What is CRM? How to use it – Ultimate Guide

What is a CRM

CRM is short for “customer relationship management.” The phrase can convey two related meanings:

1) A system of managing information about a company’s interactions with their customers, often to improve the customer experience and 

2) To monitor or manage relationships between individuals in an organization- this could be managers monitoring employees’ performance on tasks assigned by that manager/employee as well as team members helping each other out without supervision from a boss.

CRM software is a process that allows you to manage and optimize relationships with customers. These technologies help automate the management of customer relations through various features such as lead tracking, digital marketing automation, email campaign integration and appointment scheduling among others.

The following guide will focus on CRM technology but it’s important to first understand what these programs are able to do for your business by discussing processes they can automate in detail including:

CRM as a process

CRM as a process is like having an automated customer service representative in your pocket! With CRMs, you’re able to know everything about the person on the other end of that phone call.

It’s much more than just sitting back and taking orders – it gives insight into what they need or want so you can provide them with exactly what they are looking for.

• information management
• Marketing
• Sales
• Customer service
• Finance

CRM as a process is like having an automated customer service representative in your pocket! With CRMs, you’re able to know everything about the person on the other end of that phone call. It’s much more than just sitting back and taking orders – it gives insight into what they need or want so you can provide them with exactly what they are looking for.

CRM software

CRM software helps businesses better manage their customer relationships, save time and money, streamline tasks for employees with the help of AI technology. CRM software is an innovative way to automate your e-commerce business processes by giving you a central hub in which all information about current or potential customers can be stored.

What CRM software does

CRM software is a powerful tool that many companies use in order to efficiently manage customer relationships. CRM simplifies daily tasks by automating processes such as managing contacts, prioritizing leads and sales opportunities, tracking progress on projects, creating reports for management purposes, and more.

This allows your team to work smarter while improving the quality of service you provide customers every day!

The CRM system will allow managers who oversee different departments within the company access to this data so they are able to communicate effectively and efficiently with each other on behalf of individual clients without having any gaps between them or missing out on important details that might come up during their interactions together.

This allows companies to use it not only provide more competent service but also to arrive at innovations faster than before due to both improved communication as well as increased efficiency from automation tools like email marketing.

Benefits of CRM

1.Better Customer Experience

The following passage talks about how you can provide a better customer experience with data. The more information we identify, the easier it is to put together what that prospect might be looking for in your product or service and their potential needs. Imagine having an idea of every blog post they’ve read as well as where they are located – all at first glance!

2.Higher Productivity

With a CRM like Wrike, your sales reps will never have to spend time logging calls or activities ever again. With the amount of free hours they gain back in their day, you can expect to see higher productivity and an increased number of deals closed as well!

3.Increased Collaboration

The sales team can now collaborate with each other better than ever before. The company’s Salesforce program facilitates communication between the different departments so that no one gets left in the dark when it comes to a deal–and you know they’ll never let their hard work go unnoticed again!

A salesperson can teach another how to better close a deal. If one gets sick, the other will be able to pick up their slack and keep things going without missing a beat..

4.Greater Insights

Imagine how much time you will save with a CRM. With one simple app, you can access your team’s sales performance and compare it to industry standards. You’ll have data on conversion rates by deal stage, average deal size, and other important metrics that are all essential for making the best decisions possible about where to allocate resources in order to increase success!

CRM Terms to Know

Learning a new CRM can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Let’s make learning the basics easier with some key terms you’ll want to know. 

Contact

Contact is an individual person, so they have their first and last name. You can also keep track of details like company title or annual revenue per contact in a CRM (contact management software).

Lead

A lead has shown interest in your product. They are either a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), meaning they’ve somehow interacted with your marketing content, or a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).

Deal

The art of persuasion is the key to success in any sales process. Making use of an individual’s strengths, you can guide them through your dealership successfully and smoothly from inquiry into a purchase with a proposal for trade-in towards their desired automobile.

You should always try to connect leads or inquiries at the first contact stage as this will begin a possible sale transaction early on before they become too entrenched within another company’s processes which may delay closing it out altogether. 

Company

One CRM feature to take note of is the “company” record. If you are selling your products or services directly to businesses, it can be helpful for them and also yourself if you keep track of which contacts and deals belong with what company. For example, 10 different contacts could all go under a single company while three different deals may correspond as well!

Source

We have all been there, scrolling through our inbox and seeing a slew of messages from different sources. When it comes to lead generation, the source matters because that influences how you should best reach out to them in return. Keeping track of conversions by source can help determine your most effective prospecting channels so you don’t spend time chasing down leads who are not interested or ready for what you offer yet.

