Why hire your sales people, marketers and customer service reps if you aren’t going to give them the tools to do their job effectively? You don’t hire a new employee and make them sit on the floor or not provide a phone, computer or other office supplies. But why even go to those lengths if you aren’t going to give them ALL the tools they need to succeed. If you do not have a CRM (customer relationship management) system in place, you are doing your team a disservice by not giving them access and tools to do the job you hired them to do – build relationships and grow sales!
Here are my top 3 reasons why you need a CRM (there are countless more BTW):
- Your sales team, account managers and customer service reps do not have access to the data they need to have a quality conversation with prospects and customers. Imagine without a CRM – a customer speaks with or emails one person in your organization and no one else has access to this information or relationship. What if that person calls back a year later and their contact is on vacation or worse, no longer with your company. How do you know what was said or promised? Worse, the customer gets the impression you don’t remember them. Give your employees the ability to grow relationships and sales.
- How do you know what’s working and what’s not? How can you measure your marketing and content efforts? As a marketer, I always want to know what’s working best so I can double-down on that strategy.
- Perhaps the most compelling reason to invest: You are missing out on revenue potential. CRMs (when implemented correctly) can increase revenue in many cases over 40%. It’s the simplest way to make more out of your database of leads, prospects and customers. Marketers need to keep their brands top of mind and influence and educate their leads, prospects and customers into purchasing. CRMs with marketing automation make this easy.
In my experience, your website, blogs, trade shows, client meetings and social media accounts without a CRM is like a new car without an engine. Your car may look pretty – but it doesn’t get you too far. There are so many CRMs available today and many are very easy to implement and relatively inexpensive to other marketing costs. There really is no excuse to not have one!
My favorite CRMs: simple and cost-effective – Hatchbuck), most powerful, but a little more difficult to implement: Salesforce.
Are you currently running your business without a CRM? If you have a CRM, which one are you using and what results have you had?
Have questions about choosing or implementing a CRM? Give me a shout trbhuskerfan@gmail.com
Business consultant, brand and marketing expert 