How to Choose the best CRM Software for Your Business

Is CRM necessary for our business?

Having solid relationships with your clients is essential if you want to build a stable and successful business. However, the process of honing these relationships can be quite complex. Selecting a top-rated CRM can assist in providing an excellent customer experience. Cloud-based CRM software is a necessity for every company. Businesses not using CRM work at a reduced level of productivity and with less effectiveness. Even a small business can increase profits significantly by implementing more effective marketing campaigns, boosting their sales efforts, automating their follow-up tasks, documenting their engagements, and track their customer interactions.

CRM is designed to assist and focus your day to day activities. Utilizing the platform with sales best practices can help create meaningful customer experiences and eventually increase your chances of conversion.

Why choosing the best CRM software matters to your business?

For decreasing costs and increasing revenue, investing in CRM is a crucial step. Choosing the wrong CRM that may not be aligned with your business goals can be a drain on your cash flow. Proper implementation with an experienced consultant is just as important. Make sure you understand all the financial benefits before you hire a consulting team. Costly CRM implementations can fail just because of a lack of knowledge. Here are some tips for choosing the right CRM that can save you a lot of time and money.

Identify your current business needs:

Always keep in mind your company’s objectives before finalizing your CRM decision. Document your company’s vision and goals, defining the obstacles you are facing in reaching them. Then outline what attributes of a CRM can assist in solving them. Examples could be: your salespeople might be facing problems with consistent follow-ups, there might be issues with visibility into your pipeline, or your employees might not be focusing on the correct audience. Identify your roadblocks and then find ways from which you can fulfill them with the CRM platform.

Build a roadmap for success:

Do it right the first time. Build a strong foundation with incremental improvements as you learn and grow. Changing CRMs or requiring a whole new consulting team to reconfigure your existing implementation can be a drain on your pockets. Develop a roadmap for your CRM implementation aligned to your business improvement themes. A roadmap should not be a one time exercise; preferably, a continuous improvement exercised aligned with quarterly or yearly business strategy reviews.

Can you achieve your goals with this CRM?

Make a list of your goals and pick the best CRM that aligns with your business a roadmap. This step is crucial because your future goals need to be met to achieve success in the future. All too often many CRMs look great with out of the box functionality. Sooner or later, they will need to be customized to align with your business. Do some research to ensure that this will not be a painful experience when it comes time. Your CRM should be able to grow with you. Unfortunately your business with slow with the inability of your technology stack to keep up.

Decide What Features Your Business Needs

Every business is different, and few CRMs are built just for your way of working. So, to choose the right CRM for your business, ensure that it has the features which will increase the productivity of your team.

Get a pen and a paper, and write a list of features that you want and align with the goals of your roadmap – in priority order. Include your key stakeholders (sales, service, marketing, management, technology, etc).

The involvement of your whole organization, while making this decision, can make a much smoother and more successful transition. Bringing in every one or just the top managers and influencers can increase the credibility of the system choice and hence making the adoption process much easier.

Read the reviews and talk with your peers:

Reviews are an essential part of the process you cannot miss. But don’t just trust the written word, go out and talk to your peers or attend local events. Even in our daily lives, before buying something, we see if the product has worked for its previous consumers or not. So, obviously before investing tons of money, assess reviews. Also, compare your company’s needs with that company which is giving the review.

Final thoughts

A CRM is not an option for your business. How far down the rabbit hole you implement it is a personal decision and should align with your company’s objectives. Utilization of a good implementation partner will take you a lot further, faster than doing it on your own and with a higher level of adoption. Do it right the first time, take an iterative approach, make it useful to the employees that have to use them, and above all use the tools that you have purchased.