Can a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System Help My Business? 

What is a CRM system and how can it help your business? You may have heard of a CRM system and simply not have realized just what it was or how it worked. A few popular ones include; Salesforce, Oracle, HubSpot, Monday, Dubsado, plus so many more! Depending on what you need to use the system for, these can drive in and retain customers, create additional sales, organize your clients in one space, or be used to gather analytics to better understand your clients and their habits. Keep reading below while I explain why CRM systems are important for your small business. 

How do CRM systems help drive in and retain more customers? First, I want you to think about a product that you recently bought through an online store. When purchasing this product, you probably had to supply this company with your email address, and since purchasing this product, you more than likely received a confirmation email, correct? After obtaining the product, you might have continued to get emails from the company – either checking to see if you were satisfied or providing suggestions of other products you may like.

These are ways that a company can use a CRM system to keep and retain customers. By sending updates or general communications, they were building up your customer profile for their company. Now by using that example, could you see how using a CRM could help you provide potential new and current customers a way to build a relationship within your business? 

A CRM will be able to automate communications to keep your customers interested in your service or product and continue to create a relationship between you. Using a system will remind prior customers about your business, allow for them to keep you in the front of their mind for this service or product, and of course pass along your information to family and friends. 

Can a CRM system create additional sales? Yes, CRM’s are great for sales! Again, let’s think about the product you just purchased, the follow up emails that were sent to ensure you were satisfied with the product, and continue to offer similar products you may like. Now using the example above, you told a family member about this product that you purchased and they are now interested in buying one too. To make it easy for them to find, you may forward a recent email to your family member or they head to the website where there is a pop up asking for their information, from there they sign up to receive product updates and sales announcements. This family member just became a new client without your business lifting a finger. 

Unfortunately, a good portion of small businesses do not utilize these systems. If you are one, this means that you are missing out on having an automated way that increases your overall sales revenue. Just like I mentioned in the example above, these systems allow for potential new clients to be led to you without any additional steps from your sales team. Freeing up your sales team will allow them to focus on creating a better relationship with other potential leads and current clients. A CRM system also allows for your customers to feel like they are part of the company and not just another number. Your sales team can take the information from potential new clients or leads and ensure to send follow up emails, schedule possible appointments, and work with the marketing department to provide targeted purchase suggestions. By allowing the sales to focus on the targeted consumer, they will be able to turn more leads into customers with less touching points.

How can a CRM system help with client organization? Utilizing a good CRM system can allow you to maintain potential new clients or current clients demographic information, sales history, and target marketing information into one system rather than in a mash up of spaces. This can also create an area that anyone on your team can log into, see what other team members have done for the client, what the client has been interested in, and utilize this information as needed. 

For example, potential new clients can be placed into a “lead” board, which allows the team to know they need to focus on converting the lead into a client. This lead board will have the workflow set up with specific steps – such as direct calls and targeted emails – that have specific promotions that target just the potential new clients. Once the client makes the decision to move forward, your team can shift this client from the “lead” board to the “client” board. The CRM system also can create an automated workflow to walk a client through your process from onboarding to offboarding without a lot of hand holding from your team.

Another way it can help with organization is by having all of the clients documents found in one place. Most CRM systems also allows your business to forward contracts to be signed or other documents that may need to be sent to your client for review. Some have secure portals that allow clients to upload their own documents (for example if you need to send your taxes to your accountant). A CRM system typically can integrate with payment systems like Square, Stripe, and QuickBooks the customer to review and pay their invoice all in one place.

Can a CRM system help me analyze and better understand my consumer? Yes!! CRM systems typically have some sort of design within the system that allows you to get a better understanding of who your customer is. As mentioned in the examples above, once you purchase a product from a company, you typically will receive follow up emails that have similar products as the one you purchased or products that other people have bought that may have similar interests as you. 

When you purchase a product or even click on a picture of a product, that information is being sent back to the CRM system. From a business standpoint, analyzing data from this can help your business determine what service or product your targeted audience loves or doesn’t, what they may purchase in the future, and what type of marketing points makes them click on a product. Even better, a good CRM system analyst will tell you what you need to focus on to create a better customer experience that will target your preferred audience. 

One of the functions as an online business manager is to implement these CRM systems. I hope this blog has helped you better understand what a CRM system is and how you could utilize this to retain clients, build sales, organize demographics, and analyze your targeted audience information. As mentioned earlier, there are many different systems available and it may be overwhelming trying to figure out which would work for your business. We can work with you to determine what system would best service you and your business needs. 

Reach out to Support U today to discuss how we can help build and implement a CRM system that would take your business into the next level.