Month: September 2022

Customer service is one of the most vital elements of your business. No matter how good your product or service is if your customer service is poor, your business’ reputation will take a knock. Slow replies to customer queries, incorrect responses, or even lengthy conversations with customers can cause them to become irate, which is bound to lead to poor reviews.

Having a CRM system implemented into your business is one of the best ways to improve your customer service. The answer is in the name: Customer Relationship Management systems. There are a lot more benefits to CRM systems, but they allow your team to focus on connecting with customers to ensure that they have the best possible experience when communicating with your business.

In this article, we’ll be diving further into how you can provide your customers with quick, informative, and friendly customer service to ensure that they leave you an excellent review, and come back in the future.

6 Ways a CRM improves your customer service

There are 6 main ways that a CRM will increase the reliability and performance of your customer service. Beyond these 6 ways, there are many smaller elements and moving parts that will also benefit your business’ customer service team, but you’ll get to see those in action once you’ve got your CRM up and running!

Organising customer information

Collecting customer information is one thing, but organising it into useful data is another. CRMs have centralised databases that collect tons of information about your customers and arrange it in such a way that it can be used by customer service staff to create more personalised interactions. The more you interact with your customers across various different channels, the more connected they will feel, and the more they will trust your business.

Scheduling meetings

Scheduling meetings has always been a challenge over the years. In the past, it would take time and effort to find a meeting slot that works for all parties. But, with a CRM you can seamlessly manage your time and slot in meetings where it suits everyone. Your calendar is available for your clients to see, and they can pick a time slot that suits them best. Face-to-face meetings or even video conferencing is one of the best ways to connect your customers to a human rather than words on a screen, and a CRM can help your team to stay on top of all their meetings!

Preventing repeat complaints

Sometimes even when an issue has been addressed and a support ticket has been resolved quickly, it hasn’t been done properly. This can lead to repeat complaints where customers would address the same issue again. A CRM will help you to identify these repeat complaints so that you can prioritise them to get the issue sorted. The longer a customer needs to deal with a problem or chat with customer support, the more agitated they will become.

Closing tickets faster

CRMs will notify the customer support team of messages that need their attention in the form of tickets, allowing your team to become more productive. The ticketing system on most CRMs is incredibly simple, fast, and can trigger automations. This allows your team to get to work on clearing these tickets as quickly as possible. Moreover, your CRM can provide you with detailed analytics on the tickets, such as the average time it takes for them to be closed for example. You can use this information to determine where you need to improve, and what you need to do to keep your customers happy at all times.

Meaningful and personalised responses

Many businesses use generic solutions to problems or even a FAQ approach. This shows that the business doesn’t care and doesn’t have time to deal with its customers. It’s kind of like saying “I’m busy, just have a read through these questions to find the answer you’re looking for”. People want to feel connected to a business, and they want to be able to have a discussion with someone to resolve their problem as quickly as possible. Reading through a FAQ section is not an easier way to deal with a problem.

Connecting customers to the right representatives

Have you ever tried to get help from customer service only to be sent from one department to another? As South Africans, we’re all too familiar with the frustration that this causes. But, what if your customers were directed to a representative in the correct department from the very first moment they contact your business? CRMs can help your business with this by automatically tagging a relevant representative in a ticket based on the query that has been sent in by the customer. This prevents customers from waiting longer than necessary for a reply and leads to more efficient customer service.

Final Thoughts

In a modern world where everything happens instantly, having slower customer service can set you back and give your business a bad reputation. You need to be able to respond to customer queries quickly. The best way to strengthen your customer service department is to integrate a CRM into your business. Make sure to get in touch with a GoCRM expert to streamline your customer service team.

If you’re still on the fence about whether you should be using a CRM system in your business or not, you might be wondering whether a CRM will make your team more productive. Well, here’s the truth:

According to Salesforce, a CRM has an average ROI of $8.71 for every dollar spent. CRM increases sales by up to 29%, improve productivity levels by up to 34% and increases sales revenue by up to 41% per salesperson.

