Month: August 2022

Customer Relationship Managers, also known as CRM systems have become increasingly popular in recent years. Businesses all around the world have been scrambling to jump onto the CRM bandwagon as they slowly but surely begin to realise the host of benefits that they get from implementing the system and building on it.

If you’ve already decided that your business needs a CRM, chances are you’re stuck when it comes to choosing which one you want to integrate into your business. Choosing a CRM is not an easy task as there is a lot of work that needs to be done when it comes to implementation — it’s not just about testing different CRMs until you find the right one!

The reality is that every business is different in terms of its industry, size, needs, and preferences. But it’s up to you to find the CRM that is able to mould perfectly to your business’ shape. Let’s look at how to find that CRM.

Why Your Business Needs a CRM

If you’re not fully convinced that your business needs a CRM, you need to take a closer look at the benefits that a CRM brings to the table. From automation to a streamlined workspace and even third-party app integration, the majority of CRMs have something for every business, no matter the size or type of business that you’re in.

While it might sound like ‘Customer Relationship Management’ systems are only there to build on the relationship between a business and its customers, there’s far more to it when you take a closer look under the skin of this complex system.

When harnessed correctly, a CRM can be an incredibly powerful tool that will help your business to become far more streamlined, efficient, and better in every aspect. With a CRM as the foundation of your business, you will have an edge over your competitors as long as it is integrated and used properly.

Choosing the Best CRM on the Market

There are hundreds of great CRMs on the market that you can choose from. But, with so many options it becomes difficult to narrow your choices down and finally choose one that is perfectly suited to your business.

One of the best CRMs that are currently available on the market is HubSpot. The biggest advantage that HubSpot has over its competitors is that it’s completely free to use. That’s right, no free trials, demo accounts, or hidden fees. Unlike other CRMs, you can use HubSpot completely free of charge.

So, what’s the catch? The free version of HubSpot is a fully functional CRM, but it does have some limitations in terms of its features. These limitations aren’t a problem for small to medium-sized businesses though. Bigger businesses may need to invest in paid packages, but even then HubSpot is still an affordable CRM.

What’s great about this free CRM is the flexibility that it offers to businesses. HubSpot is divided into three branches — Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and Service Hub. All of these are free, but each one also offers paid tiers that can be upgraded individually. This allows you to pick and choose which of the CRM you want to upgrade as and when you need to.

For example, if your business is mostly focused on providing excellent customer service to your customers, you can upgrade the Service Hub to a paid package while keeping the Marketing Hub and the Sales Hub as free packages. 

Moreover, HubSpot is the pioneer of inbound marketing, which allows your business to draw customers in like a magnet. If marketing is something that’s important to your business, HubSpot has some excellent features that you need to look into.

Getting Your CRM up and Running

While there are tons of CRMs out there to choose from, they’re not all created equally. Choosing a CRM for your business goes beyond looking for the one with the most appealing colour scheme or the most interesting name. There are some crucial factors that you need to consider before you invest your money into a CRM. 

Firstly, you need to take a deep dive into your own business. Assess your own budget as well as your SMART goals. From there you can narrow down your search to the CRMs that fit into your budget and also meet your business goals. This allows you to find the right CRM amongst the crowd.

You need to keep in mind that the implementation of the CRM is the crucial first step. It’s always a good idea to have a group of experts onboard to guide you through the process. The majority of CRM implementations fail because they are not taken on correctly. If you have a bad experience during the first stages of using a CRM, your opinions of the system will be tainted forever, so make sure to get this step right!

You’ll need to be able to migrate all of your existing data onto the new CRM, which can be a challenge. This step is just as important because you could risk losing all of your important data if you’re not careful.

Finally, you need to have your team onboarded onto the CRM. The majority of CRM vendors have resources available to train your team members in using the system, but most people are hands-on learners when it comes to Customer Relationship Management systems. This is why it’s always a good idea to stay in touch with a business that understands the CRM and can offer their help when you need it most.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right CRM for your business is incredibly difficult. There are hundreds of different CRMs on the market that you can choose from which makes it even more difficult for business owners to make a final decision. If you need help in finding the perfect CRM for your business and integrating it properly, get in touch with a GoCRM expert as soon as possible!

If your business needs a technology update then a CRM might just be the perfect solution for you. You might be wondering what exactly a CRM is, but that’s why we’ve put together this quick but detailed explanation of why your business needs to implement one of these modern systems.

Customer Relationship Management systems have become incredibly popular in recent years. Even some of the world’s top businesses such as Apple, Amazon, and Adidas have invested heavily into their CRMs to help grow their business and slingshot it ahead of their competition.

As you’ll see throughout this article, a CRM is about far more than just keeping customers happy. If a CRM is implemented and used correctly, it can become the foundation of your entire business, building up cohesion, efficiency and a more streamlined workflow for projects. Keep reading to find out more about CRMs and why you need to invest in one soon.

