A new Customer Relationship Management system? But I’m just a Small Business
There are few times in life where certain life changing things happened too fast: switching tapes to CD’s, graduating school, and your little brother getting married. Truth is, there are certain leaps in life where it always seems daunting and unexpected. But oftentimes when those things happen, there are few regrets and people wonder why they did not do this before. Comparing huge life events to switching over to a CRM system is a little dramatic but it is a solid analogy. The same things that hold you back in life are similar to the implementation like the cost, fear of responsibility, or whether it will work in general for “us”.
Why do I need to move to a CRM when I have my Spreadsheets?
The spreadsheet is universally known and understood. The typical business today has multiple spreadsheet files stored on a server, access is proved to multiple team members and users add or remove data to these sheets on a day to day basis. The two most typical spreadsheets are the “What did you do last week” and “What’s Hot” spreadsheets which are essentially last week’s sales activities and a report of open quotes or proposals. If this is all a company needed to run the day to day, two spreadsheets would be all that is necessary. Sadly, this isn’t true and many other spreadsheets exist which list prospects, current clients, leads from trade shows or marketing initiatives, customer complaints, etc.
In terms of sales, speed and ease are critical. Spending precious time searching through the inbox or call history to get a prospect’s number or recall when they last spoke is a major waste of a salesperson’s time. Also, it’s unreliable, if the salesperson forgets a touchpoint, they risk sending the same email multiple times and annoying a prospect.
A CRM provides a full, accurate record of a rep’s entire interaction history with a prospect that’s accessible with only a few clicks. Reps will never have to manually reconstruct a timeline of touchpoints again.
CRMs allow salespeople to filter opportunities by the ones they own so they only have to refer to one page to get a high-level summary of all their deals in progress. Having a top level view like that allows salespeople to view their sales pipeline and opportunities to always know how they are doing from month to month. Some even provide a snapshot of a rep’s sales pipeline by sorting opportunities by deal stage, making forecasting painless.
In addition to making life easier for individual reps, CRM systems also improve communication across the organizational. Hypothetically, what happens if a rep is working a lead that their colleague spoke to two years ago? What if they’re taking over someone’s old territory and have only been given an indecipherable Excel spreadsheet of prospects?
With a CRM, reps can easily assess what’s already been done with a given prospect and what’s next. Your reps don’t need to spend time reaching out to their colleagues to get interaction history, because the information they need is already in the system.
CRMs standardize how reps track their activities and prospect interactions organization wide, which streamlines reporting.
Without a CRM, different salespeople can track activities in a variety of ways, which presents an unnecessary challenge for managers and leaders to piece data together to form a coherent picture. CRMs standardize data entry, meaning managers can easily combine and analyze data to understand the overall health of the sales organization.
Keeping consistent activity records also reduces friction when passing a lead from one rep to another, switching territories, or reassigning a departed colleague’s opportunity queue. All relevant information be accounted for and it will also have been recorded in a manner that makes sense across the sales force.
Ok, So what exactly is a CRM?
A Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) is a software package that sits upon a database that helps companies tracks and “relate” all activities and transactions that occur with your leads, prospects, and insights into your customers. The real value of this data is the relationship between all these transactions that provides the added insights into your customers, starting from when they came to you as a lead then to a prospect then becoming a client.
Part of ACS’s services is helping guide our clients understand their needs and processes, helping them decide when they’re ready to make the jump to a full-blown CRM system. Each CRM and CRM use is unique in how they operate but for the most part, all the systems do the same thing. The challenge is helping determine if the company is ready. This is a fine line, implement too early and you end up with a half baked system, challenging your users to adopt and learn a new software package. Forcing your users to adopt a new system doesn’t usually end well; if your users are not asking for a better system to track activities and communications with their contacts then they may never fully use it. On the other hand, management can not wait until your employees are struggling to and losing track of potential sales or confusing activities across team members working with the same contacts.
When is the right time?
There are many challenges in making a major change. But if your business is wasting a lot of time trying to understand what is going on instead of reaching out to clients and taking them through your sales funnel, then it is time to switch. If you want to analyze your salespeople’s activities to discover what outreach strategies or series of touchpoints work the best or anything else about your sales force’s effectiveness, then pulling inconsistent data from multiple sources is not the answer.
Ultimately, it comes down to this, is your business ready for growth? Your ability to do so is dependent on contacting your prospects at the right intervals and providing them relevant information at the right time, and a CRM is the effective solution.
ACS Can Help You set up a Custom CRM Solution
For today’s small business, keeping track of your sales funnel and being able to effectively manage it are essential to growing your business. Prospective clients are busy, they often have different needs that only your business can fulfill. ACS can help you develop a set up a CRM solution to organize and streamline your business to close more business.
Our specialists have experience in every aspect of Customer Relationship Management, from planning and execution to API pulls from third party integrations. As your CRM partner, we’ll work with you to develop sales funnel strategies that highlight your expertise as a business, and we can stay on top of your efforts to make sure they’re meeting your goals and delivering the highest possible returns on investment.
To receive a free, completely customized, no-obligation quote on a CRM package for your business, reach out to us by phone or online today. We’d love to hear about your CRM goals and find out how we can help. Our experts are waiting for your call!