Buying customer relationship management (CRM) software will only take you halfway to the finish line— a clear strategy will take the soft skills of your customer service teams to the winner’s pedestal.
In this article, we’ll get into why CRM strategy is just as important as any sales, marketing, and customer service efforts and how to make one that works for your teams using reliable CRM software.
What is a CRM strategy?
CRM is Customer Relationship Management. A CRM strategy is a company-wide plan for your business to grow revenues and profit, reduce costs and enhance customer relationships (putting them first). Many choose to do this with the help of CRM technology in addition to other marketing strategies and customer support models.
What can a CRM tool do for your business?
Research shows that while more businesses are implementing CRM systems, when it comes to achieving business growth the failure rate is startling. One expert estimates that the CRM failure rate may even be close to 90%.
CRM tools help businesses organize their collections of data into a simple user face so they can then recognize and communicate with customers in a scalable manner. This could include any number of important functions beyond storing contact information, like:
- Logging representative touchpoints with prospects via email, phone calls, in-person, and voicemail interactions
- Tracking deal stages
- Helping agent productivity
- Finding new customers to win their business
- Serving as a resource for representatives who need more materials to support their work
Today’s CRM tools can now be used for managing customer service relationships throughout the entire customer lifecycle, and spanning marketing, sales, customer service, and digital commerce interactions. Because of this, they can be the key to unlock a world of potential for businesses seeking to increase their profits.
7 top CRM strategies to boost your business in 2021
Now that you know what a CRM strategy is and why it’s important, this section will walk you through how you can create and run one for your organization.
Below are 7 CRM strategies to get the most out of your CRM tool and ensure CRM implementation is a success.
1. Run a complete audit
The first step is to do a complete audit of your business.
This includes reviewing external and internal processes, studying the market, analyzing the competition, and conducting a SWOT analysis — an analysis of your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
monday.com has an easy and intuitive template to build your own competitor analysis.
This step also involves checking whether you have all the resources required to implement a CRM system, such as available team members for testing the CRM, and a dedicated training budget.
The time you allot for this audit should also include time to create action items and a plan for carrying them out to improve your system. Our templates make it easy to not only record these items, but to also assign owners, track progress, and communicate on the fly.
2. Outline your sales process
Next, you can map your customer journey by identifying the different pipeline stages your prospects pass through, and clearly define who is responsible for what on your sales and marketing teams.
Here’s a sales pipeline template to help you visualize your current business process from the first customer interaction all the way to customer acquisition. The flexibility to customize these boards with countless columns allows you to make the board as detailed as you want. That way, you can filter and sort by the size of the deal, the timeframe it took to close it, and more.
This template enables you to zoom out and get a bird’s eye view of your existing sales process so you can understand exactly how a CRM application would help you optimize sales funnels.
3. Define your CRM goals
Once you’ve dived into your existing processes and data, it’s time to think about your goals and how you want a CRM system to help you achieve them.
Setting goals ahead of time is a crucial part of your CRM strategy as it keeps you focused on the features that actually affect your business and its bottom line.Define SMART goals for your CRM team before you even think about looking for new software. SMART is an acronym for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
A few examples of SMART goals might be:
- Achieving 80% customer satisfaction by May 1
- Increasing social media followers by 30% by October 31
- Improving email marketing click rates by 20% by year-end
You can use the sales process you mapped out in the previous strategy to help inform reasonable KPIs and goals.
4. Leverage data to improve productivity
With a CRM platform, you can consolidate customer data collected from different departments, such as marketing, sales, and customer service, and let your team access all data from a single dashboard.
Leveraging CRM data quickly will save your employees time and empower them to perform their best. In fact, research suggests that data-driven companies are far more productive and efficient than non-data-driven companies.
Making data available to all departments involved in the CRM process also ensures communication is streamlined and made transparent at all times. This way, the sales team for example never double handles data or waste time asking customers the same questions twice.
5. Deliver personalized customer experiences
A solid CRM strategy ensures that all your business processes, from marketing to sales to IT, work together in a systematic and organized way.
This helps you build a better picture of who your potential customer is and what they need.
And delivering personalized experiences is much easier when you have access to detailed customer and lead data at your fingertips.
Personalization improves the customer experience. And improved customer experience drives revenue and customer loyalty.
6. Reduce costs with automation
With a CRM, you can save a whole lot of time and money by automating repetitive, administrative tasks, such as feeding lead data into your pipeline.
For example, instead of manually typing in data, you can set up your lead capture forms to automatically sync with your pipeline.
Automating your sales processes will free up additional time for your sales reps. They can invest this time in nurturing leads and closing more deals, ultimately reducing your costs.
7. Track campaign performance
Finally, monitor your team’s performance to ensure the CRM solution is helping them hit their individual targets and meet the larger goals set out by your CRM strategy.
You can easily track performance with the help of reporting and analytics features that come built-in with most CRMs.
Use CRM dashboards to analyze what went well and what didn’t, identify opportunities for improvement, and experiment with new techniques.
This will help you consistently learn from your mistakes, improve customer experiences, and optimize your sales processes.
Build it and success will come
If you’re planning to implement a CRM system in your business, creating a CRM strategy to understand why you’re using it and how it aligns with your overall business strategy, sales goals, and company culture is critical.
Start today by trying out this sales process template. Use it to visualize your existing sales pipeline and get a better grasp of your company’s needs before shopping for a CRM that fits your requirements.
