one we are talking about, is a must. However, it is important to
know how the get the most out of your CRM, as failing to utilize every aspect
of it will cause you to waste money and miss out on a lot of functionality.
How to choose the right CRM for you and your company?
Recently, we’ve published a post in which we tackled the topic of sales
automation, briefly touching upon the subject of CRMs. This time, we’re
going to delve slightly deeper into the general functionalities and the
importance of properly utilizing any CRM that you might use, provided that
the specific CRM offers those functionalities.
However, before we do that, it is more important to know which CRM is right for you, which is no easy task because these days, there is an abundance of CRM platforms available to us all. I even outlined, in the aforementioned post, that the size of your
operation plays a big role in this, and while this is true, it’s not the only
factor. It just may be that you have a small operation but due to the nature
of your business and its workflow, you require a feature-rich platform. So,
before you splash out on one of these CRM platforms, it is important for you
to identify where and if your business workflow is lacking. Doing this
beforehand will let you create a strategy for your business and then do
research on which CRM is best for your specific strategy.
Who should use the CRM at your company?
people at your company - you should get all your people behind it.
It can’t be stressed enough how important it is to have all your staff members be well
educated in the capabilities of the CRM you’re using. Of course, this process
should start at the top with upper management and continue down the
hierarchy and it must be done, because the quality of the data your
employees' input into the CRM should be always at its best. Otherwise, the
upper management will have no use of the overview and reporting
capabilities most CRMs offer, and if it gets to that point, you should start
questioning whether you should use a CRM at all.
A CRM is as useful as the data it provides to its users, and if you’re not constantly updating your customer information, deal stages, and tasks, you’re just going to end up
bleeding money.
Which automation features should you use with your CRM?
All of them. If the CRM has even the slightest form of automating a certain
process, get behind it and maximize its utility. Some CRMs offer less
automation, some offer quite a lot of it. Regardless of that, you should use
every aspect of automation due to the time-saving benefits automation
provides. This will cut the time spent on time-consuming, and sometimes
monotonous, tasks and allow you to focus on the broader aspects of your
business. For instance, some CRMs offer the utilization of chatbots.
There are many ways a chatbot can be employed to make your business
more engaging to your customers, and just one of them is setting up a
chatbot on your website to be active after your work hours, in case you don’t
have employees available to chat with them 24/7. The chatbot can gather all
the relevant information related to a potential customer, or some issues a current
customer is having, which allows you to get on top of the matter at hand in
no time.
Integrating your CRM with other tools
If you happen to be using other business software, chances are the CRM
you’re also using can be integrated with it. Don’t skip out on this feature as it
adds quite a bit to your CRM, turning it into a real powerhouse so to speak.
Integrating your CRM with communication platforms is but one example of
integration.
If your sales team happens to do a lot of cold sales calls or if you
use Slack as your preferred chat platform, you can integrate them in order to
keep all communication centralized around your CRM. Some CRMs, like
Hubspot, offer your sales staff to make calls directly out of it, adding call
recording, call transcriptions, and note and task management all on one
neatly organized screen, which can help streamline this and many other
processes.
Use report and analytic dashboards
This is one of the best features that a CRM can offer. Having a
broad report dashboard available is helpful to any employee but it is most
useful if you are in management. Why is that so? Well, at any given time,
provided that your team uses your CRM properly, you can have access to an
abundance of data regarding all the processes in your company, be it
marketing campaigns, sales efforts, or customer support. Using these analytic
tools will help you identify bottlenecks in these processes faster than usual.
Thanks to this you can make timely decisions on how to deal with them and
streamline the processes in question so that they do not get bottlenecked in the future. Using analytic tools helps you know your business inside and out
which will prevent revenue loss and help with the steady growth of your
business.
So, how to know if you're using the CRM's full potential?
Just like any business tool out there, or an actual tool for that matter, a CRM
is as good as the people who get behind it. After choosing the right one for
you, make sure to educate yourself on every single aspect and feature of
that particular CRM and maximize its utility, because even the smallest CRM
platforms offer plenty of terrific features and, trust me, you don’t want to be
missing out on any of them.
Reading about optimizing the usage of your CRM is a great first step, but it does require time and expertise. With that in mind, feel free to reach out to our team. We are a team of trained sales professionals, who can help you define what CRM suits your business, then integrate and utilize them for maximum success.
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