How Trade Nations Uses CRM System to Handle Sales and Save Time

Growing sales & efficiency with the right technology setup

With the right technology set up in place, Trade Nations is ready to scale its business, run sales/marketing campaigns and communicate effectively within the team.

Setting up the proper database structure, connecting lead sources, integrating sales interactions and keeping the team notified about crucial events in a CRM system is a great first step to growing effective and quickly growing organizations and we’re looking forward to seeing it grow further with the best technology setup in place.

With the help of SoftwareSupp we were able to create a structured outbound sales process that is scalable and can be managed by our team.

Rhys Black, CEO at Trade Nations

Time of the project: 1 month

Scope of the project:

• Sales process design
• Advanced email integration
• Lead sources integration
• Project management integration

Effect: Complete CRM system setup‍

Trade Nations is a business connecting exporters to the government-approved importers. So whenever you’re looking for an entity within the UK which might be interested in importing your products, instead of searching for it on your own, you can use Trade Nations to find it for you and facilitate the import/export process.

As you might think, this kind of activity requires a significant database to be stored, both on the importers’ & exporters’ side. This would not be possible without the proper technology in place, letting the business store data about the importers & exporters, also handling the requests coming from the website.

So how is Trade Nations using the integrated technology to handle all business partners, leads, communication channels and sales in one place integrated with the website system?

Structured CRM system

The first step to an effective CRM implementation is all about proper data structuring and preparation. To make sure you’re able to browse and filter through all the data stored in a CRM, you first need to think about specific attributes you’d like to use to filter out the data you actually need in your work, like industry or lead’s source.

With Trade Nations connecting exporters to importers, the first step in the structuring process was dividing the database into 3 types:

• Importers
• Exporters
• Export Agencies (larger companies/agencies exporting the product)

With the above structure in place, Trade Nations is able to easily identify the companies within a specific group, approaching them with targeted communication & campaigns.

What is more, Trade Nations activity is focused on connecting these 2 target groups together and assuring the import/export process quality.

Consequently, Trade Nations uses another field in a CRM, letting it display the organizations connected with specific importer/exporter account.

Designed sales process to save time on multiple communication channels

Trade Nations communicates with importers/exporters through 3 main channels:

• private network/connections/meetings
• email
• social media

As a result, tracking all the interactions with prospective customers without the proper system in place could become tiresome and likely, impossible to manage.

With the right CRM structure in place, Trade Nations is able to monitor the importers/exporters acquisition through every channel with the right source tracking. Also, it’s able to monitor the progress within each stage of the sales process based with the proper pipelines’ set-up, divided into:

• mailing
• social media
• importers
• agencies

Monitoring deal progress with the above structure becomes way easier and lets the team focus on the right leads progressing them to the next stage of the process.

Advanced email integration to grow conversion rates

With the CRM system integrated into mailing technology, Trade Nations is able to easily run small targeted email campaigns within a CRM system and track their results & conversion.

It can also add contacts to the selected email campaigns by adding the prospect to the selected email campaign in the CRM system.

Statistics show that contacting the lead right in the moment of lead’s activity through the call or direct message can increase your chances of success.

As a result Trade Nations uses a real-time notification system to monitor the leads’ activity on the sent email campaigns.

Also, the company’s team is notified about new leads opening the email, clicking on the email link or responding to the campaign within Slack #CRM notification channel & in Pipedrive’s sales assistant.

This helps Trade Nations react on the leads in real-time and respond directly from the CRM system, leading to growing conversion rates and more deals closed, every day.

Lead sources integration to manage leads in one place

Trade Nation’s business is focused on acquiring leads through the website and direct 1-on-1 meetings. As a result, it’s important for Trade Nations team to keep track of the leads coming from specific sources and automate CRM data upload.

To make sure it works correctly, Trade Nations implemented website and calendar integration to make sure it handles all the meetings/inbound inquiries in one place.

So how does lead integration work in practice?

Anytime a new company or person fills in the form on the website, it will be automatically displayed as a lead in a CRM, letting the team distribute the leads and handle them in one place in an organized way.

Project management integration to communicate with external parties

Trade Nations needs to communicate progress on particular processes with external partners. Hence, it needs to communicate some of the events happening in the CRM.

With Trade Nations team using Asana as a major project management tool, it becomes possible to share the project management boards with customers and partners.

Proper CRM & project management integration lets Trade Nations label specific organizations with the “Add to Asana” label, leading to the lead/organization shared automatically in the Asana’s board.

The label is also triggered every time a deal enters a specific stage in the sales process, notifying partners about awaiting connection.