Customer Relationship Management
Customer relationship management is simply the process of managing your relationships with customers, whatever your version of that might be. So have you be it clients, vendors, buyers, event attendees, prospects, projects, homeowners, or whatever else you can think of.
Depending on the size of your business, you probably have a system in place to manage all this communication. This is known as a CRM System. Ideally, a portion of this system is automated and enables your team to process more info in less time resulting in a more significant ROI for your business.
What to look for in your CRM system
Multi-Channel outreach
First, the ability to connect outreach tools to communicate in various ways, such as dialing, email, SMS, and social media. Generally, these features can incur additional expenses, but emailing capabilities usually are included by default.
Collaborate between sales + marketing teams
Great revenue generators have excellent communication between their Sales and Marketing departments because that’s how customers are found, created, and the reason they return. A CRM system that enables Marketing teams to connect with Sales is one way to ensure your business keeps leads flowing and continues generating revenue.
Built-in scheduler/appointment setting
One of the most time-consuming and challenging parts of the customer life-cycle is the appointment setting and the tasks surrounding booking leads and filling a calendar. Therefore, your CRM needs to have integrated capabilities to use your booking tools and scheduling software or provide you the ability to build one out with automation.
Workflow Automation
If you can not automate at least a portion of your CRM processes, how are you meant to increase the overall output of your business? Automating routine and recurring tasks is essential in any CRM if you want to see an ROI. The best CRMs enable custom automation to improve every aspect of your sales process.
Reporting / Analytics
Another important feature, your reports, ideally ones you can tailor. You should have access to all the KPIs you need and be able to see and create reports, build custom metrics, and get granular details on your CRM and Sales performance.
Invoicing & Billing
Any CRM you use should have ability to connect to your preferred invoicing/billing software. Businesses often tend to lean toward these providers based on their industry, so any CRM you use should be accommodating.
Integration ability
Businesses are complex and agile these days, requiring tools for many different aspects, and you must have the ability to integrate these tools to ensure efficiency and accuracy within your CRM and across your entire business.
Customizability
Your CRM should be your CRM, meaning it should look, feel, and operate like your system, not the other way around. Being able to tailor your pipeline, process, and lead flow should be a default feature of any CRM.
CRM Red Flags
When it come to customer relationship management, there’s hundreds, even thousands of options you can choose from. You must evaluate the needs for your team, business, and company objectives and find the solution that fits those needs.
As mentioned previously, there are several features that should come standard or “baked-in” to any CRM system. If a CRM lacks anything we mentioned above, chances are there’s other aspects they’ll fall short on, and that’s a red flag.
#1 – No automation
A CRM without automation is no CRM at all. The entire point of using a customer relationship management system is to enhance your teams output by decreasing the amount of repetitive tasks they have to do to reach a sale.
#2 – No customization
We’ve all been there, using software that was built the way it’s built, and you have no way to change or adapt it. Depending on the use case, this could be OK, but in a CRM you need access to modification. add on to it, customize the look, feel, and tailor the terminology for your team to ensure high productivity and usage from your team.
#3 – No integrations
Businesses use a lot of different tools, many of which become vital to the business process, growth, and ecosystem. If you can’t connect these tools into your CRM, how will it really enhance and benefit you in the long run. Additionally, if you have to entirely change the level of subscription or pay additional to unlock access to your external tools, this can be a red flag.
#4 – No metric customization
Businesses have changed a lot over the years, and with that means changing goals, targets, and KPIs. Any decent CRM provides you performance dashboards, and measurable statistics, but being able to set, build, and measure custom KPIs is imperative to the success of modern businesses. Not being able to measure performance metrics the way you need, means you are settling before you even have a chance to succeed. Don’t do that.
Something for you to think about
A great CRM system is one that can scale with your business. There’s no reason you should have to bounce between systems every time you scale your business or go through a transition of some kind.
An important factor that’s often overlooked is employees’ satisfaction with the systems in place to do their work. The BYOD market (bring your own device) is projected to hit $367 Billion in 2022. This idea is often subsidized in companies where they provide employees an allowance or compensation of sorts to purchase technology and/or bring preferred devices for their workspace.
If your business tools or software were built in an environment where employees could plug in their preferred tech stack or software tools wouldn’t that be a win-win for everyone?
Questions to ask yourself when evaluating CRM options
- Is this a system my team will want to use?
- Can I onboard my team easily?
- Will I have to change my process to fit this solution?
- Can I customize it, or is it pre-structured?
- What’s the cost? vs. What are the benefits?
- How long will it take to implement?
- Do I have easy access to support?
Finding a foundation for your CRM and sales hub
Having a solid foundation to build upon is just as essential to the business world as it is to the construction industry. For us, there’s no place quite like monday.com. We’ve identified this as our preferred place for building all extensions of our business. Starting with our CRM and expanding from there.
For us, monday.com has opened up the doors of opportunity, allowing us to expand and constantly improve our workflow. Furthermore, as the sandbox for business, it provides our entire team functional ways to create tools to manage their work. Additionally we have the ability to integrate any of our external tools. Learn more about the ways to use monday.com here.
CarbonCRM, the C-R-M for Everyone
Being able to alter and customize your pipeline, process, and lead flow should be a default feature of any CRM. Nowadays, businesses are not copy-pasted entities, so why use systems not tailored to your business needs and goals? Simply put, you shouldn’t have to!
The CarbonCRM, our first end-to-end solution, a fully automated and customizable CRM Suite for monday.com. Built entirely inside monday.com, our Suite is ready to expand your sales efforts and integrate within your workflow. Everything you need and everything you read above is possible with the CarbonCRM!
Interested in learning more? Schedule a free demo.
CarbonCRM is now in the monday marketplace! View the CarbonCRM on monday.com