How to Best Optimize Your CRM

recruit, crm, talent

Suppose your business struggles to maintain customer relationships and keep track of meetings, leads, and other client and employee information. In that case, it may be time to find a personal CRM that works for your company.

A CRM, or customer relationship management system, acts as a personal assistant, networking service, and scheduling app. While you’re probably already using LinkedIn to connect with potential clients and team members, a personal CRM does all the heavy lifting for you. You won’t have to remember clients’ birthdays or important dates or keep track of common customer complaints on your own. Best of all, while LinkedIn functions as a personal networking tool, a personal CRM is easily shared across teams and geographic areas. 

Not all clients use LinkedIn, and a personal CRM can help you track where your best clients and lead are—whether they reached out to you on a different social media platform like Twitter or Instagram or you’re communicating with them directly via phone or email. CRMs open doors for more communication options and allow all your team members to access personal notes and anecdotes related to a client’s needs.

If you have decided that your company could benefit from the organization and increase in efficiency that a CRM brings, you may be wondering how to get started. How do you know which CRM to choose, and how do you start using it to track clients and personalize their experience? Read on to learn more!

Choose a CRM Format

Customer relationship management systems are built to accommodate client and employee needs. If your team could benefit from more communication across departments, you may want to seek out a collaborative CRM. If you’re looking to track specific stats and metrics in order to sort through high levels of data while still benefitting from personalized customer information, an analytical CRM might be right for you.

Finally, if you’re looking to automate basic data entry tasks and minor error fixes so that your team can spend more time working with people, you might want to invest in an operational CRM. These three types have some crossover, but a collaborative CRM is more people-focused, while an analytical CRM is more data-focused and better for large companies.

Train Your Team

A personal CRM will only help improve your team’s communication if they know how to use it. Before implementing a new CRM, notify team members that you plan to use this new system to improve communication and track important client information. Introduce the new system in a way that helps your team understand its potential impact and ability to increase efficiency and make work easier throughout their day.

You can train more than just your sales team to use a CRM. Marketing, customer service, and accounting teams may also benefit from its use, primarily if you use a collaborative system. As with any other training, decide whether your team members will be most receptive in a group or individual setting and whether they prefer live or online training.

Look at Your Current Data

Likely, you’re already tracking your business data through Google Analytics or another platform. If you implement a personal CRM for your team, you will need to transfer that data. Consider how much data you want to transfer. If your company is new or small, you may want to start with client information that dates back to your company’s establishment so your team will have a clear picture of their contributions to its growth. Clean out any old or irrelevant data if necessary and decide if there are any new metrics or types of data you want to track in your CRM. 

Consult Your Team

If you have team members who manage data daily, they will likely know which data metrics are relevant and irrelevant. Ask your sales and analytics teams to give their opinion on the best way to transfer your current data so they feel like an active part of the integration process. 

Integrate Your Data

Even if you’re already using Google Analytics to track certain streams of data, you may only be using data from your company’s website or app. Make sure to integrate other forms of communication too. Fit Small Business lists the seven key CRM integrations as email, phone and SMS, social media, marketing automation, collaboration, e-commerce, and accounting. You want to be able to track any customer interactions and conversions to determine your best leads.

Conclusion

Once your team is trained to use your CRM software and your data is integrated, optimize customer interactions and team use of the CRM by regularly checking in with your team members. Give them time to experiment with the CRM and learn how they can use it to access customer and company information to drive sales. Additionally, encourage them to include their notes and ideas for clients in the CRM so you can truly hone your company’s knowledge base.

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