What is CRM?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.
A CRM system provides tools and strategies to manage customer relationships effectively. By leveraging CRM, companies can enhance their customer interactions, streamline processes, and ultimately drive business growth.
Isn’t CRM just for the sales team?
No! With the right CRM in place, your sales, marketing, support, and management teams will all be able to improve processes, visibility, and revenue.
It helps businesses manage leads, prospects, and customer relationships in a secure database. This leads to increased revenue and better customer experiences. CRM software should be adaptable to your needs whether you’re a small business looking to grow or an enterprise organisation.
The right tool will feel like the heart of your business. Accurate information becomes available to everyone in the company, with updates happening in real-time. This helps to reduce duplicated efforts and enables teams to achieve shared goals. It also eliminates the pain your customers can feel if your teams aren’t on the same page.
Having everything within one unified view also creates a more secure work environment. It reduces the amount of data scattered across multiple documents, spreadsheets and apps.
A common misconception with CRM is that it is only for your sales team. In reality, the right tool will be able to meet the needs of most, if not all, of your departments. As such, it’s better to approach the question of “Do we need a CRM?” based on the problems you face as a whole business.
For instance, do you find yourself struggling with any of the following?
If you have answered yes to any of the above then CRM is the right fit for you and your business.
A CRM system has a variety of different benefits for the different departments who may use it, such as:
Increased revenue
Streamlined processes
Accurate forecasting
Detailed analytics
Marketing automation
Improved customer comms
Organised processes
Centralised customer interactions
Quicker resolutions
Better still, all of these team benefits combined lead to overall business improvements, including:
Improved customer relationships
Data-driven insights
Automation of routine tasks
A single point of truth
Improved team collaboration
Consistent communication
Different teams may use different resources or software to complete their day-to-day activities. Unfortunately, this creates silos of information that aren’t easily accessible to others. When you’re assessing different options, a good place to start is to look at the integrations they offer.
Even the best CRM won’t be able to replicate every function these other systems offer. However, it should be able to integrate with them to bring those functions together.
A simple example of this would be integrating your Outlook or Gmail emails. With an integration, you will see the emails against account or contact records in CRM. This saves you the hassle of navigating between two different tools.
Or they could be a little more advanced than that.
For instance, integrating accounting or ERP software with a CRM system can help streamline financial data management. Your accounting team can continue their day-to-day operations as usual using the system they are familiar with.
As they work on quotes or invoices, the items will be automatically added to the CRM. This allows the sales team to see real-time updates without needing to check another system.
These are just a couple of examples of integrations that should be possible with your CRM. The partnership between CRM and the integrations that matter to you will lead to:
Better customer service
Better communication between teams
Better customer experiences
CRM systems should be configurable and flexible enough to keep up with your business as you scale and grow. The more success your business experiences, the more opportunities you will have to keep track of. This can be challenging without the right tool to support you.
The result? Missed leads and frustrated teams.
The right tool can help by providing a single point of truth for all your important business tasks. This includes managing customer data and leads, marketing campaigns, creating quotes, and supporting customers. Having all these tasks in one place can streamline your workflow and make it easier to stay organized.
Your teams will feel relieved by the increased efficiency and productivity, instead of getting frustrated by manual work and duplicated efforts. Great for them and your bottom line!
It’s essential the CRM you choose makes the lives of your teams easier, not harder, if you want them to get on board
Choosing a provider who genuinely cares about your growth and progression over time is key to CRM success
Your implementation shouldn’t take months (or years!) to complete. It’s important to check that the provider has a clear, efficient, and supportive process in place
Training should be tailored to your company’s goals and teams’ needs and provided by experts who are on hand to help when you need it
Your CRM provider should offer effective and easy-to-access support that can deliver on the promise of resolving issues quickly and efficiently.
A CRM that is not only intuitive to use out of the box, but can also be easily adapted over time to match your changing processes
If you search on Google for CRM prepare to be overwhelmed with a lot of results. It’s a crowded market with a mix of some great, and not-so-great, products to wade through.
Instead, I’d recommend using a site like Capterra, GetApp, or Software Advice to start your search. Each of these sites gives you a snapshot of the software you’re looking at and evaluates pros and cons with pricing info, features packages, and more.
Alternatively, book a call with one of our team who will be happy to explore your requirements and give you advice on the right solution for your needs.
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