch with my agency, DigitalME, to learn more about how we can help you get a reliable sales database in place.