According to a Beagle Research, it has been predicted that even though 36 percent of sales professionals are still to adopt easy to use CRM for business growth, nevertheless it is predicted that this will change as we head into 2020, as it has been aptly quoted by Denis Pombriant:
“There is a great deal of white space in CRM to be claimed and this will be where humans will add the greatest value as we continue to bring CRM to businesses that were once completely manual.”
We highlighted this fact as according to another recent study conducted by Grandview Research, it states that:
“The CRM market would be worth $81.9 billion by 2025 and Gartner and others publish annual reports indicating the market’s vibrancy.”
Hence as customers are an invaluable asset to any company, therefore every business must work harder this year to gain new customers and sustain a good relationship with their existing ones.
CRM as a whole is expected to reach over $81.9 billion revenue by 2025 - Gartner Click To TweetNevertheless, the work of managing customers and the skills required for guiding them through the sales funnel is an overwhelming task.
This is exactly where easy to use CRM be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM platform (mostly used by SMB organizations) could be a powerful tool in your arsenal that can streamline business processes by gathering, coordinating and organizing customer information stored in the CRM database.
Easy to use CRM is a software that can work for any business, irrespective of whether you implementing it for a large enterprise or you are just a small startup.
Now even though CRM is a powerful business growth technology , it is a known fact that many businesses do not utilize it fully.
A Customer Relationship Management system has several benefits, like boosting retention and optimizing your sales, marketing, and support efforts and so in this article let us find out how you can improve the implementation of your easy to use CRM or your best small business CRM software solution if you are an SMB to ensure success and steady business growth.
Most often than not, the people who will be implementing your easy to use CRM tool are your sales teams.
Hence it is most important that you need to involve them when you choose your CRM software and buy CRM for business growth.
Always remember when selecting the software, that it matches your organizational requirements.
However, how do you identify your needs?
Well, your sales team can aid you to pinpoint the challenges they face in their sales cycle and even provide solutions as to how CRM can address the problems for sales growth.
Now once your sales team is recognizing the issues, your marketing team needs to identify the touch-points with the customers, how they manage their communication or the time they need to deal with the leads and prospects to qualify the leads.
We say this because only armed with the knowledge of the underlying issues, you can choose an easy to use CRM tool that will ensure streamlining your processes and provide efficient customer management for your business.
Moreover, even before you buy CRM if you accept the ideas and thoughts of your sales and marketing teams into consideration it is natural that they will embrace the software without resistance, easily.
As one of the most acclaimed and award-winning CRM for SMB organizations, we have frequently found that sales teams most often have a negative opinion about using this business growth technology and tool.
This is because most often than not sales professionals find this tool as an unnecessary burden due to the time they need to update customer-related data into the CRM database.
Hence irrespective of whether you are buying CRM for small business or for a big enterprise, you need to highlight its value in the marketing functionalities and aspects of the software.
This is because as sales reps most of their time spend researching on customer data or doing follow-ups on prospective buyers on their list.
Now, with the marketing industry becoming increasingly data-driven, sales teams once they understand the value of easy to use CRM which aids harvests prospect’s data, such as a prospect’s interests and hobbies, location, purchasing behavior, age group, and more and then analyze patterns and trends in this data, sales teams are more likely to get on board on the use this business growth technology for enhancing their data management skills.
Remember, you should sell your CRM software to your employees as a tool that can make their works simple by reducing tasks and optimizing their efforts in sales and marketing, so that your sales reps acknowledges that the tool will be able to provide them with all the necessary information to influence sale at their fingertips, easily.
For your teams to cherish the easy to use CRM tool, they need to grasp the ins and out of the software. Now, while it an easy to use CRM may be straightforward and simple to use, you still need to educate your employees on how they must use the software for harvesting optimal ROI.
The CRM training should cover all the guidelines on the operational aspect of the tool. For example how to enter the company’s data in the CRM database , or use the dashboard more efficiently, or create customer segmentation based on different filters and more.
Remember, as employees are diverse in nature, and so while some might find it easy to figure out how the software works, others without additional and ongoing training might even make mistakes which can lead to ineffective use of the software.
Additionally, encouraging your employees to take a short course on the goals and implementation process of this business growth technology most often increases the adoption rate of the software.
Now, if you are just trying to use a robust business growth technology solution like a CRM as a plug and play tool, you are surely setting yourself up for failure.
Hence, before the implementation of your CRM, rather even before you buy CRM for your business you need to create an excellent and a doable strategy to ensure you maximize the use of the software.
How do you come up with a strategy?
Well, for example, once you have recognized the goals like generating high-quality leads or goals like customer retention, you can easily come up with a definite strategy to meet up these goals.
For this evaluate your businesses’ workflow at each stage of the CRM implementation process and thereafter analyze its performance on a regular basis.
In other words, irrespective of the plan of action you decide to take, make sure that the easy to use CRM should complement the vision laid down by your company.
Even though in an HBR (Harvard Business Review) publication it states that in 2017, CIO magazine reported around one-third of all CRM projects fail it has been observed that most CRM implementations fail due to the dearth of support from the top management in the company.
Hence if the senior managers in your company are not a part of the CRM implementation process, your employees will likewise keep on neglecting to embrace the software.
This the reason, once you buy CRM you must get all the leaders on board from the beginning to create a ripple effect. For this make your managers take part in the training, attend meetings, and stay abreast of the latest CRM implementation processes.
Conclusion
Remember, CRM implementation in any industry is an ongoing process, and therefore you need to tweak your CRM strategies from time to time.
Nevertheless, once you buy CRM you should always keep your employees and teams happy working with the system by incorporating their feedback in the implementation process until the time the systems get adopted by your employees completely.
