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CRM Explained: 5 Things You Need to Know About CRM
Saphyte Team 4 min read
Updated:
Have you ever heard of CRM? If yes, that’s because it’s a buzzword in many industries lately. Its growing popularity is attributed to its functionality, the way it makes implementing sales and marketing tasks easier.
If you’re unfamiliar with the technology, this article is for you. Here, we’re going to explain what a CRM is and what you need to know about CRM to grow your business.
What is a CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business approach that focuses on improving business relationships with potential and existing customers. The approach has been used in developing CRM software.
The software is built to allow users to gather contact information about leads from their marketing channels, migrate them all into the CRM database where the CRM organizes the information into a meaningful order, and allow the users to engage with potential customers through email and other functions.
The goal of CRM systems is to allow users to convert leads into customers with the least manual effort possible. This, as a result, makes it less expensive for businesses to run operations as it allows sales and marketing teams to focus on other tasks and let the CRM automate the tasks it is designed to handle.
Such tasks include: lead scoring, email marketing, sales pipeline management, deals management, report generation, and etc.
Examples of a CRM
Here are a few examples of a CRM software:
Saphyte claims to offer streamlined CRM solutions. The company hosts an ecosystem of sales, marketing, and team and workspace management, and support solutions. The company offers a free trial, a free demo, and a free one-on-one implementation training to its new clients.
Agile’s interesting tagline says “Sell and Market like the Fortune 500.” They also claim that their product offers sales enablement, marketing automation, and customer service.
1CRM claims to be the all-in-one CRM solution for managing every aspect of your business online. Collaborate effectively with your team, from near and far. They also offer a 30-day free trial.
Hubspot’s website states that they offer marketing, sales, and service software that helps your business grow without compromise. They believe that “good for the business” should also mean “good for the customer.”
SuiteCRM claims that they are the world’s most popular open source CRM. Their website says their CRM is powerful, customizable, easy to use, and with hundreds of extensions and integrations, and that it is used by millions of people every day.
Five Things You Need to Know About CRM
Here are five things you need to know about CRM:
Not all CRMs are created the same
There are many types of CRM. So you need to find a CRM that can adapt to your unique needs and work processes. Some specialize in specific functions, others don’t have the “basic” tools expected from a CRM solution. What you need to know then before using a CRM is that finding a CRM that is right for you may take time. So here’s what you need to do:
List down your company’s needs and objectives. Then create a list of CRM platforms that can help you with these, after watching their demos. Make sure that the features and functions of the CRM software help you grow your business.
Get a person (or a team) from the department that actually needs the CRM to do the demo. If you are looking to augment your sales team’s capacity to contribute to your company by adding in a CRM software then make sure that at least one person from the sales team gets to try the CRM demo. Their feedback will be crucial in choosing the right CRM platform for you.
Communicate with the CRM vendor. This means that you need to keep the company selling the CRM platform updated about what you need, give them phone calls if possible about what your teams need, and your feedback about the product every step of the way. This allows the CRM vendor to highlight the most important features of the product, saving you time from discussing the unnecessary and least important aspects of the product.
Assess and evaluate with your team. Grade the CRM products based on their ability to address your needs and objectives as a company plus the feedback of your team. If your team likes the user-interface but you think the CRM’s functionality is much more important, then put a bigger weight on the CRMs’ functionalities when evaluating which CRM program to choose from. At the end of the day, despite the competitiveness of each CRM platform, you will only need one for your company.
CRMs are a good investment, if used right
Sure CRM companies promise you case studies about companies successfully pulling off a business strategy using CRM technology— how their CRM software was able to contribute to a business growth.
You’ll see statistics and all and the dollars coming in. But what you don’t know is that CRMs can be a little expensive, especially if you’re only expecting a few clients per month. And you might be at the losing end if you and your teams don’t know how to use a CRM.
So come up with a proper CRM strategy. Get a CRM solution provider that offers training for free, that won’t lock you up in a two or three-year contract, and someone local as much as possible who is motivated and passionate about growing local SMEs.
In the end, what matters is that the profit you have gained as a result of using a CRM should be higher than its cost. The CRM should be “worth it.”
CRMs can make you “win the competition”
The success of big businesses in their respective industries can be attributed to a lot of factors. One of these factors is their ability to use technology to their advantage.
Technological advancements often bring a lot of benefits to businesses. They speed up the production process, they enhance services rendered to clients (like improving accuracy and precision), and they also help cut costs for businesses due to the efficiency they provide.
With technologies like CRM, you will be able to enhance your relationship with existing clients. Not only that, but you will also be able to improve the customer experience during every interaction.
Why are these important? Research shows that 2021 consumers are willing to spend more on positive experiences. The experience that they have with your customer service can also dictate whether or not they’d purchase from you again.
In fact, with the recent disruptions, customers are also highly likely to switch loyalties, which makes it harder for businesses to retain customers. Hence, getting the right technology can make you win the competition.
CRMs can also improve employee retention
CRMs not only help in improving customer retention, but it also contributes to employee retention as well. CRMs have been known to help in creating a positive sales experience for both customers and employees.
Not everyone likes doing the same thing over and over again. This can be exhausting. So what CRMs do is automate these manual tasks for employees so they can focus on more productive tasks, which lets the employees gain a more meaningful experience every time they go to work.
A small business can make use of CRMs to grow
For CRMs, size does not matter. The goal of every business should be to grow: increase the number of clients so they can experience an increase in sales and profits as well.
CRMs just makes it easier for small businesses to do this. Lead generation will take much less effort with a CRM as well as in engaging them. CRM systems are built to allow you to communicate and create a more meaningful customer interaction in just a few clicks.
Bottom line
CRM tools have a lot of use cases for every industry. They help you manage customers, marketing campaigns, highlight the USPs of your products and services, establish customer loyalty, and enhance your tasks that require contact management.
Because CRMs help you approach the business with a new goal (customer centricity), the technology will help you close deals faster and shorten your sales cycle as well, which improves the overall profitability of your business.
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