Yes, it’s another 10 reasons why you need a CRM. This time I wanted to focus on pain points that you are probably experiencing in your business today. As we grow our businesses we’ll find that we are constantly trying to plug the leaks as they spring left, right and center. We’re big believers in CRM but why exactly what you need one? Here are some key indicators that it’s time to implement a CRM in your business.
Before we start with 10 reasons why you need a CRM, If you have any other “reasons”, we would love to hear them. Feel free to email us, tweet us or post a message below.
And here we go!
1. Your teams can’t remember everything, your CRM can
Are you finding that your marketing, sales and service teams just can’t keep track of everything? I could imagine that you’ve seen some sales reps loaded with sticky notes across their workstations. They may even have piles of paper lined up inside of their car as they go from appointment to appointment. The CRM is designed to remember everything about the companies and individuals that you work with. With your CRM you can track everything from notes, favorite baseball teams, favorite restaurants or the names of their kids. The CRM is there to help you keep track of relevant information about your customers.
2. Your sales and service teams spend too much time searching for stuff
I’m sure we’ve all heard it. You’ve asked your sales rep to let you know where things are at with ABC Company. The sales rep quickly jumps over to Microsoft Outlook and starts searching for that last email he sent or maybe, the prospect sent to him. He really doesn’t know without scouring his email. This is the way many businesses do it without a proper CRM working for them.
What really should be happening is your sales rep should be opening up your CRM (hopefully SugarCRM!) and simply searching for ABC Company. With the click of a button, your sales rep can be reading off the historical summary of all interactions with ABC Company.
Or better yet, you could simply look it up too.
3) You have no way to measure success
We live in a world of numbers and metrics. Any successful business owner can tell you how important metrics are in their businesses. Your CRM can become your hub of metrics and key performance indicators based on the data within your CRM. Your CRM is your ultimate hub of information where you can tie in the data that your marketing, sales and services teams can input into.
4) You have no way to predict or forecast sales
Are you crossing your fingers that you will make enough revenue for the company in the coming quarter? Your CRM can help you forecast out and project what your sales numbers could ultimately look like. If you’re finding that things are a bit slow then maybe it’s time to run a campaign to boost numbers.
5) Your sales process is broken or non-existent
Do you have a sales process in your business? What are you doing to track each stage of the sales cycle with your prospects? Every customer goes through a detailed customer journey.
Developing these stages and identifying them as part of the sales cycle is critical to ensure that you get the right messaging and information to your prospects in a timely manner.
6) Your salespeople are using sticky notes
When we talk about data import, many of our customers like to tease us about all of the sticky notes that their people have accumulated over time. Unfortunately, we don’t do data import for sticky notes. You could hire someone to do the data entry and that can do the trick. If you’re finding your sales staff using sticky notes to stay on top of things then this is an obvious reason for needing a CRM.
7) Your sales reps rely on their Contacts App instead of Mobile CRM
Your sales reps are using the contacts app instead of Sugar Mobile. This is another one of the 10 reasons why you need a CRM is so critical. Your sales reps should be using the mobile app of your CRM to capture information while taking phone calls. It’s also likely that the CRM is more than up to date than the Contacts App simply because everyone in the organization is updating the CRM.
8) You have no way to find out how many and what type of customers you have
Your CRM is not only a collection of tasks and sales tracking. Your CRM should allow you to develop a comprehensive profile of your customers so that you can categorize and organize them in a way that you run metrics and reports to find out who your customers are.
9) You have no way to organize customers by account manager (unless it’s just a spreadsheet or more sticky notes)
Your CRM allows you to organize your accounts by account managers. This allows you to develop specific accountabilities for each person on your team.
10) There’s no single source of information
Last and but not least for 10 reasons why you need a CRM, there’s no single source of information. With a CRM, you’re bringing everybody together to share information in one location. Many of the organizations that we work with find that their greatest challenge before getting a CRM is that they have no way of keeping tabs on the multiple CRM’s that have sprung up between sales reps.