Choosing the Right CRM for Your Business

The whole purpose of your business is to attract and retain customers, and that’s where a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system comes in to help. A CRM helps you to manage all your relationships with customers and prospects, knowing exactly where they are in the sales pipeline and when they need to be contacted.

A CRM also allows you to streamline and automate your processes making it easier for your team, whilst saving them time. A good CRM is an efficient system which will ultimately improve the profitability of your business.

Here are the top 5 things to consider when choosing a CRM:

Understand your goals
What problem are you trying to solve? Define your goals and what you hope to gain from implementing a CRM into your business strategy. Knowing why you want a CRM is important for you to understand which CRM to choose. Some CRM’s offer more functionalities than others and if you don’t need them all, then there’s no need to pay for it.

Implementation time
Introducing new software is a time consuming task, there’s no denying it. Implementing the software, testing it for any bugs, training your staff to use it properly, and last but not least transferring your data across to the system will be a timely task – so make sure you give your business and team enough time for the implementation stage as it’ll certainly take time away from day-to-day tasks.

User mobility
Your team are going to be in and out of the office meeting clients and potential clients so it’s important that the CRM solution you choose allows your team to have access to it even when they’re out of the office. Ideally, you’ll want a CRM which is accessible on phones and tablets as well as laptops, as it’ll be easy to access before a team member goes into a meeting to refresh their memory with the details of the client or prospect profile.

Customisation and adaptability
Your business processes are different to your competitors, obviously. Therefore, you’ll need a CRM which is flexible and will adapt with your changing business processes. When you’re doing your research into CRM’s remember to check how flexible and customisable it is.

Check compatibility
The chances are your business is going to be using other software programs, so when you’re searching for the right CRM check out which programs the CRM is compatible with – this will only make your life easier in the long run! Most systems can be connected through APIs but you’ll need to make sure you know how to do this or have someone who can. If not, you can always use a third party but that’ll cost you more!

Shop around
Remember to do your research and shop around. The sales people from each CRM company you contact will persistently contact you to find out if you’ve made a decision or whether you have any more questions about the system. The demonstration will show the system in its best light, but make sure you look at reviews online, as the saleswoman might be good at their job of selling and the system might not actually be as good as they say! If they only have a few amazing reviews chances are they’re only sending their review page to their happy customers, so be sure to do your research and don’t believe everything you read!