You should use CRM software for your business because it optimizes marketing strategies, improves upselling efforts, and enhances customer relations. In addition to these, having these tools will allow you to leverage your customer data to make adjustments to your operations as well as streamline a variety of sales and marketing tasks.
Having solid relationships with your clients is important if you want to build a stable and successful business. However, the process of honing these relationships can be quite complex. This is where CRM software comes in. By having these tools at your disposal, you can streamline and optimize your workflow when it comes to interacting with your clients. It is vital that you fully understand the purpose of CRM software in a business.
If you don’t have a CRM system yet, then maybe it’s time to consider investing in one. But there are some things to consider when choosing a CRM system. To help you out, we will be outlining some of the reasons why you should get one of these software solutions in this article. We also listed down some of the leading examples of this platform so you can start choosing which one is suitable for your operations.
10 Reasons to Get a CRM Software for Your Company
The onrush of organizations scrambling to hook up their processes to the cloud is a defining event during the pandemic. The final accounting is still out, but already the ecommerce, payment gateway, collaboration, and communication industries seemed to have done extremely well.
In the case of the CRM market, organizations are already in a position to deploy 87% of CRM to the cloud in 2021, up from just 12% in 2020. This compares well with 77% of sales professionals who were experiencing rapid digital transformation since 2019. Additionally, 13% of organizations say that one of their top sales priorities is investing in CRM.
Of course, this shift in the speed of CRM deployment has other reasons behind it. Crucially, 92% of businesses said that CRM is a crucial tool in achieving their revenue goals. Finally, those who have properly implemented their CRM confirm a yield of 45% ROI per dollar invested.
These figures amply show that implementing the best CRM solutions has become imperative in this trying time. You have probably heard sales teams split between sales force automation and CRM. Consequently, you could be wondering what’s the difference between CRM and sales force automation? The former is equipped with more features and covers more ground and, usually, the tools of the latter are included in a CRM system.
Nowadays, most CRM software systems are hosted in the cloud and made accessible and easy to maintain even for the smallest business or sole entrepreneur. Let’s take a look at why a CRM solution may be worthwhile for your company.
10 Reasons Why You Should Use CRM Software
1. More Optimized Marketing Strategies
A large portion of our readers looking to compare various CRM solutions are, in fact, startup companies and low-tier service providers still building up a market profile. This doesn’t come as a surprise, knowing how useful CRM tools can be to motivate buyers to turn to a specific vendor.
How does it work? Companies are continually performing market research looking to target the ideal customer profile, and CRMs help them understand customers’ behavior and tackle their specific needs. Another important task they perform is to identify the best time to promote and present services to those customers and use the results of such strategies to further expand the list of prospects. CRM systems also have a positive effect on efficient resource allocation, as businesses relying on reputed software are also the favorites among profitable market groups. Put into perspective, a CRM product will help you target the right leads at the right time and with the right resources.
2. Increased Workflow Efficiency
Speaking of the information delivered by CRM systems, we should also explain how it deals with the valuable time businesses lose, combining methods to evaluate their customers’ behavior. CRM software solutions consolidate different methods, practices, and tools needed to track customer activity, and finally spare you from double entries and the dull, automated approach customers find so frustrating. With a good system in place, you will eliminate all costly manual errors, and still make each customer feel as if he was the most valuable lead you have at the moment.
3. Enhanced Customer Data Analysis
There is a lot to learn from how your customers accept and evaluate your service, but marketing optimization is by far the most valuable data you will pull out. CRM systems teach you how to “energize” promotional campaigns, and promote products to unfamiliar audiences that will statistically be interested in them. The powerful standard and custom reports delivered by most CRMs also provide a clear insight into the health of each operation, the performance of each agent, and the overall sustainability of your relationship management strategy. Believe it or not, this is the source most successful companies turn to identify bottlenecks, rather than to spend hours analyzing financial data.
4. Better Customer Relations
The most important rule when running a customer-focused business is a simple one: you will be successful as long as your customers are satisfied. This is where CRM systems help the most, as they drive your marketing, invoicing, and selling efforts in the right direction. To start with, a CRM will help you organize all customer-related operations, from automated welcoming messages to service and checkout. Being able to understand what they expect from you, you will also decrease their agitation and collect valuable feedback that matters to the future placement of your products and services.
Satisfactory and efficient service delivered at all times and on all channels (email, phone, social media, web forms, surveys, etc.) also guarantees that you will be warmly recommended to customers acquaintances, and grow your customer base using nothing but what you’ve already invested.
