Have you ever been frustrated because you can’t find your agreements?
Or don’t know which of your employees last spoke to a client?
Or which one of your sales brochure is the latest version?
Or why don’t your employees realize that “Bob” is your high valued customer that requires special attention?
If this sounds familiar, you are in dire need of CRM. When implemented successfully, a CRM initiative will transform your muddled, messy, mis-managed and disorganized business into a lean, mean, tech-savvy machine!
Although there are many ways how CRM Software can help you better manage your business, I have limited our discussions to some of the popular ones below:
1. No More Messy Desk – Track & Manage Information in One Place. Stop buying post-it notes for reminders. All your contact information and reminders will be available in your CRM System.
2. No More Lost Documents, Contracts, Images, Music, etc. CRM Software will allow you to attach documents, images, etc. to each contact. So, to review a document, simply bring up the contact and look at the document attachments.
3. Don’t Waste Time Looking for Past E-Mails. Because e-mails are synchronized automatically, your history folder will always be repository of past e-mails sent/received to a particular individual. No more having to search through tons of e-mail for a particular attachment.
4. Leverage Individual Expertise through Knowledge Management. Every organization has a few individuals who know a lot about the business. CRM software allows you to track various information, documents, brochures, etc. in a knowledge management area. Because this is a searchable knowledge base, anyone in your business will be able to search and access policies, brochures, industry information, business documents, HR documents and more.
5. Automate Business Processes to Set Action into Play. So, you want to make sure that when your sales reps complete an introductory call, they get a reminder to send a thank you e-mail. Or how about sending a “friendly reminder” to your contacts one day prior to your appointment to make sure that all parties show up for the meeting. Automated business rules, when done right will save you time, money and lots of frustration.
6. Know Which Marketing Campaign is Bringing in Results. You spend hard earned dollars to advertise in the Yellow Pages, local Newspaper, Direct Mail, Internet, etc, but do you have a clue as to which campaign is really working? CRM will change all this. You will be able to focus your marketing dollars on campaigns that clearly provide the results you are looking for – sales!
7. Improve, Automate and Be on Top of Sales. Standardize your sales process with automated reminders, to-do’s, follow-ups, best practices that you know work. Review and be on top of activity logs, top opportunities, forecasting, quota and much more. CRM’s sales force automation features will help your sales team excel to new heights.
8. Track & Provide High Levels of Customer Service Good service is no longer memorable. Great service makes all the difference. With CRM, you will be able to track each and every customer service call and the steps taken to resolve them in a timely fashion. With Automation, Knowledge Base and standard processes, your customers will be rewarded with Great service which will result in return visits and referrals.
9. Use Dashboards to gauge Key Performance Indicators. So, you have 5 minutes before you dash off. But how is your business doing? Meetings? Sales? Marketing? Customer Service? With CRM, you can create customized Dashboards that will give you a quick graphical overview of all the things that are important to you and your business. Dashboards can also be extended for all your employees so that they can better focus in their area of specialty.
10. Consolidated all your various database silos into your CRM solution. Most small business have several different databases – all have name, address and telephone numbers of your customers, vendors, prospects, etc. Over time, frustration begins to set in as you realize that one database telephone number was updated and the rest were not. Before too long, people are calling the wrong number and accounting is sending invoices to the wrong addresses and you know the rest. The point here is that you can consolidate all disparate databases into your CRM software.
