Does Your Company Need A CRM? The Importance of a robust CRM system.

The importance of CRM systems is becoming more prominent, especially when you consider that 91% of businesses with more than eleven people use them to manage customer relationships.

If you’re one of the 9% who are yet to implement a CRM, or are struggling or frustrated with your current CRM, then keep reading as we explore the benefits of a modern CRM.

 

What does a CRM do?

A CRM (Customer Relations Management) system essentially provides a central base where businesses can store customer data such as contact details, previous interactions, and sale information for an entire organisation to access. It’s a system that compiles communication data, marketing activities, and sales information. With this, the next customer interaction can become more personalised based on the history of interaction with that person.

 

What available CRMs are there?

There’s plenty to choose from, but one of the best is called HubSpot. Unmatched are a Gold HubSpot Agency, perfectly placed to help you with implementing your HubSpot CRM. Some other good options include:

• SalesForce (for larger enterprise businesses)

• ZohoCRM

• Bullhorn (for recruitment agencies)

• Pipedrive

 

Do all businesses need CRM?

Above we mentioned that 91% of businesses with more than eleven employees use CRM systems. But what about the other nine per cent? The reasons they don’t implement one are unknown. However, to help identify whether all businesses require a CRM, they should answer the below questions.

• Do you have customer data sitting in spreadsheets and lots of systems? – if so, you need a CRM to house all your customer data in one place. This will benefit your sales and marketing teams hugely for more effective sales and marketing.

• Do you have a defined sales process? – If so, a CRM will help you track where deals are in the pipeline. If your sales process is not yet defined, a CRM could be the best place to start mapping it out.

• Are you managing a sales team? - If you manage a sales team, you’ll want to guarantee customer details are managed via a CRM. It’s a business risk if valuable sales data is sitting on reps phones’ or on spreadsheets across your network. A CRM will help you get all your data in one place and make it useful.

• Can you remember every customer? – In the unlikely event you can remember every interaction with every customer, you’ll want a CRM. A CRM will help make your sales calls personable, and you can store information such as how many children they have, their favourite football team, and more.

• Do prospects have multiple points of contact? - Does the entire organisation need to contact a customer? Then compiling their data on a CRM system such as interaction history, sales cycle, and contact details can ensure everybody is on the same page.

• Is your marketing team complaining about unusable or out of date customer data? – if so, you need a CRM. Marketing teams operate much more effectively with a solid CRM underpinning their campaigns and enabling CRM-powered marketing.

 

Benefits of a good CRM

By 2025, the global market for CRM systems will reach 49.6 billion dollars. Despite HubSpot being the go-to option for many, what are the benefits of a good CRM?

• A CRM can help automate follow-up communication, email sequences, sales workflows, chatbot conversations, etc., allowing more time to focus on what matters, growth.

• Using these systems helps centre business’s growth around customers by using a data silo the entire company can access.

• It can help align all business practices that focus on customers, such as sales, marketing, and customer service teams.

• It simplifies and offers better customer interactions throughout the business.

There’s no doubt that a modern and robust CRM system will bring huge benefits, but what about the cost?

 

What does a CRM cost?

Here’s some good news, HubSpot has a completely free option. This free CRM is fully functional and a great starting point for most businesses, especially B2B. It comes with a free Google Chrome plugin too, which will log and track your emails too.

As your business grows, HubSpot and other CRMs will grow with it so you’re not out of pocket and footing a huge CRM bill.

 

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that using a CRM will benefit your business, 99% of the time. For the 1%, implementing a CRM needs to wait until after you’ve solved other business issues – new software isn’t always the solution.

If your business does need a hand with CRM, especially HubSpot, speak to Matt Freestone from Unmatched Agency who are a Gold HubSpot Partner and full-service marketing agency based in Bury St Edmunds.