5. Easier Customer Data Access
A part of CRM’s standardized data organizing strategy is to keep all relevant details in a knowledge base from where all agents can access them (in most cases, depending on the roles and permissions they’ve been assigned with). That database is usually cloud-hosted, and all it takes to get there are the right credentials and a good internet connection. As expected, most of today’s popular CRM systems are fully mobile-optimized, and thus accessible from all devices, browsers, and operating systems. Some of them also provide dedicated apps for Android and iOS users.
6. Simplified Agent Performance Tracking
Many business owners rely on their CRM systems to understand how agents are performing and develop intelligent strategies on how to assign leads and tasks in the future. It is also the CRM system where they know who are the people available at the moment, and divert inquiries to other departments in case the agent requested is not available. Practically, the CRM makes each employee’s schedule visible and helps compare who is closing the most or the least of the company’s deals. Recently, CRM developers have been exploring the gamification concept that lets admins award top performers with bonuses, points, or even promotions.
7. Improved Cross-Selling and Upselling
The ultimate goal of using a CRM system is always to trigger it for deal closure, which is why the best-of-breed systems always support practices, such as upselling and cross-selling. In the upselling case, they draw intelligence from the customer’s current purchase to bring similar products to his attention and rely on tags and categories you’ve previously inserted. Cross-selling is also a part of the game, where the system tracks a customer’s previous purchases to suggest new products and to get an idea of what he’ll be looking for. All details are then stored in a centralized database. Ideally, in an individual customer profile, the agent can always turn to and see who he’s dealing with. A good CRM will be delegated the task of spotting and using opportunities, and will, therefore, end up boosting your profits.
8. Streamlined Invoicing
Most of today’s CRM platforms are equipped with at least some basic financial management tools, and the rationale for this is to stop you from extracting sensitive sales data to a third-party system. In the perfect scenario, you will be able to create quotes, prepare, and send invoices to your customers from the same platform where you’ve completed their orders. You can also automate other time and expense-related paperwork, streamline the experience of your customers, and make sure money always arrives on time.
Certain CRM products also integrate with leading payment gateways to help users complete payment and checkouts without abandoning your website/e-store.
9. Unified Social Media Management
We can’t deny social media the credit for most of what modern businesses are earning, as platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn are great pools for finding potential contacts and deal opportunities. At the same time, both large and small businesses find it challenging to maintain an active presence on all of them and personally respond to all inquiries and questions without losing focus on the rest of their work.
CRMs do a notable job here as well. Most cloud-based CRM solutions of today are tightly integrated with social platforms, and allow you to post automatically and manage all of your profiles from a single platform. Some of them even go as far as to alert you to deadlines and opportunities or collect all product-related mentions and comments for you to respond on time. For instance, you can adjust the settings of your CRM to depict any desired type of social activity by simply selecting keywords such as “customer support,” “customer service,” and many more.
10. Access to Scalable CRM Solutions
Just a decade ago, powerful CRM systems were considered to be enterprise-exclusive products, which was a reasonable thing to believe with their high spinning prices and complex installations. Luckily, developers saw small businesses as the ideal audience in need of such products and started working on their cloud-hosted versions that require neither lengthy implementation times nor bank-breaking amounts.
It is easy to find a great CRM at a reasonable price these days, and at the same time, get a confirmation that no recurrent costs or maintenance fees will apply in the future. Some are even offered as free CRM apps, which is why we recommend even newly launched businesses to get one and try it out. Currently, the leader among free CRM systems is HubSpot CRM, which offers a rich package of features at no cost whatsoever.
HubSpot CRM comes with a marketing team dashboard that provides in-depth insights into your new leads, operational performance, and more.
Popular CRM Software Solutions to Consider for 2024
Now that you have a good idea of what to expect when you invest in a CRM software, it’s time to check what the market has to offer. The overwhelming number of attractive and well-reputed CRM systems may confuse you at first, but on the bright side, you’re more likely to find a tool tailored to your needs than it would be with a less competitive software category.
To help you make the right choice, we compiled a list of popular all-in-one CRM platforms you should consider in 2024:
Hubspot CRM
HubSpot CRM combines productivity and cost-effectiveness into a well-executed CRM package, and that’s what makes it the favorite asset of both sole proprietors and international packages. HubSpot CRM is also a member of a large productivity suite packed with sales and marketing solutions, and thus, allows sales teams to align all placement strategies at a fairly affordable rate. Smart and easy to use, this tool helps users craft beautiful contact and company profiles as well as track every communication detail. It perfects user experiences by smartly assigning tasks and deals, and keeps agents’ performance in the loop to ensure clients are getting nothing but the best service. To learn more about this product’s features, sign up for HubSpot CRM free trial.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a powerful CRM system that excels in sales relationship management and suits the needs of small, medium, and large businesses. Downright intuitive and particularly competent in direct sales, Pipedrive makes it possible to attract leads and maintain quality relationships, all from a single dashboard. It scores and organizes leads in manageable chunks, and lets you customize them in a variety of ways until it adapts to the requirements of your operations. On top of that, it is one of the best-integrated systems of its kind that functions impeccably within any software landscape, fully optimized for mobile usage, and available in 13 different languages. For more information, be sure to contact the vendor or sign up for Pipedrive free trial.
