B2B leaders say their firms have increasingly been using customer relationship management (CRM) systems as centralized communications hubs for nurturing leads,according torecent research fromSugarCRM.
The reportwas based on data from a survey conducted between May 15 and July 1, 2023, among more than 800 global B2B sales, marketing, service, and IT leaders across various industries.
Respondents say the CRM-based marketing and sales activities their organizations have prioritized more over the past five years have been centralized communications (60% cite), forecasting and pipeline insights (43%), and intent data and/or lead scoring (41%).
B2B leaders say the parts of the buying journey that they've focused on most with their CRM over the last five years are customer service/upselling/cross-selling (33% cite) and mid-funnel lead generation/nurturing (32%).
Respondents say their top priorities for maximizing the value of their CRM over the next five years are gaining a complete view of all customer interactions (45% cite), leveraging AI (20%), and targeting/personalizing content across channels (14%).
B2B leaders say the biggest challenges they face with their CRM are platform feature limitations (41% cite) and technology integrations (41%).
About the research:The reportwas based on data from a survey conducted between May 15 and July 1, 2023, among more than 800 global B2B sales, marketing, service, and IT leaders across various industries.