A CRM technology is a Customer Relationship Management tool that tells you what is going on within your business and with your clients so no balls are dropped. It helps you manage your business, collaborate with other team members, manage clients and prospects, and monitor the workload. At any given time, it can also show the sales pipeline, guide staff through standardized procedures on repeatable tasks, manage projects, and monitor the type and level of client communication and servicing. In summary, the CRM’s purpose is to help your team keep everything on track and moving forward.
Everything should be logged and organized in your CRM to manage the daily operations of the business. Not only does documenting everything in your CRM help you work more efficiently, it also helps when it comes to training new hires or delegating work to others. Your CRM should be so detailed that it could act guidebook to your business should anyone become ill, disabled, or unable to work.
The major elements of a CRM are:
- Contacts and Classifications
- Sales Opportunities and Stages
- Workflows (standard, repeatable processes)
- Reports
- Outside integrations (data flows to/from other software programs)
If you wish to optimize your current CRM, or seek a more robust system, you should review your wants vs. needs, research alternative CRM software using our template of criteria, and share your findings and plan to obtain a high ROI and adoption.