5 Tips to Take Your CRM Beyond the Basics
You hired a team of professionals but no matter how skilled these people are, without the proper tools, their jobs become exponentially more difficult.
The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool you use in your business sets the tone in your company. It shows how your team will work with customers, and it shows customers what they can expect from your brand.
Taking your CRM beyond basic inputs of name, address, and phone number can make your company more money and land you more sales. Here are five tips to help you get more out of your CRM and your sales team.
- Integration is Key
Let’s face it. If any system – no matter how essential it is to your business – is hard to use, you won’t put it in action. Using a CRM that integrates well with other programs in your business is the easiest way to bring it beyond the basics.
Many CRMs are designed to integrate with automated marketing programs, analytics, and tracking apps. If yours isn’t, you might want to consider making the shift to a more advanced solution.
- Delegate, Delegate, Delegate
“I thought Bob was going to update the information so I didn’t do it.” Have you ever heard that from your team member? If you have groups of team members going out on a sales call, delegate who will update the CRM before they leave the office.
Details and action items that are not inputted into the CRM didn’t happen – at least not on your company’s books. Don’t let entries slip because of a miscommunication.
- Train Your Team
Your team is front and center with clients every day. They are the ones who must input the data regularly into the CRM. Making this task as simple as possible ensures that it’ll get done correctly and completely.
To help your team turn the CRM entries into a habit your team must have consistent training. Holding regular and repeated trainings will make it easier for your team to efficiently update customer information. It might feel as if you’re duplicating information with each training session. Don’t worry about that. Friendly reminders can go a long way to encourage top-notch data input.
- Listen to Team Feedback
Because your team members are the ones using the CRM daily, their feedback is vital. Listen to the comments and concerns from your team. Do they love one feature but hate another? Do they wish there was another option for better data tracking? Take note of their requests and do what you can to create a system they’ll love using.
- Expand Contact Information
These days it’s hard to avoid a person. With cell phones, tablets, email, Skype, Facebook, and plenty of other connection points, your clients have a multitude of ways they want to be contacted.
Use it to your advantage.
In your CRM, encourage your team to input as many points of contact as possible. It doesn’t matter if your salesman only talks to the client by phone. You want to gather as much data as possible to help you get in contact with your leads, prospects, and clients throughout your relationship. For example, if you have your prospects Twitter or LinkedIn account, you can connect with them on Twitter also. Today’s CRM platforms, like Nimble and HubSpot, automatically add this type of contact information.
Conclusion
Give your team the training and tools they need to thrive! With a robust CRM filled with all the important data and communications, your business will see a spike in sales and an uptick in customer satisfaction.
Interested in CRM for your company? Ask us about HubSpot’s free CRM platform.
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