CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management, and relationships are one of the cornerstones of business. Without a CRM, companies fail to thrive. It’s imperative to nurture and grow those contacts and turn them into relationships. Learning basic CRM facts will only help your company succeed.  

CRMs take information from all corners of the company and create a more holistic view of the customer journey. This means that your team will have a deeper understanding of that customer. Consequently, your team will close more deals and sell more products by speaking their ‘language.’  

What CRMs Are Used For 

CRMs enable businesses to stay up-to-date on customers over the lifetime of interactions. Entering data received through any touchpoint allows teams to improve how they connect with each customer. Without a CRM, information is often lost or forgotten. As a result, customer relationships can potentially be destroyed.  

How CRMs Improve Business Performance 

In the era of technology, the Rolodex has become obsolete. Many companies aren’t storing important information on paper, they’re using online solutions like CRMs. Overall, these will hold all the data around employees, company contacts, and partners.  

Using CRMs improves business performance by storing all that vital client and employee information and making it readily available. Above all, if the success of your company is dependent on people, then you need a CRM.  

CRMs help your business performance by: 

• Finding and converting targeted customers. 
• Creating deeper customer relationships. 
• Cutting down the cost of sales by nurturing the right customer. 
• Increasing opportunities for upsells and cross-sells. 
• Strengthening and increasing employee efficiency and productivity.  
• Boosting your customer retention. 

How to Pick the Right CRM 

There are many different CRMs on the market, at all types of price points. But choosing the right one can be daunting. There are two types of CRMs, a desktop system or one hosted on a server or in the cloud. How many employees you have will help determine the type of CRM you’ll need. Also, if you are self-employed or only have a small staff then a desktop CRM is what you’ll probably use. A larger company will benefit more from a server or cloud-based system.  

A cloud-based CRM makes your information accessible anywhere and everywhere. Plus, when hosted on a server, each person using the system can have the software installed onto their computer.  

Your CRM should have: 

• Accessible customer contact information. 
• Lead management to nurture, track, and target customers. 
• Forecasting reports for sales.  
• Instant messaging capabilities for employees. 
• An email client to create nurture and drip campaigns. 
• Integration with 3rd party tools like Google. 
• Content and file sharing. 
• Analytics within a dashboard customized to the person’s job focus.  

Finally, integrating a CRM will benefit everyone with vital information stored within a centralized platform solution. CRMs will help your teams nurture happy customers. And the bottom line is CRMs make for better business. Hopefully, these CRM facts help you choose the right one for your business. 

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