CRM EXPLAINED
As our work life continues to change from going into an office to remote, CRM’s are becoming essential, integrating into more and more people’s lives, both at work and at home.
What is a CRM?
A CRM — Customer Relationship Management — often thought of as only a sales tool used to manage and grow relationships. CRM’s have become necessary to effectively manage your entire business ecosystem. It acts as a single database, bringing your sales, marketing, and customer support activities together, streamlining your processes, policies, and people all in one place.
In simplest form, a CRM is a way to manage leads (people who are interested in you) and your existing customers in the most efficient way possible.
The goal of a CRM is to increase business relationships through customer retention and customer acquisition. With better lead management your acquisition of customers will improve thus increasing your sales.
Why do I need a CRM?
CRM systems are becoming systems we might all use in some form or another soon enough. Similar to how we now all use social media on a daily basis. Technology has matured and developed over the years, and CRM systems now help companies with nearly every aspect of their business cycle. Companies experience an increase in sales & marketing returns, all while helping lower overhead costs. An efficient CRM will help to bring your sales and marketing teams together so they can work cohesively rather than independently. A CRM will also allow you to analyze the interactions your team makes with your customers, efficiently track your leads, higher predictable forecasting, streamlining your overall sales and marketing processes, and more.
Who uses a CRM?
Freelancers and contractors
If you find yourself struggling to keep track of all your leads, customer interactions, and accounting. Or you are spending more time handling clients than actually working with them. Then you will value from a CRM.
Small and medium sized businesses
SMB’s should absolutely invest in a CRM. A CRM helps give you a level playing field and the ability to compete against the bigger competition in your industry. Knowledge and information is power and a CRM will ensure you and your team remain ahead of the competition.
Direct to consumer
Many B2C companies have shorter customer life cycles, and typically require solutions that are more direct and less time-consuming. A multi-channel CRM features lead management, automated email responses, and mass email drip campaigns. You are able to reach out to your customers easily and efficiently.
Enterprise
A larger sales team, means you need advanced CRM features including workflow rules, advanced analytics, territory management, sales and marketing automation, and more. A CRM will reduce the time salespeople spend on mundane tasks, allowing them time to focus on customers and unify your operations across the globe.
What are the benefits of a CRM?
Lead management
A CRM offers you everything that you need to know about your leads to convert them into happy, paying customers, quickly. Using features such as lead scoring and automated lead assignment, you can assign leads based on a variety of parameters and will know which leads have the highest probability of closing.
Deal management
A lost deal can be gone forever. But this doesn’t have to be the case. A CRM gives you a more complete picture of your current and future deals with deal management, and lets you analyze errors with past deals. Remember that it is helpful to segment your deals based on their current stage in the pipeline which tells you the probability of winning the deal.
Sales automation
Sales reps should be focused more on sales than administrative tasks. A CRM will allow you to automate your sales process. Many systems are able to replace administrative tasks with automated AI workflows. A good example of this is with automatic lead assignments. You will know exactly when a lead comes in, who owns it, and its progress through your sales pipeline.
Contact management
Having the ability to manage your contacts in one location will help you maintain customer interaction timelines, customer scheduling, notifications on social media mentions and interactions, analytics for better customers email marketing, and more. This insight is very helpful when your new sales rep takes over your existing clients.
Email management
A CRM allows email management to be a core function in your system. With your CRM you can integrate numerous email clients, saving you time from jumping between platforms. Remember when prioritizing your leads and client outreach it is valuable knowing the status of an email outcome. With your new insights, prioritizing follow ups will be a breeze.
Analytics and tracking
A CRM offers your business the necessary intelligence to process data from your various sources and then broadcast your insights as a guide driven by data rather than assumptions. With an analytics driven business you will transform your decision-making abilities to make the decisions that propel your business forward. You will no longer have to guess on the next steps.
Ready to begin?
Start with CRM implementation
Your CRM can become a keystone for your company. The process of having your CRM implementation be successful includes installing your CRM so your company can easily manage leads and client relationships. CRM implementation will allow you to set your company up for the long-term success.
Expand with CRM optimization
A CRM can easily become a burden on your company. Your CRM comes with default settings and it's up to you to customize it benefit your company. With companies moving to remote work, a CRM is a critical tool that will keep your team motivated and increase sales.
Entrust your CRM with managed services
CRM monitoring, management, and maintenance can easily have you falling behind. Your sales reps need to focus on sales and not updating their user profile or data field types. Sales professionals spend a majority of their day on administrative tasks like CRM management. This would not be the case if you had CRM managed services. Let Virago Ventures, Inc. help today.