If you’re used to running your business using an address book, a calendar and a to-do list, you might wonder if you need customer relationship management, or CRM, software.
But globally, CRM software revenue reached $39.5 billion in 2017. Businesses are recognizing the benefits of centralized systems to cover lead management, marketing, and customer service management.
There are lots of CRM solutions to choose from. But what features do you need for top CRM functionality? Read on to find out.
1. Contact Management
You’ll want a CRM solution that lets you segment your contacts. It’ll give you better access to customer data, which helps underpin new product launches.
Combine this with lead management to identify the warmest customers to follow up. Salespeople only spend 34 percent of their day selling. The rest of their time is spent on meetings, scheduling calls, and other administrative tasks. It makes sense to spend that time talking to the warmest leads.
If the CRM offers the ability to filter contacts by location, even better! You can assign these leads to your sales teams in those locations.
2. Mobile CRM Functionality
Do your sales team meet a lot of potential customers at conventions or trade fairs? CRM solutions with mobile apps help your team capture leads wherever they are.
They can also access your existing database from a mobile device, putting valuable data at their fingertips.
3. Analytics and Forecasting
Part of managing customer relationships involves measuring your successes. Then you can use these successes to forecast your future business.
Set benchmarks to better identify which results match your efforts. You’ll be able to see which campaigns or tactics are working. Double down on those and devote less time to the strategies that aren’t working.
Filtering data according to salesperson or sales team lets you identify leaks in your sales funnel. Provide extra training for under-performing staff. Or share the habits of high-performing staff as ‘best practice’ with the whole company.
Other data analytic functions include marketing monitoring or web analytics. Perusing the data lets you spot problem areas on your website that lose you customers.
4. Integrations
A CRM must be able to integrate with other platforms to give you a seamless experience. Introduce marketing automation using the segments you already have in your CRM.
Or set up a chat integration so you can offer customer support directly from the dashboard. Choosing a platform that offers in-team chat means you can use a single solution for multiple tasks.
Other useful integrations include social media management and email marketing. Streamline your use of these platforms through the CRM solution.
It’s a definite advantage to use several third-party programs within one platform. You’ll find it easier to find and share information.
5. Workflow Creations
Automating and optimizing workflows is a great way to maximize your efficiency. Set up workflows in your CRM to automate time-heavy processes like data collection or marketing campaigns.
These workflows also offer a range of analytics to help you improve processes in the future.
6. Data Protection
Storing data in lots of programs leads to multiple backups of duplicate information. Pulling it all into a CRM solution lets you protect the data against breaches. Set up automatic backups in case of disaster.
Choose These Features for CRM Success
These features offer excellent CRM functionality. They let you pull information from several platforms into a single place.
That saves you many hours, instead of trawling for data. And by automating processes, you’ll also save time you can spend on revenue-generating activities.
If you’d like to investigate the power of CRM, why not get in touch today? We’d love to get you started.
