3 Reasons to Use an Integrated CRM Tool in Your Ad Agency
Read time: 3 minutes
Whether you are an owner, creative director or account executive of a small and medium size ad agency, you probably have realized that a CRM system is crucial to help with not only managing new business opportunities, but also organizing existing clients and vendors’ contacts. The main challenge for SME agencies is that most of them use a mash up of different systems such as Excel and an address book to keep track of contacts, manage follow up calls and schedule meetings.
You are probably wondering how can you streamline your internal business processes with a system that will allow your team to manage a job from start to finish and also give you the ability to control the sales process through the entire sales funnel.
3 Reasons to Use an Integrated CRM System
1. Keeps it Simple
Using an agency CRM software that keep all sales opportunities in one system allows you to increase sales funnel visibility and shorten the sales cycles. For instance, at Function Point, we make sure to keep the CRM component of our system simple enough so account executives in the creative industry will adopt and use it right away. I have seen many advertising agencies selecting a complicated and cumbersome CRM, which offers so many features that will never be used by these agencies. Selecting these complicated systems is a recipe for disaster, because you will get a push back from your team and it will be hard to implement the system. Quite often agencies invest lots of money in a system and end up never deploying or using to its full capacity.
2. Features and Benefits
Another important item is to identify what are some of the features and benefits you need to get from your CRM system. For a SME, I would suggest sticking to the basics in terms of functionality. The ability to enter prospect information, track the sales funnel and create revenue forecast reports based on probability to close are some of the key items you need to watch for when looking for a CRM system. Don’t forget to check if the CRM offers you the ability to see what are your large sales opportunities and who is the account executive involved in the process. Additionally, I like a CRM system that easily allows you to create prospecting tasks and reminds you when to call or email prospects. Not to mention, the functionality to manage notes and sync with your calendars.
3. Project Management Integration
I have seen many agencies using CRMs systems that don’t integrate with their workflow and project management applications. These agencies spend so much time looking for information and don’t have visibility on what happens after a prospect becomes a client.
I suggest looking for a system that provides an end-to-end solution including CRM, scheduling, time sheets, reporting, job management and invoices. Then, you as the owner or senior manager of a creative studio, will be able to have all the information at the click of a button.
Overall, a CRM needs to be easy to use, have the key basic features and benefits that are important to your agency and ideally is an end-to-end solution so you don’t have to use multiple systems at your agency.
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This article was contributed by former Function Point employee, Leonardo Maia.
