If you are here, you either recently started using a CRM or you are planning to start using one. And if that’s the case, you have landed in the right place!
We have some best CRM practices that’ll help you.
91% of companies with 10 or more employees use a CRM.
Why?
Simply because they want their business to grow SYSTEMATICALLY!
And for that much-needed growth, you need to track the buyer’s journey for every prospect that your team interacts with, streamline communication, and enhance the customer experience. So that they can slip through without any effort!
Every business wants to grow, but setting up a CRM and systems can be daunting at first!
If you don’t start right your initiative of systemizing and automating things can turn into a cute toy that eventually no one will use!
It’s normal to be confused and clueless when you are still trying to figure out how to get your entire team to properly work on the CRM and get the required results!
Trying out a CRM is only the first step in the right direction! And it’s just a little bit of help and guidance you can set up correct and optimized workflows that will help you convert most prospective leads into lifelong customers and retain your existing customers.
Here are seven CRM best practices to help get it right:
#1 Have a workflow for your team to always work at their full potential.
Setting up a workflow to optimizing for this does not mean that they should not take a few extra minutes in their lunch break or not make a short call to check up on their family or sit in front of the system 24/7!
This type of management is really shortsighted.
If you try to optimize for every minute they will hate their job. The best performers are the ones who actually love their job, and want to do it.
Instead, you have to set up workflows to help reduce their work and automate robotic stuff so that they can focus on coming up with better ideas to convince each and every prospect.
Three things you can do in your capacity are:
- Autodialer – So that no time is wasted in the mindless work of typing numbers
- Calling list-based campaign – So they don’t have to think or calculate who to call next.
- Follow-up and task management – So that energy is spent on convincing rather than remembering 100s of follow-ups and tasks and keeping track of all that in a bunch of sticky notes.
#2 Setup proper coordination between departments
The sales team closes a big account, and one user from that company comes for support and the support team member fucks up because he doesn’t know that it’s a huge account at stake!
If your business has to be successful then everybody must have a common goal. In business, that goal is to create and deliver the perfect experience for all your customers every step of the way right from the moment become a lead to taking special care of the people they refer.
This means when a customer calls to get support he cannot be kicked around from department to department like a football, instead anyone who picks up the call must be equipped with all the information and tools needed to solve the customer’s problem.
For this to happen teams across different departments need to understand this goal and work together in perfect coordination with each other to achieve this. Otherwise, the business can be in a permanent state of haywire mess, losing deal after deal and having no idea who to blame or what to fix.
Once you understand the importance of coordination between teams across departments, here are some ways you can use CRM capabilities to create and deliver the best end-user experience.
- User journey tracking
If the sales team knows exactly what marketing material a prospect has seen they can better understand his expectations and they can close better. - Sales interaction tracking & recording
The biggest mess-up happens when multiple salespeople promise different things and the delivery team is left clueless. The best solution to this problem is to use CRM to track each and every interaction with the sales team and make sure that all the information is available on a single dashboard. - Support ticketing
You have multiple customers, and if you provide support based on memory then you are going to forget some queries. To you, they are just ‘some’ of the many queries. But for the customers, they are their only priority. And when you forget their issue, they get pissed and go talk to your future customers about your bad service. This is why depending on memory is a terrible way to provide support! It’s super important to make sure that each and every customer’s problem gets solved. Using support tickets and closing them only when the customer confirms that his quarry has been resolved is the best way to make sure of this. And most CRM systems these days come with support ticket systems or integrations that you can easily implement to deliver top-notch after-sales support to each and every customer. - Reengaging customers to ask for referrals
Can you find a list of your most loyal customers and send a message on WhatsApp asking for one or two contacts/referrals?
No?
Then you need to set that up in your CRM! Because referrals are the most profitable form of lead generation.
#3 Differentiate between existing customers and potential customers and have separate teams and workflows for each
Your new customers bring revenue and taking care of existing customers gives you the chance to generate more revenue without working to get new clients/customers.
While CRM helps you to do both things, it’s important to understand that these 2 are separate and hence create 2 separate workflows for them
Because there is no point chasing new customers and building new relationships when your existing customers are abusing you on Twitter and leaving shitty reviews.
CRM essentially has 2 main purposes:
- Help you increase your clientele by developing a connection with your potential clients (i.e. your prospects)
- Providing contentment and product satisfaction to your existing customers.
These are the basic 2 groups that you have the focus on which will eventually help your company grow. And things will get messed up if you don’t understand the differences between the two and set up the correct CRM workflows accordingly
#4 Have workflows for upsell/renewal offers & getting referrals
There are 2 ways for any business to make money
- Get more customers
- Sell more to the existing customers
This is the part that most businesses neglect
Everyone knows that client acquisition and client retention are two different things. Most people who want to grow fast focus only on the first!