So, if CRM systems are truly so powerful, how exactly do they make your team productive? It’s all well and good looking into the numbers and the statistics behind CRMs, but that’s different to understanding how CRM systems can benefit your business and make your teams more productive.

How does a CRM make my team more productive?

Customer Relationship Management systems play a vital role in modern businesses. Almost all global businesses are using CRM systems and making the most of them. But, CRMs aren’t just beneficial to large companies, they’re great for small and medium-sized businesses too.

Project pipeline

One of the biggest challenges that businesses face is keeping track of projects, deals, and general progress on tasks. This is where a CRM sales pipeline will help your team to keep track of each element and ensure that everything is done on time.

CRMs provide an easy way for businesses and salespeople to track their communications with customers and clients. These pipelines can easily be managed and altered, which allows your team to quickly get an update on the progress of any given task.

CRMs can track the following elements within your business:

• Appointment scheduled
• Prospects qualified to buy
• Presentation scheduled 
• Decision-maker bought-in 
• Contracts sent
• Sales activity levels
• Meeting to close deal hit rates 

Time Saving Features

Having a CRM integrated with your business systems allows your team to save some time on smaller tasks that have less of an impact on the success of your business. This allows your team to focus more on the bigger tasks that matter more.

Automation is one of the biggest benefits that come with adopting a CRM. Your system can be programmed to automate smaller tasks that take up crucial time in your team’s schedule. 

Here are just a few examples of tasks that a CRM can automate:

• Logging into various software to get work done.
• Having to manually respond to most internal emails.
• Setting reminders in order to get various tasks done.
• Gathering data from various sources in order to generate reports.

Streamlined collaboration between teams

With a CRM at the heart of your business, your entire team has one unified system that they can work with. This allows every team member to view a project, a sales deal, or even just a task in the form of a ticket.

Moving this ticket onto the next step in the process is as simple as passing it along to the next stage in the CRM. This will automatically notify the relevant team members and inform them of what they need to do. Team members can tag one another in projects, leave notes, and get an overview of the entire ticket in a matter of seconds. This negates the need for time-consuming and disruptive meetings or phone calls.

CRMs also allow you to integrate third-party apps such as Slack, Google Docs, Zoom, and many more. This allows your team to use their favourite productivity apps more seamlessly and with more purpose.

Final Thoughts

CRMs are the ultimate systems that will connect your business and allow your entire team to work together in a more productive way. Research has shown that companies that use CRMs experienced far more productivity and a boost in their sales compared to those that don’t.

If you’re looking to take your business to the next level, make sure to get in touch with a GoCRM expert as soon as possible for a personalised assessment of your business, and a recommendation of which CRM will fit you best.

South African businesses are slowly but surely catching onto the trends that are being used overseas. One of these trends is CRM systems, which have become more and more popular in the South African business landscape. You might be wondering whether it’s time for your business to look into investing in one of these systems.

When you look closely at the benefits that a CRM brings to your business, there are plenty of reasons why you should get one. But then you still need to decide which CRM you should go for. Should you bite the bullet and go with the most popular option even if it is incredibly expensive? Or are there other CRMs that are better suited to South African businesses?

There’s a lot to consider when you need to choose a CRM, but it’s important to make the right choice because changing to a different CRM once you’ve already committed to one is not an easy task. Keep reading to find out which CRM you should use in South Africa.

The Best CRM Software for South Africa

South African businesses are unique and often very different to foreign businesses. As such, we also have unique requirements when it comes to the systems (and CRMs) that we need to use. 

There are a few popular choices when it comes to CRMs worldwide, but if you’re in South Africa you’ll need to narrow it down. Below are some of the most popular CRM options in South Africa, and this will give you more of an idea as to which CRMs you can start looking into:

• HubSpot CRM
• Salesforce Sales Cloud
• Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Zoho CRM
• Insightly
• Pipedrive

It’s important to keep in mind that you need to choose the right CRM for your needs and preferences. Salesforce might work for a business like Vodacom, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also the right CRM for your business!