Salesforce CRM
Salesforce CRM is a unified cloud-hosted solution offering robust features for lead management, marketing automation, partner management, and sales data analysis. Offering a scalable architecture for businesses of all sizes, this platform will allow you to automate several marketing tasks, increase lead generation, and boost conversions, thus, streamlining your overall workflow. It even comes with a patented Einstein AI feature that aims to improve lead scoring and activity capture, so it is easier to zero in on your strongest leads. In case you still feel that this software does not offer some of the specific functionalities you are looking for, worry not. Salesforce CRM has open API capabilities that allow it to integrate with other Salesforce productivity systems and third-party applications.
Netsuite CRM
NetSuite CRM from Oracle is a full-featured and robust customer relationship management software that gives businesses a bird’s eye view of their customers’ interactions and the tools to address opportunities as it arises. The combination of traditional CRM components, such as marketing automation and SFA with more specialized tools, boost revenue, and retain customers. NetSuite CRM smoothens the customer lifecycle by putting customer insights front and center, thereby shortening the lead-to-sale conversion. It allows you to keep track of marketing campaigns, manage your employee productivity, and work seamlessly with other companies with partner relationship management software. Not only is NetSuite customizable, but it is also cloud-based and accessible from a variety of devices – Ipad, Android, or via a browser. If you wish to learn more about the tools and functionalities this CRM offers, sign up for a NetSuite free trial.
monday.com CRM
monday.com CRM is a highly efficient CRM system that marries the functions of a CRM with pipeline, workflow, and collaboration management. Designed for businesses of all scales and a wide range of industries, the platform enables you to create and automate workflows as well as configure sales pipelines. As a CRM, it organizes contacts and traces the communication history with customers, ensuring that outputs are delivered to the right people. monday.com CRM extends its customization to the profiles of your staff. You can group people to form teams and assign and monitor tasks. With all of its sophisticated functionalities, the platform’s drag-and-drop interface makes the experience easy. It also integrates with widely used apps like Asana, Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Gmail.
Pipedrive leverages different types of dashboards to help you ensure the seamlessness of your CRM workflows.
CRM Trends to Watch Out For
In addition to finding the right platform for your operations, it is important to monitor trends in the industry. This will allow you to fully utilize your new investment and make sure that all your strategies are optimized based on the market landscape. To help you out, here are the CRM trends to watch out for.
- Data Mining and AI will grow more popular. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data mining will become more widespread this 2024 because of the increasing demand for hands-on customer service. With these tools, you can easily consolidate your sales and CRM data from multiple sources and gain deep insights into your operations. From there, you can learn more about your clients, your operations, as well as draw conclusions as to how you can improve your service.
- Social CRM will become more important. The rise of social media has been a turning point for businesses. It not only serves as a way to promote brands but also as a channel through which companies can proactively communicate with their target audiences. This is why social CRM will probably be one of the most important tools you’ll have in your arsenal of business systems. This type of CRM will help you simplify many sales and marketing tasks by capturing important customer information on different social media channels as well as consolidating your interactions with clients and leads on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media networks in a single interface.
- Omnichannel strategies will remain crucial to business success. While social media is becoming popular as a means of interacting with customers, you still shouldn’t neglect other communication channels. One of the most important aspects of customer relationship management is that you need to make it more convenient for clients and leads to approach you. To do this, you will need to roll out omnichannel strategies. Utilize your email, live chat, phone calls, and SMS to interact with your clients and get more information from your customers. By doing so, you can cover all your bases and make the most out of every CRM campaign that you launch.
NetSuite CRM offers a fully featured interface to reinforce the operational requirement of businesses, large and small.
Choose the Best CRM Application For You
Finding a CRM application for your operations does not end with simply choosing the most popular application on the market. You need to take a closer look at each platform to determine which one can work in line with your priorities to achieve your business goals. To start with, here are some tips on how to choose the best CRM application for your company:
- Pay attention to its contact management features. The most critical part of any CRM system is contact management, so make sure you choose an advanced one that is “tweakable” and able to grow with your business. Consider customization to deliver personalized service to your customers, and opt for the most scalable storage scheme offered.
- Test customer support in advance. There is little chance that your introduction to the system will go by without questions, so examine whether customer support is actually worth the money you’re paying for it. When buying a CRM tool, you’re buying a commitment to a company. So, ensure they will be there for you at any moment. Ideally, customer support should be accessible 24/7 and available via several communication channels (phone, email, live support, social media).
