So, you have a growing business that needs a CRM that will elevate your business and help it keep growing. That’s the first step done, you’ve recognised that you should be looking at CRM and that it can help, but what exactly will it help you with?
In this article series, I’m going to give you 6 key points that CRM will help your business with. This article initially started out as one piece, but the more I wrote, the more I realised it would be too long for just one article, so I have split it in two with the second being posted shortly.
Relationships
As the name suggests, CRM or Customer Relationship Management is about managing your business relationships. Customer Relationship Management is nothing new, the concept first came about in the 70s and has continued to evolve and grow since. The CRM industry was valued at $52.64 billion in 2020 and is predicted to grow to $128.97 billion in 2028.
Many CRM programs have been built around the foundations of improving business relationships, and while many CRMs will do much more than just relationship management, this fundamental ethos of the product is still one of its most important features.
At its most basic state, a good CRM will:
- Document any communication
- Capture key information
- Contact information
- Emails sent,
- Phone calls made
- All previous interactions
This means that anyone in your team can look at the record in your CRM and know where you are with a client. Has a key salesperson left and since been replaced? Speed up your onboarding process for the new salesperson because they know everything that has happened with the clients that they’ve taken over. Is one of your clients having an issue with your service or product? The customer service team can check the record and see exactly what they’re using when they were sold it and how often they have issues.
As you can see, having all this information at your teams’ fingertips means they can spend more time doing what they’re being paid to do instead of trying to get up to date with the situation.
Efficiency
A huge part of any CRM system is the processes that come with it. Being able to standardise what would normally be complex operations means you can save time by automating a lot of the process and making it easier for your team to follow a tried and tested method.
As touched on in the previous point, having all customer and lead interactions at your fingertips means that managers can better quantify employee performance, they can see which processes are helping or hindering your team and you can easily track which marketing and sales campaigns are working and which aren’t.
Maybe someone on your team thinks that exhibitions are the best way for your company to generate business, with CRM they can prove that by generating a report of all the exhibitions that they’ve been to and how much business they closed through them.
These are just a few examples of how CRM can make your business more efficient, but if you are tracking everything in your CRM, you can easily run reports or searches on anything that you have collected data on.
How can CRM help with growing your business?
Once you have made your businesses more efficient you can now focus on growing that business. Your teams will have to spend considerably less time working on mundane admin tasks that aren’t making you any money and more time on what they’re there to do – grow your business.
CRM is perfect for any sales team allowing sales leaders to review specific activities like emails, calls, and meetings. This allows the directors to identify patterns, understand the sales processes that work better, the ones that need improvement, and scale their processes as the business grows.
We have plenty of articles on how CRM can help your growing business, so I’ll keep this section short and sweet, but you can read more here – Control Business Growth with CRM and here – CRM: The technology to guide your business growth.
So, without a CRM system, it’s easy to get lost in all the admin and lose focus on what matters and that is your business’ growth.
By investing in CRM, you are using its value to put the customer at the centre of your business, which is the fastest way to acquire new business, develop existing customers and retain everything that you’ve worked so hard to build. Be sure to keep an eye out for part two of this blog, which will be published later in the week.
Whether you are looking for consultancy on the right system for you, don’t know where to start, or already have a system and need training or support the team here at Collier Pickard will help you select the perfect Customer Relationship Management system for your organisation and to help you grow.
