Excel is, of course, a wonderful tool for many applications. But as a CRM, it is not the best choice. When you think of a CRM, you mainly think of an advanced platform for managing relationships: a customer relationship management system. The power of a CRM system is still seriously underestimated. Many companies are cautious of the cost (although there are some free systems), or the complexity of setting up and using them.
Whether this is true or not, a CRM system helps you move forward as an organisation. And there is more: we see it as the beating heart of your organisation, and we are happy to explain why.
Why should you invest in a CRM?
The days of paper invoices and paper customer files are long gone. Digitalisation has been going on for a long time, and customer management has been done digitally for a long time. Customers are also asking for a faster response from your organisation, so you need a high-performance solution.
In addition, the number of (digital) channels has increased enormously, and a central system in which all these touchpoints are managed is no superfluous luxury. This multitude of channels makes it quite complex to keep track of everything correctly for each contact. Add to that the fact that you also want to keep track of attachments, meetings, notes and emails.
Apart from all that, you and your organisation also want to work efficiently. Time is money, and working hours cost a lot of money. With a CRM system, you spend that time much more efficiently. You can simply e-mail from that system and no longer need to log in separately. You have all the relevant data for a contact person in one place, so you no longer lose time looking them up in different systems.
Investing in a CRM is not bad financially. There are very affordable systems that are rock solid. So, it is mainly a time investment: the setup, importing data, learning to work with it… It pays off in any case and for these reasons…
Building customer relationships
A CRM helps your organisation build relationships with customers long before they become customers. From the first interaction, you have a relationship with them. Each subsequent interaction, live or via digital channels, is another step in that relationship.
Without a CRM system, it would be extremely difficult to keep track of all those interactions and to build on the road you have already travelled together. This does not only apply to large companies, by the way: also very small teams or self-employed people benefit from building and maintaining good relationships.
Trust and customer loyalty
People will only become customers if they trust you enough. And building that trust takes time and energy. Your CRM system helps you build it: using the data in your CRM, you can do the right things at the right time and keep track of all the relevant information so you don’t make any mistakes.
In addition, your CRM system also helps you follow up on existing customers correctly and punctually. All the data you have on your visitor’s behaviour, purchases or complaints are available with just a few clicks. These help you to keep customers satisfied and increase their loyalty to your brand.
Understanding customers better
A CRM system stores a lot of data about your customers and prospects. This data gives you insights into the problem your customer is trying to solve. This enables you to further adapt your services or products to your market. The data also gives you more information about how they use your product or what complaints they have. This data can be an important source of ideas for product innovations, or new or improved services.
These are some good reasons to consider using a CRM system. But what exactly will it bring to your organisation?
Managing data
Your CRM system collects lots of data from several different sources. There is for example some sales data. How many people do we know? And how many of them are customers? How much revenue do they generate, in total but also on average? How many companies do we have in our customer database, and what industries are they from?
But it can go much further than just names and contact details. A decent CRM system also keeps track of how many emails they open, how often they visit your website, which channels they use to get in touch with you, and so on. Adding to this other connected platforms like social media or a webinar tool, you’ll understand how enormous the amount of data in your CRM system can get. That means you also have a lot of data to play around with when doing marketing, for example as automation triggers.
What data does your CRM contain?
People are often amazed at the amount of data you can find in a CRM system as we just mentioned. What is there to find?
- The basics: contact data such as surname, first name, email, telephone numbers, address, etc.
- Company data: company name, sector, size of the company, the LinkedIn page, contacts within one company, etc.
- Sales data: quotations, deals, meetings, emails, reports, signed documents, etc.
- Date data: when did someone become a customer, when did they click on a link, when was the deal signed, etc.
- Data on properties that you create in your CRM, such as which business unit is responsible for it, specific subcategories of customers in your market, specific statutes that your customers work with, and so on.
If you work with Hubspot, for example, you will have more than 150 properties at the contact level at your disposal by default. You can add more that are specific to your company, so you can customise your CRM for your company and sales and marketing teams.