- Check out integrations. In the best scenario, you will get yourself an open API system that can function in any software ecosystem, and therefore requires minimal adjustment to adopt. If this is not the case, however, check the list of integrations offered by the vendor, and look in particular for prominent social networks, ERP, customer service, and payment gateway systems.
If you don’t have a particular CRM in mind yet, try HubSpot CRM. It’s free to download, but, more importantly, it sets your processes on a solid foundation. The free app scales to more advanced sales, marketing, and customer support features, all critical aspects to keep your customers happy for the long haul.
Key Insights
- Optimized Marketing Strategies
- CRM tools help businesses target the ideal customer profile, understand customer behavior, and identify the best times to promote services.
- They assist in efficient resource allocation, enhancing market profile building, especially for startups.
- Increased Workflow Efficiency
- CRM systems consolidate methods to track customer activity, eliminating double entries and manual errors.
- They improve customer interactions by making each customer feel valued and important.
- Enhanced Customer Data Analysis
- CRM systems provide valuable insights into marketing optimization and overall operation health.
- They help businesses identify bottlenecks and improve promotional campaigns.
- Better Customer Relations
- CRM systems organize customer-related operations, ensuring efficient service delivery.
- They help decrease customer agitation and collect valuable feedback for future product placement.
- Easier Customer Data Access
- CRM systems keep relevant details in a centralized, cloud-hosted database accessible from various devices.
- They provide mobile-optimized access, making customer data retrieval easy and efficient.
- Simplified Agent Performance Tracking
- CRM systems help business owners track agent performance and develop strategies for task assignment.
- They support gamification to reward top performers and improve overall productivity.
- Improved Cross-Selling and Upselling
- CRM systems use customer purchase data to suggest relevant products, boosting sales through cross-selling and upselling.
- They store detailed customer profiles to enhance future interactions.
- Streamlined Invoicing
- CRM platforms often include financial management tools to create quotes, send invoices, and manage payments.
- They integrate with payment gateways, ensuring a seamless checkout experience.
- Unified Social Media Management
- CRM systems integrate with social media platforms, allowing businesses to manage profiles and respond to inquiries from a single platform.
- They track social media activity, helping businesses stay responsive and engaged with customers.
- Access to Scalable CRM Solutions
- Modern CRM systems are affordable and accessible to small businesses, with cloud-hosted versions requiring minimal implementation time.
- They offer scalable solutions, with some free options available like HubSpot CRM.
FAQ
- What is CRM software, and why is it important for my business? CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is a tool designed to help businesses manage interactions with customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability. It is important because it enhances customer relations, optimizes marketing strategies, and improves overall business efficiency.
- How does CRM software optimize marketing strategies? CRM software helps businesses understand customer behavior, target the ideal customer profile, and identify the best times to promote services. It also aids in resource allocation and market profile building, making marketing efforts more effective.
- Can CRM software improve workflow efficiency? Yes, CRM systems consolidate methods to track customer activity, eliminate double entries, and reduce manual errors. This improves customer interactions and makes processes more efficient.
- What kind of data analysis can CRM software provide? CRM software provides insights into marketing optimization, operation health, agent performance, and overall sustainability of relationship management strategies. It helps identify bottlenecks and improve promotional campaigns.
- How does CRM software enhance customer relations? CRM systems organize customer-related operations, ensuring efficient service delivery and reducing customer agitation. They collect valuable feedback, helping businesses improve future product placement.
- Is customer data easily accessible with CRM software? Yes, CRM systems keep relevant details in a centralized, cloud-hosted database accessible from various devices. They are often mobile-optimized, making data retrieval easy and efficient.
- How can CRM software help in tracking agent performance? CRM systems help business owners track agent performance and develop strategies for task assignment. They support gamification, rewarding top performers and improving overall productivity.
- What is the difference between cross-selling and upselling in CRM systems? Cross-selling suggests new products based on a customer’s previous purchases, while upselling brings similar products to the customer’s attention based on their current purchase. Both practices aim to boost sales.
- Can CRM software handle invoicing and payments? Yes, many CRM platforms include financial management tools for creating quotes, sending invoices, and managing payments. They often integrate with payment gateways, ensuring a seamless checkout experience.
- How does CRM software integrate with social media? CRM systems integrate with social media platforms, allowing businesses to manage profiles and respond to inquiries from a single platform. They track social media activity, helping businesses stay responsive and engaged with customers.
- Are there affordable CRM solutions for small businesses? Yes, modern CRM systems are affordable and accessible to small businesses, with cloud-hosted versions requiring minimal implementation time. Some, like HubSpot CRM, offer free options with a rich package of features.
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