The Details About Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems

If you’re not familiar with CRM, you might be wondering what these systems are. Customer Relationship Management systems are used to build a stronger bond between a business and its customers — at least, that’s what it looks like on the surface.

But when you dive further into the world of CRMs, it becomes clear that these systems are much more than that. They are, in fact, incredibly powerful when utilised in the right way. As long as you implement your CRM perfectly and onboard all of your team members, you will have access to an invaluable tool that can give you the edge over your business rivals.

With a CRM at the heart of a business, it can become a unifying element for your entire team even beyond departments and geographical borders. This opens your business up to immense growth opportunities, better efficiency, and ultimately more profit.

The Advantages of Using a CRM

Explaining what a CRM is might give you a basic idea of why it can be beneficial to your business, but, once you understand the advantage that a CRM brings to your business, you’ll be fully convinced that it will help your business. Below, we’ve got some of the top benefits that a CRM will bring to the table.

Rock Solid Customer Relationships

It might not be surprising to hear that a Customer Relationship Management system will strengthen the relationship between your business and its customers. But, how exactly does a CRM help you to accomplish this?

CRMs act as a centralised system for all communications between your business and your customers. From the moment they filled in a form to submit a query to their first purchase and even every complaint that they have sent in. Any member of your team can look into the communication history of a customer and help them with any issues they might have with a product or service. This cuts down on slow customer service immensely as there is no need to ask a customer about background details before the issue can be resolved.

Customers can even be informed about new products or services. Your team members can follow up on new sales, or send them targeted marketing for products and services that they could be interested in, which prevents your customers from being spammed with tons of annoying marketing messages.

Whether you have communicated with customers through emails, phone calls, or even through social media, your team can keep track of all communications in one central system that any team member can access. 

One Centralised Database

If a CRM system forms the foundation of your business, it means that it can collect all of your data in one place. Having everything in one centralised database will allow you to quickly pull any data that you need at any given moment.

Your CRM will collect data about every customer that interacts with your business. Whether it’s through your website, your social media channels, or even an email, your CRM will build a profile of each person that is associated with your business — whether they have bought something from you or not.

Having all of your data on one system helps you to create a more personal relationship with your customers. For example, you can choose to send personalised messages to each of your customers on their birthdays, or you can choose to send a message to all of your customers that have the job title of CEO in the hospitality sector.

It’s this personal human touch that draws customers closer to businesses and takes away the cold and harsh nature of standard blanket marketing techniques. CRMs are incredibly powerful when it comes to tailoring your business around your customers’ wants and needs.

Data-Driven Decision Making

With all your data collected in one place, it becomes much easier to streamline your decision-making process and use the data that your business has collected to take the right path. This is especially important when it comes to making decisions on marketing strategies, which can often be incredibly difficult and time-consuming when you need to compare numbers between different marketing channels.

By running different marketing campaigns, you can collect data through your CRM to analyse which one works best. You can even dig deeper by identifying which marketing channels work best for each type of customer that you have. 

This will allow you to create targeted marketing campaigns by basing your decisions and investments on real-world data rather than simple guesswork. Data can help you even further by showing you which of your marketing campaigns have led to the highest number of new leads being generated, which gives you the confidence to choose the perfect marketing strategy for your business.

Automation

One of the most important elements of any modern business is efficiency. We want our employees to work on the tasks that matter the most. Unfortunately, though, there are some time-consuming tasks that team members need to take on, which takes their focus off the more important tasks and ultimately causes your team’s production levels to take a hit.

Many CRMs can automate basic daily tasks that your team needs to complete. Moving a project onto the next development stage is one example of this. Instead of calling a meeting to brief the next team on the project’s progress and what they need to do, a CRM will allow team members to tag one another in a project and leave notes. The CRM will automatically notify the team when the project has been moved to the next stage and is ready to be worked on.

While this might be a small feature, it makes a massive difference at the end of the day and allows your team to work much faster and get more done without major interruptions. You can customise your CRM to work in a way that suits your team’s needs and preferences.

Streamlined Teamwork

CRMs will help your teams to experience a far more streamlined working environment. The majority of CRMs will allow you to integrate third-party apps into the system. All of our favourite productivity apps such as Google Docs, Slack, and even Zoom are integrated directly into a CRM.

This allows your team to utilise the CRM seamlessly across different platforms, and this takes automation to another level. Your CRM will send notifications across Slack, allow Google Docs to be added to projects, and it can do much more as it becomes the glue that keeps all of your different platforms together.

The right CRM will allow your team to work across different platforms with ease. Whether you’re in sales, social media marketing, or even customer service, integrating these apps into your CRM will make a huge difference to your entire business.

Conclusion

While you might expect a CRM to be a system focused on building customer relationships, it is, in fact, much more than that. CRMs can become the foundation of your entire business, and when they are integrated properly, they can propel your business miles ahead of the competition. Whether your business is focused on sales, marketing, or customer service, you need a CRM if you want the edge over your rivals. Get in touch with a GoCRM expert for more details about CRM integration.