CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management System. It helps to systematize and save customer data, manage and evaluate team work, optimize and automate the company’s business processes. Properly implemented CRM makes life easier for the director and his employees. It gives a ready-made set of tools for work and takes away part of the routine.
Sounds good, but implementation costs effort and money. In order to talk about implementation costs as an investment and make an informed implementation decision, it is useful to know exactly what benefits CRM can bring to your business.
Before deciding to implement CRM, you need to understand what it can bring to your business. Previously, we have already talked about what a CRM system is and how to implement it. In this article, I would like to discuss the effect of implementing a CRM system on a business.
Sales
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Unified and up-to-date customer base
Clients, contact persons and the history of interaction with them are stored in one place. It is impossible to lose, impossible to forget and very easy to find any client. You and your employees can see when you last interacted with the customer, what he bought and what he is waiting for now. This means that if any of the salespeople quit tomorrow, or maybe all at once, the customers will still stay with you. At the same time, the new sales manager will be able to quickly get to work, having received all the necessary information from the CRM system.
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Automated and clear processes
Often sales are reduced due to the «human factor». Employees forget to call back customers or answer emails late, as a result, the customer may leave. On the one hand, the CRM system automates some processes, such as sending letters or invoicing, and on the other hand, it reminds managers of what they need to do, such as making a call. At the same time, the system can itself distribute the workload and cases between employees.
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Increase repeat sales
Statistically, acquiring a new customer costs 5-10 times more than returning an old one. Repeat sales can be a serious source of income, and CRM will help with this. The system will tell you what to offer the client and remind you when it is better to do it.
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Sales cycle management
Every company has its own sales cycle. Sometimes these are quick sales, usually in B2C, but sometimes the cycle includes many touches between the client and the seller. CRM will help you build an effective cycle, test it, adjust depending on the results and monitor compliance with it. The system will automatically move the transaction to the required stage, set tasks for managers even between departments, and report on the work done to the head of the department.
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Sales forecasting
CRM system keeps track of various data in real time mode. The team will be able to make a forecast, evaluate the planned profit and adjust the plan to increase it.
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Ease and speed of communication
The introduction of a CRM system allows you to collect all communication channels in one place. Messages from instant messengers, social networks, chats on the site, mail, etc. will get into one system where managers will be able to respond to them promptly. This allows you to shorten the response time and not lose a single call.
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The control
Thanks to the reports generated by the system, it is easy for the manager to check the work of employees. It becomes immediately clear who did what, and it becomes easier to track the effectiveness of each and adjust it.
Marketing
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Data collection and management
We have already mentioned a single customer base with an order history. But in addition to orders, it stores dates of birth, gender, and any other data that you decide to collect. This makes it possible to segment customers according to selected parameters to customize advertising, mailing lists or special offers.
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Advertising management
Thanks to CRM, it is easy to understand through which channel customers come and which advertising works. You can see which advertising campaign brought each client, be it social media advertising, adwords or something else. This allows you to optimize costs, quickly redirect the budget and increase the effectiveness of advertising.
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Unity of Sales and Marketing departments
To build great customer relationships, sales and marketing must work together. With CRM, marketing and sales departments can stay up to date with each other’s activities, work on joint projects, and work together from launching a promotion to closing deals with customers.
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Product and service development
Analysis of customer sales and purchase funnels, as well as collecting feedback, will allow you to find weaknesses in positioning, service or products and work on mistakes to increase sales.
Project management and team work
The main thing in teamwork is cohesion, understanding by team members of areas of responsibility, understanding of their tasks and measurability of the result.
CRM allows you to make project management simple, convenient and transparent even for a remote team.
1. Management of deadlines, tasks for the project.
Team members and its leader see at what stage the work is now, who is responsible for it, what is being done on the project and control the deadlines. Tasks are easy to set, link to each other and form a project plan. If something did not go according to plan or ran out of time, the system will remind you of this.
2. Employee workload control.
It is easy to track what each individual employee is doing and what their workload is. This allows you to distribute tasks evenly.
3. Single space for team work.
It is unlikely that everything will be as it was before the pandemic and all employees will return to the office. And although remote work has become commonplace, employees still need a single space for work and communication. CRM is in fact becoming such a space. Here, the team can discuss projects, store materials, collaborate on documents in real time, or hold meetings. And setting access rights and roles allows you to protect data. You can invite third-party contractors to your system and control their work.
HR
On average, the company spends on training and onboarding a new employee from 3 months, for each of which it pays a salary. CRM greatly simplifies and speeds up the training of beginners. You will be able to create checklists, training materials and tests that employees will independently pass during the adaptation. Thus, at the end of the trial period, you can easily track the results and decide on further cooperation.
Conclusion
In the article, we have listed the main positive effects of the implementation of CRM. Their combination leads to the fact that the team starts to work faster and more efficiently, which in turn increases the profit of the company. However, it is important to remember that a CRM system alone will not build a new sales force or attract new customers. CRM won’t fix a weak sales funnel, but it can show you where the weaknesses are in your existing funnel. When implementing a CRM system, it is important to be patient and ready to work.