Things to Consider

When choosing a CRM in South Africa there are a few important factors that you need to consider. With hundreds of potential CRMs on the market that you could choose from, it’s incredibly difficult to make a final decision and commit to one system — especially if you don’t know what to look out for!

Costs

The first factor to keep in mind is the costs involved in the CRM system that you choose. There are two different costs that you will need to consider — this is often not clarified by the CRM beforehand, so make sure to double-check both of these costs.

The first cost is the recurring fees that you need to pay. All CRMs will have a monthly cost that the business needs to pay. Make sure that these costs can fit into your budget, and shop around to see which CRM suits your budget best.

The second cost is the implementation of the CRM. These systems are incredibly complex, and the initial set-up to get the system up and running is vital. You can’t cut any corners during this process!

Some CRMs even require specialised support to keep them running, which can add even more costs to the overall package that you’ve chosen. Salesforce is one example of this, where some businesses pay up to $6500 per month for their CRM solution.

Difficulty to Implement

CRM systems need to be integrated with your business before you can use them. Many business executives attempt to tackle this process on their own, but that’s often where it all goes wrong. CRM implementation is difficult, and that’s why nearly 70% of all CRM initiations fail before the system is even launched.

From migrating data to ensuring that the system is running smoothly, you need to have a ton of experience and expertise in order to successfully integrate a CRM into your business. Some CRMs are more complex than others, and this is where your decision will become important.

Some CRMs require tons of investment and effort just to get them up and running. So, if you’re not prepared for those extra costs and the potential headaches that come with it, you’re going to need to do some thorough research into each CRM before you make your final decision.

Benefits

Every CRM is unique and offers different features. It’s important to review the features, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each CRM before you make your decision on which one you’re going to invest in.

Make sure that you understand what the CRM has to offer for your business, and assess whether it meets your needs. If the CRM is lacking in one area, or the ROI does not match up with what you would get from another CRM, you should take this into consideration when making your decision.

Scalability

South African businesses often start small and grow. Some businesses don’t even grow that much, but they remain at the perfect scale. Either way, you want your CRM to grow with your business. 

Whether this is adding on new features in the future through updates or moving up to more expensive packages as your budget increases. It’s never a good thing when you’re paying for features that you’re never going to use, so make sure that the CRM fits the scale of your business!

Support

With CRMs being such complex systems, you’re going to need some help every now and then. It’s so easy to run into errors or encounter specific problems that only experts have the solutions to, so you want to be sure that you’ll have support both locally and internationally.

If you’re using a CRM that very few other businesses in South Africa are using, it’s likely that you won’t be getting reliable local support. You’ll then have to rely on international support which comes with a whole host of challenges.

The best way to assess the support that you will be getting from each CRM is to dive into user reviews. You’ll ideally be looking for fast and reliable support on a 24/7 basis. The best CRMs will have support available through multiple different contact methods as well. As ironic as it might sound, there are some CRM vendors who don’t have great customer support!

User Friendliness

At the end of the day, your team will be using the CRM. This is why it’s so important to have the right CRM implemented into your business. If your team can’t get to grips with how the system works, it’s highly likely that your CRM implementation will fail.

If your team is not skilled in IT, then you should steer clear of the more complex systems and rather invest in one that’s more user-friendly. This will be a major factor for business executives to keep in mind, especially in South Africa.

Luckily, there are tons of CRMs on the market that are user-friendly, and many of them (such as HubSpot) come with tons of resources and even online courses that help you to teach your team members how to get the most out of the CRM.

Conclusion

Choosing the right CRM for your South African business can be tricky. There’s a lot to consider when making your decision. Ultimately, a CRM should benefit your business and make your team’s job easier, rather than causing them more headaches. Make sure to take your time and draft up a full assessment of the pros and cons of each CRM before you come to a conclusion about which one you want to invest in.

The business world is raging about CRMs, but not everyone has a full understanding of why these systems have become so important in our modern world. Customer Relationship Management systems have been adopted by thousands of businesses all around the world, but why?

