I’ve been helping small businesses with CRM for about 15 years now, and one of the questions I get asked a lot is this: How will CRM benefit me and my organization?

The way we approach things here at Azamba, there’s two main benefits of CRM:

 

 

CRM Benefit #1: Increased Visibility

The first benefit of CRM is increased visibility, which almost every small business wants. In today’s day and age, things are moving too quickly. You can’t afford to fall behind, you can’t afford to drop the ball, and all the while, the left hand has to know what the right hand is doing.

CRM puts all that key information about your prospects, your customers, your sales, and your sales people in one place, so whoever needs that information can get to it when they need it. That’s very valuable, and it helps everyone in your organization.

CRM helps management see what’s going on with the pipeline, and where things are maybe falling through the cracks.

But CRM also increases visibility for the individual salesperson. Instead of juggling different sales opportunities through Outlook or spreadsheets or accounting software, your salespeople can go into CRM. From there, they can pull up their accounts and they can see what’s going on.

 

CRM Benefit #2: Invisible Personal Assistant

The second main benefit of CRM is that, when it’s set up correctly, CRM can act like an invisible personal assistant for everybody in your company.

What do I mean by that? Well, with our CRM, if I sent out a quote today my system will remind me in two business days to follow up on that quote.

You can even program sophisticated rules to create and control automated reminders and activities.

So if it’s a deal size that’s under a certain threshold, maybe the system itself emails that prospect and asks “Did you get that quote? Do you need more information? Would you like me to follow up with you?” So, the system can email on your behalf.

If it’s a larger deal or it’s a critical account, it puts a reminder on my calendar to follow up.

That’s just one example. Another example I like to give is if I have 100 accounts that I manage, the system can be programed to remind me if I haven’t reached out and talked to one of those accounts in the last 90 days.

So, I’m always staying on top of my accounts. Nothing’s falling through the cracks, I can use my time more effectively, and the system actually does some of my work for me. It creates a really valuable experience with the CRM.

Plus, when you use your CRM this way, most sales people really appreciate the system. So instead of the CRM being a time sink into which they’re just entering data, the CRM actually becomes their best friend because it’s helping them sell more.

 

There are many benefits of CRM, but hopefully this gives you some understanding of how CRM can help you and your team. If you have more questions, please give me a call. I’d love to talk about it with you. Thanks!

That's all for this episode, but you can continue your CRM education with our CRM 101 series on Channel Q!

For specific questions, or to find out whether CRM is a good fit for your business, contact us!

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