Why a CRM is essential to your Business

Is your business having trouble closing on sales in your pipeline? Do you have trouble following up on sales opportunities in a timely manner? This might be due to your lack of customer relationship management.

Many businesses fall victim to these same issues, but luckily for you, there is an easy solution to those problems.

Let me introduce to you the CRM. CRM platforms – or Customer Relationship Management platforms – allow you to gather all of your customer interactions in one central location.

At Chatter Buzz, we use CRMs to maintain contact with and create more meaningful and long-lasting relationships with our customers.

You might be skeptical about how much this can actually improve your business. However, SuperOffice reported that 91% of businesses with over 11 employees use CRMs in 2021. So, if that many people are using it, then it must work, right?

I’m about to tell you 4 ways that CRMs can majorly improve your business’s relationships with clients and ultimately lead you to more sales.

Let’s dive right in.

What is a CRM?

First, let’s address the question: What even is a CRM, and why do I need one?

Let me give you a scenario:

Your business appears to be booming. You are garnering a lot of potential leads. However, you cannot seem to close on many deals because you do not have a centralized platform to manage all of those leads. You miss out on a lot of sales opportunities and potentially beneficial customer relationships because of this.

This is why you need a CRM. CRM software is used to store, organize, and manage data on your business’s relationships with customers.

Now, I am going to take you through the 4 reasons why a CRM is essential to your business in 2021.

1. Better Customer Relations

The key to any business is its customer relationships. Without any customers, there aren’t any sales, and therefore… there isn’t any money. Even if you are selling the best service or product, you will find your business struggling without satisfied customers.

Customer Service

Your CRM can provide you with automated customer support to make sure your clients are getting their problems handled immediately.

Additionally, knowing the ins and outs of your customers can help you make a personalized experience for them, leading to better service.

According to Salesforce, 76% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments, and in 2020, 52% of customers expected offers to always be personalized.

A CRM can help you to meet these expectations.

Customer Targeting

Your CRM tool can collect information on your customers’ demographics and behaviors and can create automated segmentation. When creating your target market, it is important to understand their challenges and needs to better engage with them.

Then you can send marketing content that is relevant to the customer, thus increasing the chance of a conversion.

Lead Nurturing 

Nurturing a new lead is very important for conversion but can also be very time-consuming. CRM platforms take care of this problem by automating the entire process, allowing you to send out automated content that can help the new lead along their journey to becoming a customer.

Customer Retention

With all of your customers’ behaviors at your fingertips, you can see where in the sales process they come across pain points that may lead to losing their business. Knowing your customers and creating personalized content and offers for them encourages loyalty and repeat business.

Another tool that your CRM can provide is a sentiment analysis, which can help you understand how your clients feel about you and allow you to do something to make it better – before it is too late.

2. Higher Productivity and Efficiency

Setting up automation throughout your selling process can save your team the time and headaches of trying to do it all manually. With a CRM platform, you can set up automation such as email drip campaigns, chatbots for customer service, and more.

If you want your business to succeed and grow, your team needs to be running at peak efficiency.

Automated Processes 

Like I mentioned previously, CRMs allow you to build out your entire sales process and create automation throughout. This can help you and your employees make sure everything is running smoothly and allows you to see what aspects of your business and communication can be improved.

With your team not having to focus on smaller steps of each customer’s journey, they have plenty of time to address your customers’ bigger needs.

Detailed Analytics

All of the data in the world can’t help you if you don’t know how to read it. Luckily for you, a CRM platform often includes data analytics, which helps break down your data so you can better understand it.

With this data, you can then better address your customers’ needs and refine the customer’s journey.

One Database

With a CRM platform, you can have everything you need to manage your clients and the sales process in one location. Therefore, all of the data is easily accessible and can be accessed by anyone on your team.

This helps your team communicate with your customer better because they are all able to have access to any of their information without having to dig around in a never-ending folder.

3. Increased Sales

A CRM platform can help you create your sales process from first-touch to post-purchase, making it a seamless process for your staff and customers. Another way CRM can improve your sales is by helping understand what type of leads you are getting and which to prioritize.

Instead of wasting time on a lead that won’t convert, you can focus your team’s energy on engaging those that will.

Sales Reports

Have all of the data you need with your CRM platform’s reporting features. Your team can get reports on the sales process, their performance, and every project that is in the works.

Sales Forecasting

The best way to predict the future is by looking at the past. For businesses, the best way to see your past performance and understand those patterns is through reports. Using the CRM automated reports you can better predict future sales and understand ways you can improve.

4. Save Money

By improving your efficiency and creating automated processes, your CRM can save you time which in turn saves you money. Having your automation set up alleviates your team so that they can take care of more important things, and it allows you to scale your business without having to hire more staff.

On top of that, you can save money by decreasing your cost per lead and increasing your sales. With the highly personalized automated campaigns you create, you will not have to spend as much time or money to get a lead or conversion.

Another way your CRM saves you money is by reducing the number of mistakes in your processes.

Choosing the Right CRM

Not every CRM contains all of the tools that we mentioned, so it is important to do your research on which one best fits your businesses’ needs.

Which CRM you choose can be based on the size of your company, how much money you are able to spend, and what features you need to run your business. Another thing to consider is that some CRMs are generic, while others are industry-specific.

To help you choose, you first need to decide on your budget and create a list of features that are a priority to you. Before making your decision, make sure to read the reviews from other businesses to see how it helped them and do a test run with a free trial.

Here is a list of CRM platforms we recommend:

• HubSpot – best for scalability

HubSpot can take an influx of customer interactions and includes a visual dashboard for your business’ complete sales funnel. It makes it easy to build a relationship with your customers, thus allowing you to get insights on your leads and engage with them all on one platform.

• ZOHO CRM – best for online/cloud-based 

ZOHO is the perfect CRM platform for businesses that have remote teams that are always on the go. Being cloud-based and having a well-designed mobile app, ZOHO makes it easy for you to access your data on the go.

• Salesforce – Best for growing your business

Salesforce is known for being a great CRM because it has an intuitive interface, quotes and orders builder, and a library of training resources. It allows you to manage your campaigns and customers as well as provides unlimited custom applications. While Salesforce has so many tools, it is also more expensive than the other CRM tools so it is best for larger businesses.

Keap is perfect for small and new businesses who are still learning how to use CRM platforms and want something that is easy to use. It has a migration team that helps your business with transitioning your data and provides free onboarding coaching and training.

No matter which CRM platform you choose to use, it will be able to help manage your customer relationships and improve your business.

Start Improving your Business with a CRM Today

As you can see, many ways you can use a CRM platform to improve your relationship with customers and your business.

Do you currently use a CRM platform? To learn more about how we can help you use CRM to improve your business, schedule a free consultation with a marketing professional from InApps!