Here are the top six benefits of a CRM:

1. Centralised data system
2. Solidified customer relationships
3. Increased customer retention
4. Data-driven decision making
5. Automation
6. Streamline workforce

CRMs might be expensive, but, if you’re not using one then you’re likely to fall behind your competition. If you still need some convincing about why these systems are so powerful and essential in the modern business landscape, keep reading to find out why you need one!

The Top Benefits to Expect From a CRM

We know about all the reasons that would hold you back from getting a CRM, but what about the reasons why you should? As with anything in life, there’s a trade-off with implementing a CRM into your business. Let’s take a closer look at the advantage that a CRM will provide to your business.

1. Centralised Data System

With a CRM at the core of your business, it becomes a system that can start collecting data for you. Having knowledge and data about your customers will be key in making important decisions that will drive your business in the right direction. It’ll also help you to get more personal with your customers, which is something that they’ll appreciate.

From the moment a customer visits your website and shows an interest in your business, to the moment they purchase a product, your CRM can collect crucial pieces of information about your target audience. From the posts that they like to the emails that they don’t even open.

All of this data allows you to build a profile for each person in your contact list. This will allow you to segment your contact list and target them with personalised marketing campaigns — something that we’ll get into shortly.

2. Solidified Customer Relationships

With all of this important data carefully stored away in your CRM, you’re on your way to making the most out of personalised email marketing. People don’t want to receive emails from info@company.com, they want to hear from Mike at GoCRM for example. This adds a more human touch to your marketing which people react more positively to.

Did you know that 70% of people feel frustrated when they receive irrelevant emails? Forbes has compiled over 50 stats that prove just how powerful personalised marketing can be, and having a CRM is the first step to getting that marketing campaign up and running.

Email marketing is the best way to hook your audience, and connect with different target markets at the same time. It’s one of the most effective tactics that’s even used by some of the biggest businesses in the world like Adidas, Amazon, and closer to home, Takealot!

3. Increased Customer Retention

If customers feel like they’re being treated in a more human way, they’re much more likely to return to a business. The key to this is having good customer service. Have you ever been to a good restaurant, but their service was incredibly slow and the waiters were rude? Would you go back?

It’s the exact same with a business. You might have an excellent product, but if your service is poor then your customers will be left unsatisfied. They’re also likely to look for another business that does the same thing but has friendlier staff and quick service. This is especially relevant to businesses that offer a service!

With a CRM, you can keep track of when your customers have bought a product or service, and then send them a follow-up when it’s time to renew. For example, if your business sells pet supplies, you can enter customer data into your CRM. When a customer buys tick and flea treatment for their dogs, you can automatically remind them to buy the product again three months later when their current tick and flea treatment reaches the end of its lifecycle.

4. Data-driven Decision Making

We already know that CRMs collect a ton of data from customers, but they also give you insights into your financials, project management, and marketing. This allows you to get an overview of your entire business, and it gives you an idea of where you can improve going forward.

For example, you can use your CRM to see where most of your website traffic is coming from. If you notice that your Facebook page isn’t doing well at directing traffic, you can either choose to put more focus on your other marketing channels, or you can try something different with your Facebook marketing to see if there’s a change in how people react to your marketing.

All of this data is displayed in neat graphs and tables on your CRM, which allows you to make data-driven decisions on what’s best for your business and target audience, rather than just guessing or following the latest trends.

5. Automation

Earlier, we lightly touched on automatically sending an email to your customer when their tick and flea treatment runs out and it’s time to renew their product. Well, this is also an example of automation, which is something that most CRMs excel at.

Automation can help to save your team valuable time and effort by reducing the number of smaller, less important tasks and allowing them to focus on the bigger tasks that are more important to the success of your business.

Another example of automation is when a customer tries to contact your customer service team outside of working hours. You can set up a simple chatbot to help customers and answer their questions even when no one is online. If they still need assistance, the customer service team will automatically be informed the next time they’re online.

Automation is one of the most important features that a CRM can provide to a business. As long as your CRM is integrated properly and you’ve got the right automations set up, you’ll see an incredible change in your business’ efficiency and productivity.

