What is CRM?
If you are wondering what a CRM system is, then it is good to know that a CRM is a software application that is designed to help manage all relationships and interactions with current and potential customers.
C.R.M. is an acronym for Customer Relationship Managementtranslated as Customer Relationship Management.
CRM Definition: A CRM is a software application, a customer relationship management system, which is designed to help manage all relationships and interactions with current and potential customers. Attracting new customers and retaining existing customers are the main functionalities that a CRM software accomplishes
The importance and roles of
CRM software. What does a CRM do?
A CRM application has 6 major roles in a company:
1. Increase sales and business;
2. Monitoring people’s activity;
3. Automation of processes to streamline work and increase productivity;
4. Building and improving long-term customer relationships;
5. Better understanding of the customer portfolio and their needs.
6. Centralizing customer interaction history and data
CRM helps businesses build lasting relationships with customers, which helps improve long-term customer loyalty and retention.
As it’s much cheaper for a company to sell something to an existing customer, a CRM software helps to improve the company’s profitability. But perhaps the most important role of a CRM is that it allows you to grow your business, to scale organically and in a controlled way as your business grows.
CRM is first and foremost a strategic tool, which is why it’s a good idea to start using it as soon as possible, before it’s absolutely necessary because you can’t cope with the volume of customers.
CRM helps to
Learning. CRM helps a business learn and better understand who its customers are, why they buy and when they buy. This can anticipate customer needs and proactively address them, which can provide a strategic advantage. At the same time other things can also be observed, such as the fact that a lead, in most cases, turns into a customer after 7 interactions with them, by the sales person for example.
As soon as customer information is collected in one place and properly organized, it will be much easier to segment your customers to generate sales through promotions or by promoting new products.
Organization. CRM helps people to become more efficient, better plan their activities and interactions with customers, and automate different processes.
Optimisation. It helps optimize interactions with customers, as well as collaboration between sales people.
Monitoring and reporting. CRM software is an extremely important tool for both administrators/general managers as well as for sales managers, i.e. area or regional supervisors. Basically in CRM you can see the activity of all sales people, what sales potential there is, what sales have already been realized, etc.
When do you need a sales CRM app?
17 signs you need a CRM
1. If you lose a sales person, you’ve also lost leads or customers (or at least interaction history, maybe even contact details).
2. You don’t know where customer data is located. You can’t find customer contacts when you need them or other relevant data.
3. You want to grow, scale your business and you still rely on Excel. What’s more, every sales person is with Excel and their reports.
4. Call a customer and you can’t find their purchase history. Or maybe even worse, call a customer and the account manager is not there and no one can help that customer because no one knows anything about them.
5. You can’t understand which products customers buy most.
6. Your sales people don’t have all the information about the customer when they go out in the field
7. You store information about sales, people activity, customers in different files and hard disks. In CRM you have everything in one centralized database and you can analyze these things much easier.
8. You spend too much time checking on the activity of your sales people, asking each one individually and asking them to send you reports that are done manually. In CRM reports about their activity are generated automatically.
9. Sales people do not collaborate and do not synchronize their activities.
10. You can no longer keep up with the number of leads or potential customers.
11. Not clear how your team communicates with customers and leads.
12. You don’t have a step-by-step sales process, which has been proven to be effective, so each person sells the way they want, but the desired results don’t happen.
13. Sales people use pens and diaries, Google Calendar or other tools to plan their activities. All these things should be in the CRM, not somewhere else.
14. It is frequently forgotten to contact customers or leads or update information about them. In addition follow-up reminders are essential in the sales process, and a CRM can do them automatically.
15. When you have new sales people taking over a portfolio of existing customers, using a CRM to view customer history and contact details is vital.
16. Teams from different departments do not collaborate, each team has its own data. This isolation of data leads to communication problems. For example, marketing people always have to go
to sales people to get contact details of customers or to see what has been sold recently.
17. You miss sales opportunities and you don’t know why.
