A rundown on how customer relationship management systems or CRMs, can keep you connected to customers oceans away, and other digital tools that can help you stay in touch with and nurture leads.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems can help business-to-business exporters nurture overseas customers through long sales cycles all the way from New Zealand.

Let’s walk through a scenario:

You’ve met someone at a trade show overseas and they gave you their details.
Where did you put their information?
What were they interested in and what have you sent them as a follow up?

They’re now a warm lead - what now?
Do you wait until you get back to New Zealand?
Have you scheduled a chat online?
You may want to get to know them a bit more so you can decide what comms to send before you talk to them next time. With B2B sales, there are a lot of ‘next times’.

Eventually, you’ll forward some pricing. You’ll want to note that down and add them to a regular email.

Different CRMs have their own strengths so it’s best to think about what types of things you want to capture about your customers before you commit to one.



You’ll want a contact management system or database for all contact information, including email addresses, phone numbers, company names, and any other information you might add, for example if someone introduced you.

You may also want a system that has lead and opportunity management to help you categorise and prioritise your leads, and monitor their progress.

Sales deal tracking can help capture deal values, expected close dates and associated contacts.

Task and activity management helps you create and assign tasks, and set reminders, so you never forget a follow-up meeting.

Reporting and analytics means you can check out how many deals you’ve got at each stage, what your success rate is like when it comes to closing deals and which geographic areas are getting the best results.

Automation can come in handy, letting you integrate with an email marketing tool or set up workflow automation like follow-up emails.

There are plenty of other tools that can integrate into a CRM.
Otter.ai can transcribe any calls or video chats straight into your CRM.

Next Step:

Consider setting up your own CRM system.

Popular CRM systems for Kiwi B2B exporters include products like Hubspot, Salesforce and Zoho.


More specific options include Pipedrive which focuses on the sales pipeline and sales team productivity, or Gong which captures information for various touch points anywhere your team interacts with customers.

Additional resources:
Interested in export or maybe you’re exporting already? Head over to myNZTE, your place for insights, tools and guidance to help you take your business to the world.
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