3 Features You Should Look for in a CRM

A CRM can be a great tool if you’re trying to improve your follow up process with your clients, coordinate your sales and support better, and better personalize your marketing efforts. However, there are so many different CRMs on the market, and it can be difficult to know which one would be best for your organization. 

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and these innovative systems are designed to help you to map out the customer journey and offer them a more efficient service. You can easily track every aspect of their order and all of the communication they’ve had with your company, no matter who they speak to or how.

As a result, you can use this information to improve their experience and show your team how they can improve the customer experience for future clients. 

These benefits have helped CRMs to flourish over recent years, and today there is a wide range of choices on the market. From smaller companies to huge corporations, many organizations offer CRM systems, so you need to choose wisely in order to get the product that suits your company. 

While many CRM systems might look similar at first glance, some might be better suited for your business’s size, your plans for the future, or the nature of your business. This is why it’s important that you look up as many options as you can, and know what to look for depending on your needs. 

Choosing a CRM system for your company requires an exact knowledge of what you need and what your clients are expecting, but there are some general features that you need to look out for if you want to find the perfect solution. To help you find the perfect CRM for your organization, we’ve listed the three key features you need to consider. 

Ease of Use

If you’re new to CRMs, or your team is not familiar with them, then the first thing you should consider is ease of use. While some tools out there might be great, if you can’t manage to use them, they’ll be useless to you. You need to make the most out of your CRM solution, and that means finding a tool that you and your staff can easily master. 

Salesforce is a perfect example of this. Salesforce has become the gold standard in the industry, but as PieSync outline here, it is not the easiest CRM to maintain. As a matter of fact, they mention that the under-the-hood functionalities are so vast and complex that many companies decide to have a dedicated administrator in the house or even outsource the management to a third party.

In comparison, Zoho, which is in direct competition with Salesforce, is much easier to implement and would be a better fit for a smaller organization that needs a CRM that will be easier to pick up right out the box.

Lead Management and Lead Scoring

Another very important feature that you should be looking for is lead management. You want a CRM that will allow you to sort high quality leads fast and easily. Another common feature to look for is lead scoring. Both of these tools will allow your sales team to identify which leads are worth spending time on, and concentrate their efforts there. They will also be able to see which leads might be warming up, and approach them accordingly.

After all, leads are crucial to growing your business and helping it to move forward, so your new CRM tool should be able to help you to earn them and review their process.

Find a CRM system that will help you to not only find new leads but also monitor their journey from new lead to paying client. Once they’re in the system as a client, the system will be able to help you track their customer journey, so that you can keep an eye on them and make sure that you offer them the service they expect. 

Sales Analytics

As well as improving the customer experience and tracking their journey, CRM systems are also ideal for helping you to adapt your sales technique, upsell, cross-sell and more. As such, when choosing a system, you want to pick a tool that offers a lot of analytics. Business intelligence tools will allow you to check for patterns, see results, and see how effective or ineffective your team is. You’ll also be able to see if leads are leaking out at a certain point in your sales funnel. 

Another thing you should be looking for is forecasting tools. These solutions will allow you to set benchmarks for your organization, and see if your efforts are pushing you towards your goals. These innovative solutions will also allow you to see where your future efforts should be concentrated, giving you the opportunity to improve your business practices and drive your company towards even greater success. If you find a CRM system that has all the sales analytics tools you need, then you can use it to its full advantage and ensure that you not only support your existing clients but also attract new ones. 

Conclusion

A CRM system can be an invaluable tool for any organization, and choosing the right one is essential. Make sure that you consider all of these options, and don’t go for a tool simply because it’s common and everyone else uses it. 

Make sure that you find the software development solution that suits your business. Never just sign up for the first product you look at; take the time to review all of the options on the market to find the one that will work best for your business. Consider everything from who is going to use the system to what exactly they’ll be doing with it, as well as how it can be adapted to meet your company’s future needs. 

This article should help you to find the perfect CRM tool for your business and drive it forward towards the success you’ve always desired.