6. Streamlined Workforce

Having a CRM will streamline your workforce by allowing them to collaborate on projects across departments and geographical locations. Because all of your team members are using one unified system, everyone can see everything that’s happening in the organisation, including the history of a project, how long the team has been working on it, and much more.

CRMs will also allow you to integrate third-party applications into the system. Most of the popular productivity apps like Slack, Zoom, and even Google Docs can be supported by major CRMs, which allows your team to spend more time working, and less time switching between tabs and apps that slow their devices down.

Final Thoughts

The list of benefits that a CRM brings to your business continues on much longer than the six benefits we’ve seen above. It’s difficult to truly understand the extent of how much of an advantage your business will get from implementing a CRM until you take that leap of faith and try it out for yourself. Get in touch with a GoCRM expert for more information about CRMs or to get started with a CRM as soon as possible.

Customer Relationship Management systems have become an essential part of the modern business landscape. By now, we all know why they are so integral to business and that they bring several benefits that will give you an edge over your competition. But, have you been wondering what the tradeoff is?

Here are the five disadvantages of CRMs:

1. Difficult implementation
2. Costs of CRMs
3. Training
4. Complexity
5. Security concerns

There is always a tradeoff in anything in life, and CRMs are no different. It’s difficult to make a decision on whether your business truly needs a CRM or not, especially when you start looking at the positives and the negatives. So, let’s dive deeper into the drawbacks you can expect from a CRM.

Five Disadvantages to Implementing CRMs

1. Difficult implementation

No matter which CRM you choose to go with, you’re going to be faced with a complex and challenging implementation process. All CRMs are complex systems that need to be integrated properly if you want to make the most of them.

In fact, almost 70% of all CRM integrations fail. The problem is that if you have one bad experience with a CRM, there is a chance that you could turn your back on this powerful system entirely without ever experiencing any of the benefits that it could bring to your business.

Many businesses don’t understand how they need to implement a CRM into their business so that it will seamlessly integrate with their other business systems. Then there’s also managing the project to ensure that it goes smoothly, and integrating the current business’ data without losing any of it! 

It’s an incredibly difficult process, so this is one area where you can’t afford to cut corners. It’s always best to team up with an experienced CRM implementation team to help you get the system up and running.

2. Costs of CRMs

One of the biggest elements that hold businesses back from using a CRM is the costs involved. If they’re not incredibly expensive on the surface, then you’ll likely be faced with hidden costs or trial accounts. You’ll also likely only find out about these once you’ve committed to using the CRM — as we know, implementing a CRM is not easy, and neither is switching to a different one.

This is why it’s so important to make sure you carefully choose the CRM that is right for your business, rather than the most popular one on the market. CRMs are not “one size fits all” solutions, and what works for Apple might not work for your medium-sized furniture upholstery store. 

CRMs can quickly become more and more expensive, especially if you don’t do in-depth research into each one before you make a final decision. Some CRMs even require specialised teams to be set up just to keep them running, and this is something that’s not suitable for smaller businesses.

Nevertheless, there are some truly free CRMs out there that give you the flexibility to only pay for the features that you need, rather than paying for features that you’ll never use. HubSpot is one of our personal favourite free CRMs, which is perfect for small to medium-sized businesses.

3. Training

Anything new needs to be adapted to. The same goes for CRM systems. Once the system has been implemented and integrated with your business, your entire team will need to learn how the system works and adapt to using the CRM rather than your old business systems.

Whether you were using manual processes or just spreadsheets and emails, your team will likely have a steep learning curve ahead of them once the CRM is up and running. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is what everyone always says. But, when it comes to integrating a CRM into your business, you don’t have a choice!

Training your team can be difficult, but you need to make sure that your business management understands how the CRM works and are able to answer any questions that your team members may have. It’s also a great idea to have some training resources handy when you need to onboard new team members, or have team members that need to refer to some training modules.

4. Complexity

On the topic of teaching an old dog new tricks, you may find that some team members are resistant to the changes you are trying to implement. Getting your entire team to buy into the CRM is the best way to get them onboard with the idea of overhauling your business’ systems.

