What is a CRM and Why Should You use that Software in Your Company?

The use of a CRM in companies starts to be a necessity, especially considering that each day we tend more towards the management of a greater volume of data in them.

However, there is still a certain lack of knowledge about what a CRM is and how this software can help in the management of tasks that affect different departments of the same company or business.

The use of tools or CRM software, therefore, offers a series of organizational and competitive advantages to the companies that are already implementing them, that your business should not lose sight of.

Do you know what a customer relationship management is and what is this type of software for?

To deal extensively and broadly with all that a customer relationship management system can offer, He is a marketing consultant at the company Compass, one of the partners of Zoho CRM, one of the most well-known and currently used. Adrián, thanks to his experience in the implementation of management systems can provide us with this post a valuable information about it.

What is a CRM and how can it help the marketing strategy and the management of your company?

It is quite frequent the ignorance of companies, especially in the case of SMEs, what is and what a CRM is for.

It is also common to hear that they do know what it is for, but that they do not need it or that it is only useful for large companies with large budgets and thousands of clients.

In the current scenario, and especially on the internet, with the competition just a click away, the difficulties to get new clients are evident, so we must consider the imperative of preserving and caring for those we already have.

That is where these tools appear that, in broad strokes, we use to intelligently treat each and every one of our clients according to their needs and interests.

What is a CRM?

In definition, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a software designed to manage the relationship with customers and potential customers or leads that must be fully integrated into the different processes of the company, be it of any type and size.

Likewise, this is also a model of corporate management or management of a business based on the relationship with customers.

Managing the relationship with the client means analyzing all the interactions and data obtained throughout the life cycle of the client or, what is the same, keeping track of everything “what we have done” with that client.

We must think of CRM as a tool to manage all our business relationships, unifying the whole process:

Operations

Diary

Sales strategy

In addition, it is important to bear in mind that these applications go beyond, also gives us the possibility to control our relationships with suppliers, commercial and marketing team.

Why use a CRM?

Many companies use excel sheets, agendas or other software in which they store only the most basic customer data.

Doing this and doing nothing is practically the same.

Imagine that a client requested an advisory service two years ago and calls us to request another one. It is practically impossible for us to remember what we did for him.

In the CRM we would have all that information at our fingertips:

What service did you buy for us?

How did he pay us?

Did we have a problem with him?

What employee took your account?

What annotations did we do about it?

What did the emails that we sent us to say?

Which companies should use a CRM?

Normally companies begin to question the need to use a CRM based on their number of employees, thinking to unify the information flows that each one of the handles.

Perhaps it would be more interesting to raise it in reverse. It will be interesting to implement it when we have more clients or potential customers than we can manage.

That is, a CRM is essential, for example, for a consultancy that has hundreds of clients even if it only has two employees.

How does the DB structure a Customer Relationship Management?

The first thing we should know is how our data divides any CRM software. Basically, we can divide the data into 4 categories:

Possible customers or leads.

Accounts

Contacts

Opportunities

To illustrate how each of these categories should be delimited, we will put a small example:

We attend a fair to which we go with the aim of offering our products. In the course of it, we receive the business card of a person who is interested in what we sell. That person is not a customer, he is a leader.

It is possible that I will become a client, but it is also possible that I will not become a client. After a few days, we call our leaders and we present our services. We can receive several answers, but to simplify, we will summarize it in two:

It does not interest what we sell. In which case, we must reflect it in our CRM so that it is clear that we have contacted him and he has told us that he is not interested. This registration can be useful if in the future you get back in touch with us.

You are interested in any of our services. At this time, we would proceed to convert to the lead. Your file will disappear from the list of possible clients and will appear in the account lists (inheriting the data we have from the company) and contacts (inheriting the data we have from the contact person (s)).

Now, from the account form, we will see the contacts that we have associated with it and we can generate opportunities, which are the last leg in any customer relationship management software.

A business opportunity will be any project that you request, whether it is finally accepted or not.

Know what the client needs

This software not only stores the basic data of our clients but also allows us to know them. By synchronizing all our interactions with a single tool we can know at all times what has happened to a customer.

If we try to manage all these information flows with different non-centralized tools, it causes inefficiencies, time losses, and frustrations of both workers and customers.

The CRM allows us to have all the information in one place and access it simply by knowing a customer data. It is possible to segment it according to our interests to carry out all kinds of actions that stimulate our sales.

We will also obtain data about which customers are most interesting to us, not only which ones buy more, but which ones leave us a greater benefit, which pays punctually, etc.

That is, using information intelligently, we will sell more and sell better. We will also have a better reputation because, knowing what the client needs, he is more likely to be satisfied and recommend us.

What should I know to choose a good CRM software?

Each company must find the alternative that best suits their needs, but as a general rule, the software must have the following characteristics:

Scalability:

The tool grows as the company does. The implementation of a CRM is a process of adaptation and has a cost, so we should not be forced to change software if our company increases or decreases in size.

Personalization:

The tool is configurable to adapt to the needs of the company. It should be possible to add or remove modules, fields, functionalities according to our needs, as well as develop integrations with other tools.

Cloud:

The tool is accessible from any computer. Nowadays almost any company needs a minimum of commercial mobility, so the alternatives of CRM SaaS ( Softwares as a Service ) are an option that seems essential.

Conclusion

We try fundamentally with a tool that helps us sell more because we sell better.

By collecting and using the information, we do not waste time with clients who are not interested and we focus on customers who really want to have a business relationship with us. We will also be able to provide a specific treatment to each client based on their needs and interests.