But, seedhe shabdon mein –
Retention ka matlab h apne existing customers ko sambhal kar rakhna
For new customers, you have to build trust from scratch but the existing customer is already being you and he already trusts you. So it is much easier to get him to pay more by buying more of your services. (Upselling) and even getting him to bring more people that he knows so that they can start paying you and trusting you (referrals).
Many companies focus the majority of their time and resources on acquisition. Efforts to improve retention are often put on the back burner, or totally neglected. In reality, though, strategic initiative for retention offers a much higher ROI and hence it’s much more cost-effective than its counterpart.
While referring your customers use their own trust to build trust of new contacts are you! This means having a referral strategy is like outsourcing your sales teams work to your customers.
So if you want your team and your business to succeed using the CRM then you can not exclude upsells and referrals from your core strategy at the time of setting up your CRM!
#5 Systematically collect feedback and use that to find growth opportunities
CRM stands for customer relationship management! And koi bhi relationship one-sided nahi ho sakti.
Hence getting the customers’ feedback is the most important part of it.
You only build a relationship when you know the customer’s pain points and are willing to work on them. This is why you need to set up a workflow in your CRM using which your team tracks all the feedback and actively helps you in achieving your customers’ wishes.
This again is a very good way of client retention.
Getting customer feedback helps you in 2 major ways
- To find out and work on the areas where your product is lagging
- Build a client business relationship with your customers
Sure you can ignore this advice and build a one-sided relationship with your customers but just like any other one-sided relationship do not expect them to reciprocate when you go to them in looking for a testimonial or a referral. Or you can just follow this advice and talk to your customers, build a relationship, and just be there for them so that when you need them they will be there for you as well!
#6 Never miss follow-ups
The biggest mistake that most new business owners name is – being careless about follow-ups!
Their logic – mujhe har follow-up ke lie pareshaan hone ki zaroorat nahi, jisko sach mein zaroorat hoti h, wo khud 4 baar aata h.
Baat mein dum to hai.
But if you are like most business owners then you are not the only person in the country providing the service.
Usko zaroorat to h, bus customer ek h aur businesses kai saare, aur wo aapko 4 baar kyun call karega jab 4 log same service provide karne ke lie usko baar baar call rahe hain?
To aisi situation mein!
Follow ups miss krna means apne company ki growth ke saath risk lena.
Plus you are in business so there is nothing wrong and running after new prospects!
Once the trust is built, it creates a relationship and the customer naturally prefers you over all the other people providing similar or the same service but until then you will have to run after him!
And these days with the right CRMs it is super easy to do this, you don’t have to maintain huge data sheets or remember in the follow-ups, just add reminders to the CRM and forget the CRM itself will remind you! And if you are setting up a new CRM and this is the easiest for the absolute key element!
#7 Your team works with a long-term approach rather than daily/weekly goals:
Short-term goals keep your employees productive but your company’s growth cannot rely on getting people to make 10 or 20 extra calls on any specific day. Because ultimately it’s the annual targets and goals that create progress and overall growth!
No company grew fast because all the salespeople did exceptionally well on one particular day. This is why if you are serious about growth you need to create a system for your team to be productive day after day in the long term.
As this article stated in the very beginning, you need a CRM because you want to have a steep increase in your business growth. But once you achieve it, you also have to sustain those growth numbers.
Hence your CRM systems and workflows should be set up not just for short-term productivity but also to help your team members achieve their long-term goals.
One tangible way to achieve this using CRM is by tracking long-term metrics. Things like
- Call durations and quality score
- Lead return rates
- Overall closure rates
Don’t fall into the trap of choosing something glittery!
A CRM jo bas ShowBaazi aur dekhne ke liye to acha h par targets meet karne mein koi help nahi karta!
If you are going to pay for CRM software, make sure it serves your purpose instead of getting features that look good but don’t really add much value to your business!
Also Read: CRM Sales Process Used by The 7 Best Sales Teams in India
Conclusion
Implementing a CRM is absolutely useless! There’s a reason why most growing businesses fail at implementing and benefiting from CRM Software! And once they fail they avoid using a CRM until they grow too big, start leaking revenue and leads from everywhere and then they absolutely have to implement a CRM! There is no doubt or denying that implementing and succeeding with a CRM can be difficult and complicated. But you have to start right! Or you can fall into the same trap of ‘trying’ a CRM and failing at it. And then abandoning the idea of using a CRM until you fall into another crisis years later!
It doesn’t have to be this difficult you just have to get into the right mindset and understand that implementing a CRM is not about one particular feature. Instead, it is like setting up a system for your business. This means doing things like choosing a vendor who is invested in your growth. Who is willing to understand your business and educate you to get the best results?