What to do with the data in your CRM?
Gathering data is of course not the purpose. It’s what you do with it that counts. In any case, you may want to build some useful dashboards with relevant data for you. These dashboards will help you:
- get more insights into your buyer personas
- Your marketing team gets more insights into the channels that work best
- Management can adjust sales processes and teams based on the data, create forecasts and make decisions.
- Your sales team can work with the right customers and target them more efficiently
- With all data in one place, your internal communication runs a lot smoother and less confusing
An example: suppose your marketers bring in a lead through a Google Ads campaign. Your sales team can see how that person became a lead, and also what the context of the ad was. Based on that, they start a sales conversation. Later in the sales process, the prospect turns out not to be interested after all. The sales representative registers this in the CRM, the rest of the team knows that they no longer need to contact this person and marketing knows how this lead was followed up and why he or she did not become a customer after all. With that data, both teams can adjust their operations and make your organisation better.
CRM is more than sales
Lots of people think of a CRM as only a sales tool. Managing customers in a system was mainly the responsibility of the salespeople. But times have changed: many people in your organisation get in touch with customers and benefit from the data in your CRM to do their job. So it is much more than just sales: it affects your entire organisation.
CRM and marketing
Think about your marketing team: they want to generate leads and store all relevant data about them in a CRM. But their job doesn’t stop there: someone who enters your CRM is rarely ready for a sales call right away. They are still at the very beginning of their buyer journey and are still looking for information. They are still looking for information they need to make a purchase decision. Your marketing team is at play here, they can:
- retarget these people on Facebook to show them relevant content
- set up lead nurturing campaigns to further nurture them with relevant content
- fine-tune buyer personas based on the interactions with these leads
- lead scoring based on demographics and behaviour to get your sales team qualified leads
It comes down to the fact that the ‘C’ in CRM has changed over time. C is not only about customers but also about leads, prospects or simply new contacts that get in touch with you for the first time. Your CRM is an important tool right from the start of the buyer journey.
CRM, service and after-sales
The use of a CRM for after-sales and service is more known. Think of service technicians who come to maintain machines in your production hall, or software companies with ticketing systems to follow up on complaints or change requests. These data are also an invaluable source of information for your sales and marketing teams.
You can link your CRM to other systems that help your after-sales teamwork more efficiently. Think about customers who have questions about using your software. Your CRM system allows them to look up the information relevant to them as a customer, or follow up on the status of a complaint, for example.
In addition, your CRM can also serve as a trigger to show personalised content when these contacts visit your website. The more personalised your content is, the better your customer’s user experience will be.
Who uses a CRM?
Well, everyone of course. Or at least: every company SHOULD. However some organisations still wonder whether they need a CRM, and some use Excel. Small businesses often just don’t want to go through the trouble of setting up a CRM for just one person or 2 co-founders. But we feel that even in those cases, a CRM helps your business grow: you’ll find all your customer-related information in one central system AND when you start growing, you can hit the ground running. No more messing around in Excel or endless searches in your mailbox.
Non-profit organisations also tend to think that a CRM is irrelevant because they associate the C in CRM with sales and profit. But as we mentioned earlier: even a non-profit has a kind of customer, a very specific one. Think of sponsors, volunteers, members or financial partners. You also want to be able to manage all of those in one system. I would even dare to say that non-profits benefit even more from a CRM: it allows them to work much more efficiently and, more importantly at lower costs. That is often a major concern for a non-profit organisation.
Conclusion
If you take a closer look, you will quickly realise that CRMs offer many advantages. It is a tool that helps you become more profitable and grow more sustainably. And complexity is certainly not the issue: every tool has its learning curve and the benefits are many times greater than that short learning curve. Plus, there are some easy-to-use platforms out there. In any case, don’t just go for what others say, do your research. Yes, their experience may be relevant, but at the end of the day, it has to work for your organisation.