Marketing Guru Joe Polish often says “People don’t buy from you because they understand you, they buy from you because they feel understood.”

Businesses turn to CRM software to nurture customer relationships with more attention while they run the other aspects of the business. Equally important, CRM software can help them surface insights for better management decisions. When customer data is organized in a meaningful way, companies understand their customer buying behavior deeper, and essentially, their market better.

CRM solutions are available to accommodate businesses of every size and budget: from a small SaaS subscription-based model to large-scale enterprise installation. Companies both new and established will profit from using an appropriate CRM solution.

Depending on a company’s needs, a CRM could help facilitate the transfer of customer data to the cloud or include more sophisticated features to help teams collaborate with colleagues, communicate with customers, send personalized emails and gather insights from social media interactions.

Without a CRM system, most businesses handle customer connections and information using the old-fashioned staples: Excel spreadsheets, Google documents, email or even note cards and Rolodex. These tools work fine for some small businesses, but they offer little in terms of scalability and customer insight.

Pros and Cons

The Good:

• Story time: a CRM can provide you with a record of every interaction your company has had with a customer, letting nothing slip through the cracks. You can keep track of  customers’ purchase behavior:

• What product is selling the most?
• How many are returning to buy?
• Why are customers not returning?
• Are they using credit cards or cash?
• What are they saying about you on social media?

• Real-time status: Not only does a CRM give you a centralised, organised place in which to store all of your customer data, it also gives you a full picture of your customers’ journey with your company; you can see exactly where in the customer lifecycle they are at all times.
• Automation: A CRM can even include automation features, which take care of certain tasks and free your team up to focus on bigger things. Actions such as sending emails, creating leads coming from different channels, adding payment terms for a group of companies or individuals and so on can be automated for team members to focus on more personalised tasks per customer. This ensures all customers keep moving through the sales funnel efficiently.
• In-depth reporting: A CRM can also help you get more out of the historical data regarding your sales and customer performance by offering in-depth reporting and dashboard functions. These functionalities offer direction in establishing long-term strategies for the business’s future success.
• Source of truth: All this information is available to your entire team where a central source of truth is provided. Thus, everyone is always on the same page.
• Proactive, not reactive: Get on top of complaints, issues, or new concerns that may affect sales, before they escalate into a full-blown crisis.
• Re-market to win: You can find new sales opportunities in old/current customers. You can also view your dormant customers for targeted re-marketing with promotions unique to their potential business needs.
• Time Saver: You can generate marketing, sales, customer service, finance reports and other customised reports according to your business

Solutions to the Bad:

• Your data is out there: Your data is stored on the server operated by the vendor. Although vendors guarantee security, it only takes one vendor employee to fiddle with your data through an unauthorized access.

Solution: invest in a reliable CRM solution that is known for its security, like HubSpot, for which testimonials and customer satisfaction have proven its claim on reliability.

• Poor internet connection: Cloud-based CRMs depend on the strength of your internet connection. Poor or intermittent signal disrupts your ability to use the solution.

In this digital age, a strong internet connection is something that every individual must invest in. Now more than ever, businesses have understood the need for a digital platform and a strong internet connection is a successful digital platform’s foundation.

• Staff resistance: CRM software can be difficult to understand for first-time users. The more features it has, the more complicated the software may be. If employees don’t use the software, they don’t get its benefits.

Use CRM solutions that offer astounding training support. Often, the reason for staff going back to old methods is due to familiarity of the old system. They need to build their confidence of using the new system through training and teaching them how to troubleshoot common issues.

• No clear goals: A CRM system is only as strong and useful as the user at the end of it. You need clear goals on how you want to use it, what goals you want to achieve, and know exactly what it can do for you.

Have a plan prepared before hand to understand what your company’s business processes are and what your customer’s behaviour is. Contact customer support to build a plan for your business before investing in a CRM solution.

So, do you need a CRM System for your Business?

No matter how large or small your business is, having all of your customer and business data in one place will undoubtedly make your life easier, and your business more efficient. But what constitutes a need over want?

You need a CRM system if…

1. You’re unable to keep up with the velocity of growth

If you’re in the fortunate position of having a flood of new business but are struggling to keep up with it, you may need CRM. An intelligent CRM system will quickly sort and prioritize your leads for your sales team to respond to them in a timely and efficient manner.

2. Your clients use multiple POCs

If your prospects and customers are talking to multiple points of contact within your organisation, it can be easy to lose track of what’s been communicated over the period of the sales cycle. A CRM system will provide a documented history of all your interactions with them, showing who has said what and when.

3. Your customer data is all over the place

Spreadsheets, email, and sticky notes may have worked just fine when you started your business. But now, those tools can severely limit your team’s visibility into customer interactions, as well as your ability to make informed decisions quickly. A CRM system will give your entire organization a single, central source of easily accessible data.

4. Its hard to keep track of your sales team’s daily activities

Whether they are in the office or on the road, it’s essential to know what your sales team is doing and how they are performing. A powerful CRM allows team members to update details from their mobile devices, so information is instantly available for you to see.

5. Your teams are not always on the same page

Emails tend to be the powerhouse of a business’s communication, but there is a degree of separation between emails and back-end systems, and even more separation between individual email accounts. Most CRM systems provide native integrations with popular email service providers such as Gmail and Outlook.

6. You are losing customers, and your customer service is the culprit

Getting customers is tough enough as it is. Losing them to subpar service is especially painful because A) You can always give better service, B) It can spread like wildfire to your prospective clients. If you find that your customer service team spends more time reacting to customer complaints than proactively anticipating customer needs, it might be time to invest in a CRM system.

7. You have valuable, long-term accounts you need to manage

Keep your best, high value clients happy. A CRM system can automatically remind you of milestones and important events for your most valuable customers, so you can easily send out timely communications and assure them their business is appreciated

8. Your reporting process takes too much time

If your salespeople are manually entering data to produce reports, they are spending less time doing what they should be doing: selling. CRM systems can keep all your data in one easy-to-access place, making up-to-the-minute reporting and accurate analysis a breeze.

9. You need your work to go with you

New generation CRM are omnipotent; portable and always accessible. Most of them offer cloud-hosted versions, which means you can access the system from anywhere. Mobile agents and executives can take advantage of this when working in the field from native mobile apps. Since this reduces the number of data entry points, it greatly reduces errors and future service mistakes.

Picking the Right CRM Solution

While the pros and cons of a CRM are clear and apply to all businesses, the type of CRM that fits your business needs requires further research. Some factors to consider are:

• What will this CRM solution cost in both time and money?
• What is the opportunity cost of not having a CRM in terms of time and money?
• Will it integrate with the rest of your business tools?
• Will it provide the insight you require?
• Will this software track the objectives you need to keep an eye on?
• Does this software mesh well with your specific sales funnel?
• Does it take into account all the customer information you consider relevant?
• Will it allow you to monitor your performance with the right perspective?
• Will this software grow with your business and its goals?
• It is easy to use? (for you and your sales team, keeping in mind every new implementation requires training and a flexible adjustment period)

Conclusion

With the benefits clearly outweighing the disadvantages, we can safely answer that, yes, most businesses, possibly including yours, need a CRM software. But should you wait until your customer base is large enough to merit a centralized system? Or should you buy the system proactively, to support and facilitate growth? The answer may vary based on timing, budget, and the type of relationships you are building. But the truth is, if you are a customer-facing business, a CRM is a crucial investment, and it’s never too early to make it.

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