Today, we are going to talk about what a CRM is.
And why more and more businesses are using it.
CRM is a Customer relationship management tool, and don’t take the word customer as the main reference here, because we can use the system in different ways and not only to manage customers.
So I will give you 5 key points of a CRM.
1- Collaborative system
The first key point and perhaps the most important function of a CRM, is information sharing because it is a collaborative system.
This sharing ecosystem is where everyone will find the same information.
The information can be a phone number or email of a client, the value of a deal we closed earlier in the year, the start date of a project, the next actions we need to take to close a deal and so forth.
Whatever it is, having all of the information centralised and available to everyone is what makes the system an essential tool to have in your organisation today.
2 – Task management.
Here you will record the activities that you need to do.
The CRM is kind of your personnel assistant. It will help you book meetings (making sure you never have a double booking) send emails (templates, in bulk or custom), but more than anything, with a CRM you can be sure that you’ll never forget anything and nothing will fall between the cracks. In a few clicks only you can set up tasks (and even automate it) and get a daily/weekly/monthly summary of your pending tasks.
The task management works hand-in-hand with the sharing ecosystem in the CRM, because it will help YOU and the team to keep on track.
3 – Business Forecast
Using a CRM is not just about following up with open deals but also further planning with newly converted leads into deals in your sales funnel. You can act, plan and forecast.
The CRM will help you visualise clearly what’s going on in your business by indicating an expected close date or an action that needs to be done in the future.
4 – Analysis and stats
Once the work is done comes the part where we need to analyse and generate reports.
Here we can see if set targets were achieved or if we need to put more effort in either if those targets were actions/activities in the CRM or converting leads into customers.
Having centralised data makes it easier to pull out reports and stats live because as I said before it’s a collaborative tool.
With a CRM you can have a birds-eye-view of your business which will help you make more strategic and focused actions & directions because you have a complete history of your customer journey from the lead stage to deal conversion and all of the communication you and the team had with them.
5 – Manage your business and all the rest
Some small, quickly forgotten details can make the difference when closing a deal, such as looking way back to when you first started the conversation with this contact, so you can nurture the relationship and grow them with all the information recorded in the CRM.
And we don’t end here. A CRM is not just about closing deals and increasing sales. There’s so much more you can do, from lead generation to email marketing and project management.