My blog focuses on Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Customer Relationship Management teams are critical depending on the type of business that you are in. The can make or brake your collaborations which are critical for business. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Make Your CRM Work For You.
* * *
CRMs are all the rage in businesses today. But actually extracting value from them is notoriously challenging. It’s not always clear how you should leverage them.
That’s where this post comes in handy. It explores the various ways you can make your CRM work for you so you can get the best value from it.
Decide What You Want Your CRM To Do
Your top priority is to decide what it is that you want your CRM to do for you. For most companies, this will be maximizing conversions, but it could also be other things, like retaining customers (and preventing them from getting annoyed with you and your services).
Think about what you want to target with your team and hold this up as your North Star. Then, build your CRM strategy around it.
Customize The CRM To Fit Your Workflow
The next part of the process is to set up your CRM to facilitate your workflow, just the way you want it. For example, you could hire a Pipedrive consultant to help you with a comprehensive implementation plan and setup.
Most businesses don’t take this shortcut, but it is highly worthwhile. For example, if you run a service-based business, you could add new fields depending on customer milestones or project requirements.
Little touches like these can make all the difference. They make life so much easier for your staff and allow you to get on top of issues quickly, without them snowing you under.
Train Your Team Properly
Another tip is to train your team properly on your CRM. After all, if you’re investing in it, they need to know how to use it.
Training will involve various hands-on sessions. It will also require going through the motions a few times to understand how it really works.
Many vendors provide online instructions at discounted prices if you sign up for their services, which is helpful. These guide your team through what they need to do. They can also help you reduce annoyingly high error rates.
Keep Your Data Clean
To get the most out of your CRM, it also pays to invest a little time in keeping your data clean. Doing what you can to remove duplicates or incorrect information is helpful.
Modern software is getting better at doing this itself. However, you may need to get someone to go through it by hand for you as well, depending on the situation,
Team members should be going into the CRM and looking for bad data on a weekly or monthly basis. If you do it less frequently, you can wind up with serious customer service issues and general all-around confusion.
Get Rid Of Repetitive Tasks
One of the main benefits of CRMs is how they allow you to automate repetitive tasks. They can do things like send follow up emails or update task statuses without your input.
The list of automations is also growing because of the role of AI. It’s having a profound effect on what’s possible and how much work you can offload to these systems.
For example, setting up automated workflows is usually easier than you think these days. Staff are only really required to monitor them and ensure that they make sense for the underlying customer.
Leverage Analytics For Insights
Another thing you want to do with your CRM is to leverage its analytics capabilities for insights. You want to figure out what’s working, what isn’t, and how you can better use the software to improve your KPIs.
The best way to do this is with custom reports built around your concerns. These let you drill into what matters and see if you can identify areas for improvement.
You can also go into the data and see which types of leads are generating the most conversions for you.
Integrate With Other Software
Finally, you can increase the potency of your CRM by integrating it with other software. Connecting it to marketing tools or accounting software can reduce the number of office processes you need to perform.
For example, suppose you integrated your CRM with your email marketing tool. You could use the CRM’s lead management features to determine when you should send out emails to prospects, and what they should say. You can also use your CRM for personalized campaign tracking, cutting down dramatically on the amount of work your team has to do.
Using these CRM processes can transform how you do business quickly. You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes to your bottom line.