Enterprises today are utilizing CRM software to build, nurture and maintain their relationships with their customers. In fact, CRM adoption is at all time highs and the CRM software market has become the largest software market in the world. It’s expected that the market will generate over $85 billion in revenue by 2025. Although businesses are using CRMs, they are not maximizing the utility of their CRMs. Below we’ll cover the best tips that businesses can use for their CRMs to improve their productivity and total revenue.
- Get buy-in from management and users
The first step that you should take before implementing any CRM tool is to get buy-in from management and users. Management is often the biggest hurdle for companies that are interested in using CRMs. If the management is used to using older operational tools, they may have more resistance to adopting a CRM. It’s important to sell management on the ROI of a CRM. On average, a CRM produces $8 for every $1 invested. Exhibiting the potential benefit and ROI of a CRM tool is crucial to getting buy-in from management.
In addition to management, you have to get buy-in from your employees who will be the main users of the CRM. Your business likely has certain software and other processes it follows; incorporating a new CRM will mean a significant change to their workflows. By adding your employees into your decision making process for a CRM, they will become active participants and stakeholders in the CRM you select.
- Choose the right CRM
The single most impactful way to improve revenue and productivity is to choose the right CRM or AI CRM. All CRMs are not built equally and choosing the wrong one can be very costly for your business. To choose the right CRM, start by clearly identifying your needs and pain points. Consulting with your sales, IT and other teams is a great way to get feedback and pinpoint exactly what you are looking for in a CRM tool.
Once you have identified your key problems, you can start making a list of possible CRM solutions that can address your needs. Check out each CRM you’re interested in and jot down the features and benefits of each so you can make an informed decision on which one is best for your business. Once you’ve narrowed down your CRM options, demo each one and see how well it fits into your business and what results it generates. Most CRMs offer a free trial and you can use this to try several different options.
- Create a CRM strategy
A vital mistake that most companies make is that they don’t have a CRM strategy. A CRM strategy is the blueprint for all the activities that your business conducts with a CRM. This includes setting goals, KPIs, how each team utilizes the CRM, outlining your sales funnel and more. Without a CRM strategy, your teams will likely underutilize the CRM and fall short of any goals that are set.
A CRM strategy doesn’t have to be very sophisticated. You can create a simple strategy that outlines the specific goals you want to achieve along with the different processes in the CRM. Your CRM strategy should also include how often you look at your campaign performances and your general sales processes. Nailing down your CRM strategy will give you a roadmap of how your business should interact with people and how to manage clients relationship with a CRM tool
- Invest in training
Training your employees is vital to improving your outcomes with your CRMs. Since your employees will be the people who will use the CRM the most, it makes sense to train them on how to use it and what outcomes you are aiming to achieve. You can either invest your time into training your employees yourself or purchase training programs that can guide your employees. Regardless of which path you choose for training, it’s important to document how your team uses the CRM so you can have a manual to refer back to when issues arise. Some companies even use technologies like screen sharing to give live updates to employees who are being trained in a CRM.
By training your employees sufficiently in the use of the CRM, they can help serve your customers better and improve their productivity significantly. Once they are well trained in the CRM, they can use advanced features that will allow them to collaborate with other departments in your organization and scale customer service operations. It’s also important to get feedback from your employees on training, so you can address any gaps in their knowledge and implementation of the CRM.
- Integration with other software
The utility of a given CRM can increase dramatically when it integrates with other software tools that your business uses. Although integrating with a number of software tools can seem productive, it can make your CRM more cluttered. You need to use software integrations that actually help service your customers better or improve your own internal operations. You can start by making a list of bottlenecks and issues you’re currently facing with your processes and customers.
Once you have your list, you can start listing software solutions that can address those needs and you can find a similar integration that you can use in your CRM. By adding a handful of useful software integrations, you can exponentially increase your productivity while reducing the bottlenecks in your systems. Some of the software tools you can integrate into your CRM tools include contact management tools, fulfillment tools, sales forecasting tools, marketing analytics, lead management and more.
- Leverage automated emails:
Automated emails is one of the best tools in a lot of CRMs. With automated emails, you can use your customer data to create personalized emails that are completely automated. Most CRMs allow you to create email sequences that are automated and you can personalize them further with the customer data you have. You can use the customer’s name, company, location, specific pain points and more to personalize your email outreach.
For example, you can use automated emails to send personalized emails around life events of the customer. This could be birthdays, holidays, revenue milestones, etc. These personalized emails can be campaigns for your marketing team and you can personalize the email even more depending on how much data you have on your customer. These automated emails are extremely low cost and can generate thousands of dollars if not tens of thousands for your business.
- Enable cross-team collaboration
CRMs are already powerful tools for companies, but you can take it to the next level by enabling cross-team collaboration directly from your CRM. During the lifecycle of your customer, they will interact with several teams within your business. This can include sales, marketing, customer support and more. Without a CRM, this can lead to a fragmented and poor experience for the customer. Many CRMs allow teams within businesses to work together directly on the CRM to provide a cohesive customer experience.
There should be several feature options on your CRM to allow cross functional collaboration between teams. If it’s not apparent, feel free to ask your CRM provider. These features will allow your teams to communicate and work directly in the CRM to meet customer needs. This will all lead to more efficient sales, marketing and customer support for the company.
- Use analytics and reports:
Analytics and reporting are underutilized tools by most companies who use a CRM. Depending on the CRM you use, there will be periodic analytics and reports generated that can give you insight into how your business is performing and how your customers are interacting with your teams. You can use this data to inform your operations and improve your processes on behalf of the customer. Your CRM will often provide you with customer profiles and indicate different patterns and behaviors they have when interacting with your company. You can use these insights to inform your marketing and sales strategy to help close on a client.
- Continuously update:
It’s crucial to update your CRM to maximize the research and development work that your CRM provider is doing. The majority of CRM providers update their product routinely and they patch software issues along with any other complaints their users have. If you fail to update your CRM, you could be running on a legacy version of the CRM and that can cause significant issues for your employees and customers.
As you obtain more data from your customers, it’s even more important to update your CRM to utilize the further insights gained from the data. With up to date data on your customers in your CRM, you can accelerate your sales cycles, manage customer relationships better and maximize your lead nurturing efforts.
