What is a CRM System and Should You Be Using One?

How do you know if you should be using a CRM system? In short, if your business markets, sells or services customers then you need help when it comes to Customer Relationship Management. The days of handling leads and customers with just paper folders, spreadsheets or saved emails are over – no matter how large or small your business may be. But why do you need CRM and what exactly is it? Let’s find out…

CRM explained

Your business creates large quantities of data on a daily basis. For example, every time an employer picks up the phone to chat with a customer, meets a new potential client or follows a promising lead, they learn something that could be of possible value to your business. That’s all well and good, but where is that data stored?
Customer details and previous discussions can easily be lost or forgotten meaning phone conversations and meeting may not be followed up thoroughly – this can all result in losing potential sales. Fortunately, there’s a solution.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a system designed to manage all your business relationships and interactions with your customers and potential customers too. It turns your customer data into useful actionable information that can enhance your business. This means you can focus your company’s relationships with individual people and helps you keep up to date with their contact details. It also allows you track every interaction they’ve made with your business to date and manage their accounts. In other words, it’s simply designed to improve your customer relationships.

Why use a CRM system?

Here’s 5 great reasons why it may be worth considering using a Customer Relationship Management system:

Reason # 1: Be more organised

Organising all your data into one system gives you a great overview of your business. A CRM integrates tasks, emails, calendars and more into one easily managed place. You can easily access your information from anywhere on any device. Without a doubt you’ll learn things about your business that you never realised before. Being organised and storing data in one central location helps you to bring all the pieces together – remember one of the keys to a successful business is organisation.

Reason # 2: Improves communication

A CRM system improves communication throughout your business. For example, what if a rep is working on a lead that another colleague spoke with a year ago? Or what if a new employee is taking over a colleagues work only to be handed an indecipherable spreadsheet? You get the idea. With CRM, you can immediately assess a customer’s history to see what action needs to be taken next – without even speaking to other employees. This allows your business to run much more smoothly and effectively.

Reason # 3: Increase sales

Ultimately, every business wants to improve their sales. But how can you do so if you can’t easily track what’s working and what isn’t? Using a CRM system, you’ll gain greater insight into your sales team’s activities. You’ll soon learn how they’re spending their time and also highlights which areas are more likely to win new business. Using this handy info helps you fine tune your processes and up your sales. In short, you’ll have accurate business data at your fingertips, instead of dotted around your office.

Reason # 4: Enhance customer relationships

Every customer is valuable. For many businesses, in order to stand out in an ever-crowded landscape, it’s important to tailor your products, services and even engagement processes to fit your customer’s needs. This is where a CRM system is beneficial. It captures detailed data about your customers and their needs so you can better target your marketing efforts. What’s more, it gives your clients the impression that you really care and that you remember their personal preferences.

Reason # 5: Get a clear overview of your business

A good CRM system will give you a reasonable idea of what to expect. As long as your history is stored correctly, you’ll be able to see what’s in the pipeline when it comes to prospective deals and get an accurate (but not 100%) feel for what you can expect to see happen within your business in the coming months.

When don’t you need a CRM system?

If you’re a one man band, only get one lead a week, have no repeat business or only a handful of memorable regular customers and your sales cycle is short then using a CRM might not be necessary for your business.

In summary…

At the end of the day, increasing your profits and growing your business ultimately means developing great customer relationships. A CRM system helps you to do this effectively. Giving you clear insight into your sales and marketing activities, it allows you to provide great customer experiences. If you’d like to learn more about a CRM system in Hull or York, why not get in contact with us here at Advance Computer Systems? Call us today on 01904 653789 or click here.