Why your business needs a CRM
How to nurture customer relationships using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
Businesses grow because of relationships.
The way relationships grow is through communication.
And that brings us to CRMs...
A CRM helps you create and nurture relationships with your customers — so that your business grows.
That's where it gets the name, Customer Relationship Management.
Not having a CRM could be costing you
Businesses collect a lot of information on their customers. Without a way to organise and make sense of that information, it becomes difficult to grow your business. Not to mention, customers want a personalised experience - because relationships are just that: personal!
Without a CRM, you may be:
Wasting time organising contact information and sales data by hand,
Failing (or forgetting) to follow-up leads in a timely manner,
Missing out market insights and segment data, which means,
Missing out on creating and testing new products to serve customers
Not realising your full sales potential
All of this = inefficiencies and loss of potential revenue.
What does a CRM do?
A good CRM, in our view, is one that does three things really well:
1. Organise your customer data:
A CRM helps you keep everything organised (as it relates to your customers) so that you can send the right message to the right customers at the right time.
When you have a CRM with great customer data and insights, you can turn that data into actions that make a difference to your customers, and your revenue.
2. Streamline your sales team and process:
A CRM helps your sales team stay organised and easily guide potential customers through to a sale. CRMs give you the sales tools you need to do this, such as pipelines, email and phone tracking, task delegation and more. Some CRMs can automate follow-up emails and other sales tasks to streamline your sales process and give you back time.
3. Facilitate better relationships:
The end goal of a CRM is to help you have better relationships with your customers. Once the organisation, sales and marketing automation is in place, this frees you up to spend time crafting valuable communications to different segments of your audience. A business grows because of its relationships with customers, and that requires communication. A CRM will enable you to do just that.
Which CRMs is best?
There are over 600 CRMs in the market, so you have plenty of options to pick from (perhaps too many). Remember that every business is different and works differently, and so one CRM doesn’t fit all.
Popular CRMs include:
Just to name a few.
What are our top picks?
Read: The 3 best CRMs for small businesses
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to choosing a CRM. Here are some examples from our community:
A local property developer uses Hubspot across all their building projects and associated sales reps. They use an external sales funnel tool, but all the leads feed into Hubspot, where their sales reps move customers through a defined sales pipeline.
A small accounting practice uses Xero Practice Manager as their internal client CRM, because it's suited to their day-to-day workflow, which also syncs to Mailchimp for their external email marketing and communications.
A consulting team uses Keap as their CRM, integrating its built-in tools like appointments, landing pages and email marketing. They use an external billing system (Stripe) which syncs back to Keap as well as their accounting system.
Source: Zoho
In summary…
Managing customer relationships without a system is exhausting. A CRM will give you the clarity, tools and insights you need to build great relationships with your customers and grow your business.
Remember: there's no one-size-fits-all. We recommend you get help to find a CRM that meets all of the capabilities you need to grow.
Need help selecting a CRM? Book a quick call with our team. We’re here to help.
Written by Lachlan Nicolson.
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