The key to getting your team to accept the idea of using a CRM rather than the systems they’re used to using is simply discussing it with them. Most of these problems can be solved with simple and clear communication. You simply need to help your team members to understand how a CRM will make their life easier.

Throughout the discussions, you need to be ready to address any concerns that they might have — learning a complex new system will certainly be one of those concerns. At some point, the team will have a realisation that the system is being used to assist them, which will encourage them to become more open to the idea.

5. Security concerns

With a CRM integrated at the core of your business, your entire team will be working on one unified system. This means that every team member will have access to your data. Whether it’s contacts, projects, finances, or marketing metrics, you need to have the confidence that you can trust your team with this information.

Having all of this information available at the click of a button may be great when it comes to streamlining your business and allowing your team to collaborate effortlessly, but there’s always the risk of data being leaked outside of your organisation or used for malicious purposes.

Nevertheless, there are security processes that you can put in place if you feel that this is too much of a risk. With the correct safety measures in place, you can use a CRM without having to worry about where your business’ data is going.

Final Thoughts

CRMs are revolutionary systems that have become integral in the modern business world. But, they do come with some drawbacks that you need to know about. While some of these drawbacks can be major, they can often be avoided simply by teaming up with some CRM experts to help you get the best out of your chosen system. Get in touch with a GoCRM expert as soon as possible.

The digital marketing world has evolved massively over the past decade. We went from traditional advertising on television and pop-up ads to social media and influencer marketing. But, with the majority of these marketing methods, it’s incredibly difficult to add a personal touch that will connect directly to your target audience.

It’s difficult to address both the CEO of a company and a young aspiring marketing manager with the same message. The most effective way to market your product or service is to add a more personal touch to your message and use language and ideas that will appeal directly to them. This is simply impossible to do with social media marketing, which is currently one of the world’s major business focal points.

You might get your business seen by many people, but it’s not always being seen by the right people. Even then, you’re not catering to everyone’s personal needs and preferences, only a small percentage of them. So, how can you personalise your marketing to ensure that you are maximising your ROI? All you need is a CRM and a contact list — keep reading to see how it works.

Is Personalised Marketing Effective?

Personalised marketing has become more popular in recent years, but the question on everyone’s mind is: “does it really work?” If you’re wondering whether marketing with a more personal touch really makes a difference, take a look at HubSpot’s 24 data-backed reasons why personalised marketing works.

Studies have shown that customers react far better to personalised marketing than a simple blanket email. This personal touch allows the business to connect to its customers, rather than just trying to sell them products or services. 

Ultimately, you need to understand your customers to ensure that you’re connecting with them on a personal level. An email sent to the marketing manager would look different to an email sent to a sales consultant for example. This differentiation in your message, tone of voice, and even the product or service you’re marketing will make a big difference in creating a more personal bond with your customers.

The main obstacle that you’ll face in personalising your marketing is building up a detailed contact list. In order to make your personalised marketing as effective as possible, you need to gather as much information about your customers as possible. From their contact details to their job titles, and even their geographic locations. Any of this information can help you to better segment your contact list and send out more effective marketing material.

How a CRM allows you to Build a Contact List

If you’re using a CRM, you can build up an extensive contact list with ease. The majority of CRMs will allow you to create forms on your website that allows you to capture information. You need to make sure to create the correct prompts and questions that will allow contacts to build up their profile on your system.

For example, you can ask them which job title is most relevant to them, which country or region they are based in, and much more. Using these capture forms allows the CRM to build up a detailed profile of each customer, which is then stored securely in your business’ centralised database which is perfect for email marketing campaigns.

Once you’ve built up a solid database of contacts, you can start to plan how you’re going to segment them into different groups to send them personalised emails.

Segmenting your Contacts

Many CRMs can segment your contact list for you based on a specific range of data that you choose. This makes it much easier to personalise your marketing emails and send them to the relevant contacts that you already have saved into your CRM system.

Dividing your contact list into different groups will help you to personalise your marketing based on specific parameters that you set. But, you will still be responsible for creating content that is relevant to your audience.