How to Use a CRM

Once you’ve developed your CRM, it’s time to put that puppy into overdrive! Utilizing the power of these systems can make all the difference when building an effective customer-centric business model. Here are some tips on how: 

1. Add your salespeople

Your sales team needs a CRM. But before you implement, make sure they’re on board with the idea and have agreed to use it; otherwise, adoption will be low and this project—which is an investment in your future success—will feel futile.

If you want to help your company sell better and make more money, then a CRM is the way to go. Anybody who has tried using one knows that it makes tracking sales much easier than before. It should be used by everyone in the organization because data will become clearer with each new sale added into the system’s database. With this information at their fingertips, managers can see what strategies are working best for them so they know which ones need refining or changing altogether

2.Customize your settings

Don’t forget to set up your CRM so that it accurately reflects the different stages of a customer’s journey. You’ll be much more effective if you can see at what stage each lead is in, and even better yet – whether they’re ripe for an offer or not!

How do you decide what to buy? What differentiates buyers from people who opt for a competitor or make no decision? How long does it take after initial contact with the salesperson until agreement on purchase is reached, and what are some of the steps in between.

Let’s say your sales process is divided into “Connect,” “Qualify,” “Demo,” and “Close.” Create deal stages in your CRM pipeline for each one. Now, you’ve standardized the sales process for your reps.

the process of your sales includes “Connect,” “Qualify,” “Demo,” and “Close.” You’ve just taken your sales process to the next level. Create stages in your CRM pipeline for each one and make sure that all of them are standardized so you can be totally on top of things!

When you first set up your CRM system, it is important to customize the default “properties” or fill-in-the-blank details about a prospect. For example, HubSpot has fields for phone number and email address as well as date created (day they entered your system).

Next, create custom properties for store data in order to build an effective outreach strategy that will engage prospective clients with relevant information most likely to resonate with them. The key here is having customized fill-ins so when prospects are looking at their emails from one of these campaigns they can quickly see what type of client/industry this business serves without ever opening any message’s subject line which often includes too much irrelevant detail if not tailored appropriately.

3.Import your contact, companies, and deals

It’s time to change the way you do business. There is a certain simplicity in importing your contact, companies, and deals all into one easy-to-use platform.

Finding a company to purchase and merge your CRM with is not always an easy task, luckily there are many companies that can help. One of the more popular ways for merging systems is through importing data from one system into another using CSV files. When doing this, it’s important to make sure each column in the spreadsheet matches up with a property found within the other system you’re moving over information to!

4.Integrate your other tools

Integrating your other tools will help you to have a 360-view of prospects and customers. This is also beneficial because it reduces the amount of time spent on data entry, making for more efficient use of your team’s valuable time.

What’s the best way to connect with someone on your website? This is a question we get all of the time, and it can be difficult for us to answer. But HubSpot has made this process seamless: if they filled out one form or started chatting with you via chat-box, these people will automatically show up in their CRM! If our leads are highly qualified and ready for social selling (a salesperson), then they’ll just be routed over–but if not, that doesn’t mean there isn’t still hope — marketing teams have been given tools like educational content so those folks won’t feel left behind without any guidance at all.

An inefficient process using several tools:

• use form builder to collect leads
• take that leads to your email tool
• Export qualified leads to your CRM

5.Set up your dashboard

Customize your dashboard to keep up with the latest trends in CRM. See what people are saying about you and get a clearer picture of where things stand at any time during the day, week, or month. Customized dashboards let business owners see everything they need from their company’s data in one place!

With your sales objectives and process in mind, you can choose which statistics appear on your dashboard. For instance, if this month’s objective is to sell more of a specific product than another one or the number of completed tasks has been set by management for staff members then these metrics may be important when reviewing performance data at-a-glance.

6.Enable reports

Reports are an important part of any sales organization. They allow you to track data, identify trends, and see what is working well or not so much in your business. But they can be time-consuming for the reps who should really just spend their day selling! That’s why it’s a great idea to create daily reports that include top sellers from each department as well as quarterly email updates with monthly results on anything from conversion rates by product category to average deal size per customer segment (by region).

Consider the range of information you could track about your reps. Tracking everything from emails sent to deals won can help give a clearer picture for what is going on in their day-to-day work, and provide more insight into how they operate as an individual.

use your CRM as the primary key

You don’t need the latest technology for a CRM to work. Chances are, you already have all the tools at your disposal and it’s just about finding out how best to use them. This guide will help get you started on that amazing journey of CRM success!