A robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software should be able to cater to many parts of the business, permitting each department in your organization to augment effectiveness. When you have separate teams working on different tools, a lot of data falls through the cracks and fails to translate from one system to the next.
Let’s begin by understanding what a CRM is:
CRM software is a tool that helps you manage interactions and relationships with customers and prospects.
CRM software incorporates not just guidelines on how to direct interactions, but also systems for organizing and tracking all the relevant information. This includes meetings, proposals, customer interactions, customer data, sales conversions and more.
The primary motivation behind using a CRM tool is to automate certain parts of sales for speed, proficiency and accuracy. These are the CRM use cases that are many people familiar about.
In this blog we will detail other ways of using a decent CRM, from sales management to strategic marketing and competitor tracking.
- Business Management
One of the essential benefits of any CRM software app is to help you manage your business more effectively. Instead of disjointed data living in separate files, documents, notepads, and minds, CRM software helps you keep everything in one place, allowing your sales, marketing, and service departments to work more efficiently.
Besides just record-keeping, you can also use your CRM to keep track of the touchpoints your customers have with you. By tagging these touchpoints, you’ll get an idea of how each contact or client interacts with your brand. We’ll talk more about how CRM tools help you track customer activities in the next section.
In a nutshell, CRM takes a bunch of moving parts and helps you organize and make sense of what your customers may need to take that next step with you. While there is a learning curve to any new technology. Power BI is an online business intelligence tool created by Microsoft. It integrates data from various sources into one platform. To make informed choices that boost the profitability and sales of your business, you require data-driven insights from well-organized sources. The combined capabilities of Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM help you assist your sales team and dig deeper into the data. If you are new to the Power BI tool, taking the Power BI Course is recommended before implementing it in your business.
- Integrations
Integrations are a must-have when it comes to CRM software that goes beyond internal record keeping. If you’re looking to empower your outbound and inbound marketing, integrating with social platforms, email marketing, and Google Business Manager is key as it allows you to deliver personalized and targeted messaging. Other integrations, like loyalty programs and SMS messaging, are vital tools to consider for now or for future growth and scaling.
Any current software your team uses is an important consideration as well. The right CRM platform has what you need out of the box or empowers easy integration if it’s not included.
- Data Management
Using your CRM software as a resource library is yet another way to keep everything needful organized and support your sales team. You can collect, manage, and share relevant data, all with a verifiable trail so that your whole team stays in the know. Whether that is a “paper trail” to a client, employee documentation, or a vendor, use your CRM to store and track important records all under one roof.
- Timely Communications
The CRM tool you use may become an exclusive relationship manager and also allow you to choose whenever it’s your time to get in touch with the customers in a far more participating manner similar to a conventional email, for instance. With the right third-party integrations, you may also automate a few of these communicates and also initiate correspondence dispatches depending on lead rating or even buying stage.
- Predictive Analysis
In higher tiers of CRM, you’ll start to see proprietary predictive analysis models (more often than not named after a famous scientist or mathematician). So, what can predictive analysis do and is it worth it? At the core, predictive analysis is a type of AI that learns customer behavior patterns and responses to help you make better decisions. By analyzing historical data, CRM analytics can determine how successful an approach may be, which theoretically reduces your overall risk.
When CRM and marketing work in synergy, you may even see suggested predictive text and workflows that target contacts based on previous behavior.
- Improves Product Sales Management
Uses of CRM software programs enable to automate quick sales workflows so that you can contribute regularly as well as accelerate product sales tasks like systematical lead development. Fulfilling that it is, this is just not sales managers’ ideal goal. Furthermore, customer relationship management software can be utilized by sales professionals to put product sales objectives and also monitor their compliance and to imagine development for assignees to have them inspired.
Staff overall performance evaluation, both of them in their wholeness as well as separated by individuals, could make consistent overall performance evaluations fact-based and actionable.
- Centralized database of information
One more skill that CRM software does best is providing a centralized database with all information on your customers, making it easily accessible to anyone in your organization. This makes it easy for a sales representative to see what product a certain customer is interested in, for example. If the customer has previously interacted with your company, the CRM will include records of that communication, which can assist in future marketing efforts and sales pitches. This saves your employees the time of digging through old files and records, and it makes for a better and more productive experience for the customer.
- Streamlined internal communications
Apart from facilitating communication between your business and your customers, a CRM can make it easier for your employees to communicate with each other.
A CRM makes it easy to keep a watch on how other employees are speaking with a potential customer, which helps your team maintain a consistent brand narrative. It also allows team members to send each other notes or alerts, tag each other on projects, and send messages and emails, all within one system.
- Recruiting pipeline
Organizations need employees to grow their business. The less time you spend recruiting and hiring the right people, the more time you get for your company. Consider your CRM a way to organize and manage the hiring stages of your candidates. Create a new Deal using automation when you first receive an application.
Example Stages:
- Application received
- Application screened
- Phone screened
- Interviewed
- Offer made
- Offer accepted
Bottom Line:
This should not be an exhaustive list. Instead, use this list as a jumping-off point for you to find inspiration to think outside of the box. Adjust the stages to suit your needs, and come up with your own alternative use cases for a CRM. And lastly, using a Sales CRM like Kylas to manage and track your sales process, you can deliver the best performance possible and have a successful roadmap to reaching your targets.
Let us know in the comments what innovative uses for a CRM you have come up with. And remember automation tools exist to create efficiency in your life, to allow you to focus on what matters most; the relationships themselves.
Related Posts:
9 CRM use cases other than Sales Automation
Hello, My name is Shari & I am a writer for the ‘Outlook AppIns’ blog. I’m a CSIT graduate & I’ve been working in the IT industry for 3 years.