There are hundreds of different ways that you can segment your contact list. You can communicate with your customers in different ways. 70% of people are frustrated with irrelevant emails — this shows that if you’re spamming your contact list with blanket marketing emails, you could lose them altogether.

Building Relationships

With your contact list built up and personalised marketing emails sent out, it’s time to start building relationships with your customers. It’s impossible to start a new email campaign for every customer that signs up to your email list. But, you can use your CRM to automate this process, which makes it much easier to ensure that every new customer that signed up using your form will receive the same emails. But, you can use these emails to learn more about your contacts and understand what they’re most interested in.

Building relationships is as simple as personalising the emails that you send to each of your contacts. Whether it’s recommending specific products or services based on a contact list’s geographical location or sending a free eBook that is relevant to marketing managers.

Conclusion

In a world where everyone is constantly bombarded with all sorts of marketing campaigns, personalisation is the best way to connect to your customers. It might take some time and effort to set up, but if you’re using a CRM, personalised marketing becomes a breeze. Get in touch with a GoCRM expert to find out how you can get your personalised marketing set up as soon as possible.

CRMs have become incredibly popular in recent years, not only overseas but also in South Africa. Statistics have shown that businesses all around the world have started to adopt CRMs — their usage has gone up from 54% to 72% in the last year alone!

If your business is not using a CRM, there is a risk of falling behind your competition. These powerful systems can be used to create a stronger bond between your business and its customers, streamline your workflow, and even allow your team to collaborate seamlessly across departments and geographical locations.

But, in order to understand what you are truly missing out on, we need to dive deeper into the features that you can expect when integrating a Customer Relationship Management system into your business in 2022.

What is a CRM?

CRM is short for Customer Relationship Management system. These platforms have been developed to allow businesses to launch themselves into the stage of efficiency and productivity. If these systems are integrated properly, they can become the foundation of your business and allow your team to work more effectively than ever before.

Top 8 CRM Features

Below we’ll be diving further into the top 8 features that all modern CRMs provide to their businesses. Each CRM will have their unique strengths and weaknesses, and some may even offer additional benefits to the businesses that use them. But, for now, we’re looking into the main features that will drive your business ahead of the competition once you have invested in a CRM.

1. Contact Management

CRM is short for Customer Relationship Management, so it might come as no surprise that one of the main functions of this system is to manage your list of contacts. But, a CRM can help you to build your contact list by collecting details from your customers. You can then segment this contact list into different groups, allowing you to differentiate between different types of customers and communicate with them accordingly.

2. Reports on Dashboards

With a CRM at the centre of your business, it will collect data from several different avenues. From your website visits the number of views on your latest social media post. All of this data will be collected and displayed in dashboards on your CRM. This allows you to quickly and easily monitor how your business is doing in a specific area such as marketing, sales, or even customer service. 

3. Sales Analytics

Your CRM can provide your business with in-depth sales analytics — this is potentially one of its most valuable features. Your team can create better sales campaigns by analysing past results, and your CRM can be used for sales forecasts, deal management, and even sales automation such as follow-up campaigns.

4. Synchronisation and Sharing 

CRMs will sync with your outside applications such as Outlook and Google Drive. This allows you to use one platform with several different apps connected to it rather than constantly switching between tabs and applications. With a CRM being the foundation of your business, every member of your team can get access to documents and files that they need directly from the CRM.

5. Marketing Automation 

Marketing campaigns can become tricky to manage when you’re using a wide range of different platforms and trying to tie them all together. But, if you’re using a CRM, you can automate these campaigns by connecting your social media channels to your unified system. This allows you to post on different platforms and keep track of your analytics all in one area.

6. Third-Party Integration

Third-party integration is another notable feature that CRMs offer. Whether you use Slack, Zoom, or Google Meet, your CRM will be able to integrate these apps which allows your team to seamlessly work together using the CRM. Some CRMs such as HubSpot can even offer integration with over 500 third-party apps.

