What is a CRM? In a world of ever increasing acronyms, you can be forgiven for not knowing what CRM is short for. Although I am sure there might be other acronyms from different subjects or sectors, CRM is usually short for Customer Relationship Management.
What is Customer Relationship Management?
Customer Relationship Management is the system or procedures put in place by a company to improve the chances of turning a potential customer or client into a happy and paying customer or client.
With the development of new technology, some CRM software has become the central digital Hub of a wide range of businesses. These businesses use CRM software to keep track and analyze trends and performance of sales and marketing efforts.
Who uses CRM Software?
With the rise of the online service sector (Like Accounting, Web Development, Design, Virtual Assistants, Online Classes and many other businesses) CRM software became more and more important.
But the tools can be tweaked to help just about any business that has paying customers. From Ecommerce stores, to your local Plumbing business, everyone can benefit from the automation tools included in most CRM tools. I will go into more examples later on.
What is the best CRM Software Program?
As the CRM space is super competitive, there are many CRM solutions to consider. As such, this is not an easy question to answer. The reason this is not an easy question to answer is because there are so many variables that every single business has, it would be impossible to point to a universal best CRM Software Program for everyone.
Let me explain..
These variables include:
- Business Sector
- Amount of employees
- Current Revenue
- Total Customers
- If you selling a product or a service
- Budget
- Time
Drawing on my own experience as a Business Development Manager for a Sustainable Building Product Supplies Company, I can explain the business and how it may differ from most other businesses.
First, the business sector is MOSTLY local building supplies sales, however we also have Ecommerce options for some products. Additionally, we liaise with local installation experts to offer our customers the full service. However the business is only small, there are two full time employees plus the 2 owners who rarely communicate with customers.
Until recently, there was no CRM software as the first employee used traditional practices like the trusty old diary! As we implemented automation improvements like a website Chatbot and online installation request forms, we realised it was getting more and more difficult to keep on top of these enquiries coming from different channels. Especially as we began to focus on conversion rate. Sometimes all it takes is a simple follow up phone call to convince a customer to buy.
But in a busy world, who can remember to follow up on every single online chat, phone call enquiry or in person discussion? In my mind, CRMs are just another version of a second brain. A reminder system that can be partly automated.
Like you, I was overwhelmed by the amount of CRM options. I considered Zoho and Keap before ultimately deciding to try out Hubspot. As it usually takes weeks to implement the CRM tools and tricks into your individual business, I believe comparison posts like Compare Software should be taken with a grain of salt.
What does a CRM help you with?
I have written out these headings with very basic questions, because these are the very questions I had when I first went down the CRM rabbit hole! So I will try to explain the benefits and use cases that we found to be instantly helpful.
First, we set Hubspot up with our Outlook Emails. Essentially you can just start checking your Emails through Hubspot and turning Email Conversations into “deals” the benefit of this is you can create notes and reminders within Email conversations. So if there has been a phone call in between the last Email, you can create a note of that conversation and set yourself a reminder to follow up on this in the future.
Next, you can start plugging in different communication channels (Like having your call answering system or online chat come through your CRM) The benefit of this is capturing all customer data in one location.
