B2B leaders say their firms have increasingly been using customer relationship management (CRM) systems as centralized communications hubs for nurturing leads, according to recent research from SugarCRM.
The report was 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 report was 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.