7. Campaign Management 

Managing a campaign becomes much easier if you’re using a CRM. You can manage the campaign ROI, scheduling, analytics and more directly on your CRM without ever having to leave the system. With advanced analytics and dashboards, you can track your campaign’s progress and make data-driven decisions on the next course of action to take.

8. Project Management

Project management is yet another strength that CRMs will bring to your business. Whether it’s working on a website or chasing up a lead to convert sales, you can use your CRM to keep track of your progress and define clear steps that you need to take. Other team members can easily check in on the progress of any given project without even having to jump into meetings or type emails to their co-workers.

How to Get Started With a CRM

There is a multitude of CRMs to choose from, but it’s not just about choosing the CRM with the most appealing colour scheme. There’s a lot to consider underneath the surface of a CRM. Choosing a CRM is a difficult process, and sometimes you need to consult with an expert to get some guidelines on which CRM you need to integrate into your business. Get in touch with a GoCRM expert for a full breakdown of which CRM you need to choose, and how you can get it implemented into your business as quickly and as smoothly as possible.

If your business’ main focus is converting leads into sales, then you would benefit from using a CRM. Customer Relationship Management systems are incredibly powerful and they allow you to connect with your leads on a more personal level. Here are five ways that you can use a CRM to warm up your leads and convert them.

1. Use Consistent Communication

Consistent communication is important in keeping your leads warm. But, you don’t want to be spamming people with content that they might find annoying and irrelevant. This is when your leads will become closed off to any future communications with your business.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to follow up on every lead and nurture them. That is unless you have a CRM that allows you to automate workflows and email marketing sequences. Whenever a new contact is created on your database, your CRM will automatically start the process of warming up your new leads.

CRMs also allow you to keep track of your communications with any given lead. If you’ve noticed that 10 emails have been sent to them and there has been little interaction in return, it might be time to take a different approach to warm them up.

2. Send the Right Content at the Right Time

Identifying where your leads are in the buyer’s process is one of the most important elements of sending them relevant content at the right time. If you’re using a CRM, you can easily identify where they are in your sales funnel and identify their buyer persona.

Over 70% of internet users claim to be frustrated by receiving irrelevant emails at inconvenient times. Being able to track your leads allows you to send them relevant content that will be useful to them based on where they are on their buyer’s journey, which creates a more positive experience for them.

3. Investigate Customers’ Previous Interactions

If you were able to see how much each customer interacted with your business and your marketing emails, you could see what they reacted to best. CRMs can track metrics such as website visits, email opens, clicks on landing pages, and also the content they download from your website.

This data gives you an insight into what content your leads are enjoying the most and what piques their interest. This allows you to tailor your content to each lead and personalise the content to their needs and preferences.

Your leads are far more likely to interact with your content and convert if they’re receiving marketing that appeals to them. With marketing emails that are useful rather than annoying, leads are also more likely to stay onboard even after they have converted, which can lead to them coming back in the future.

4. Keep Customers in Contact with the Same Person

People are much more likely to interact with another human being rather than with a generic account. People don’t want to talk to “info@company.com”. They want to talk to Luke, who they’ve seen and read about on the company website.

Keeping your customers in touch with a real human being is crucial. It’s also important to keep your customers in touch with the same person, as this builds more of a connection between the business and its customers.

5. Re-engaging Old Customers

Leads can often go cold, but that doesn’t mean that you need to give up on them. For the majority of your leads, all the hard work has already been done, all you need to do is warm them up again, just like a microwave meal.

Your CRM will keep track of your leads and the interactions you’ve had with them from emails to any other actions taken such as link clicks and website visits. So, if you’re using this system properly, you should have a long list of leads that you can re-target.

All you need to do is approach them again and work on using a different angle. You can even adjust your email marketing to be more personalised to try and hook your cold leads and convert them.

Final Thoughts

Converting leads is incredibly difficult. But, if you’re using a CRM you can nurture your leads and warm them up just by using good communication and a personalised message. Use the five steps above to warm up your leads and get them to reengage with their business if you feel that they are losing interest. If you need to get a CRM up and running, get in touch with a GoCRM expert.