Customer Relationship Management Software, more commonly referred to as CRM Software – Is this something you need? It depends. Do you work in sales or marketing? Is it important for you to track your interactions with current and future customers? Do you keep track of prospect and customer’s name in a spreadsheet and find it hard to control and find what you need, when you need it? If you’ve answered “yes” to these questions then a CRM software package might be exactly what you need.
Most CRM software are feature-rich when it comes to keeping a record of prospects’ and customers’ names, emails, social media feeds, phone numbers, and phone calls. The purpose of a CRM system is to put into place a method for the company’s sales and marketing teams to interact with prospects and customers in the most efficient manner.
A good CRM system will help create strong relationships between the marketing and sales teams. Marketing will send leads to the sales team and the sales team will have all the necessary information about a prospect in ONE place. If you’ve ever worked in sales and tried to keep all the information about a prospect in one place (including emails, calls made, follow up calls, their personal information, notes you’ve taken, and to do lists) you know how quickly the information can become out of control. Even the most organized person will still find the process of keeping everything accessible hard to manage.
Now that you know what a CRM package can do, the next thing you’re probably wondering is, “Do I need one?”
Do You Need a CRM System?
Most often, the answer is yes, especially if you have lots of leads. And that’s really the goal – right? You want to grow the number of leads and prospects and turn them into clients and customers. You might be able to manually track this information through a combination of Excel and Word docs, but you’ll quickly outgrow that capability. It’s not effective –time-wise and financially – to waste time digging through documents to find out what you said in your last call.
When did you say you’d follow up? Did you say you’d supply some further information? Why weren’t they ready to purchase? You can have all this information at your fingertips and trackable through a client name, phone number or identification code. According to Docurated’s State of Sales Productivity 2015 study, salespeople spend 31% of their time hunting for or creating content. That’s a lot of wasted time that could be better spent adding new prospects and turning prospects into customers.
A good CRM package will allow sales reps to save all information related to a prospect in one easy-to-locate place. CRM systems with the following capabilities will streamline the sales team’s day to-day workflow so there will be more time for follow up:
- Provide modifiable email templates
- Report how far they are from meeting their quota
- Report how many deals are in the pipeline
- Report the stage of the deal
- Report which tasks need to be completed
- Provide manager access to view categories
- Have cloud storage capability
- Have mobile phone capability
- Provide robust reporting features
Which CRM Software Is Best for Me?
There are many, many CRM packages to choose from. Deciding which one is best for your business really depends on which features you think you’ll use the most. One thing to consider before purchasing a CRM system is if you currently use any type of marketing automation software. If you do, make sure the CRM you choose can be integrated with it. A gap between marketing automation and CRM can lead to lost information and opportunities – you don’t want that!
The bottom line is this – If your growth and success depends on knowing as much as possible about your clients quickly so you can deliver a very personalized experience for them, ultimately this type of service will help grow your business.