What is CRM?

What is CRM?

CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management . It's a strategy for managing all of your company's relationships and interactions with prospects and customers.

But CRM is not limited to customer relationships: Today, it also includes the management of relationships with all important stakeholders in the company , such as employees, suppliers and channel partners.

CRM is also typically used in conjunction with other words, such as CRM software or CRM strategy . Most of the time, people use the terms CRM system, CRM solutions , or CRM tool to refer to a contact management system in general. Such software assists you in collecting and storing contact details and organizing follow-up with clients . Since the data is stored in one central location, you immediately improve productivity and collaboration within your team.

Great service not only helps you get customers, it also helps you keep them longer. That's why a CRM system like (Salesforce Sales Cloud) Focus is an indispensable help for clever companies. From the first contact until long after the sale: all information about (potential) customers is stored in one place.

CRM: strategy or software?

Both. CRM is indeed a strategy, but a strategy that needs to be supported by technology to really take off. You can plan as precisely as you want to maintain your customer data error-free or design the lead follow-up. Without the support of the right software, you can throw your strategy right down the drain. It won't be long before the strategy requires so much manual work that it becomes difficult to maintain as the number of customers grows.

Conversely, CRM can put you on the road to success, but on its own it doesn't do much. Just like a good pair of soccer shoes doesn't automatically make you a world-class striker, a CRM program is only useful if you have the right strategy and implementation in place.

In practice, a solid CRM strategy and software go hand in hand.

1. Understand what your current contact management challenges are

Think about what is giving you a headache right now. Do you recognize any of the following statements?

• Contact information is not readily available . Contact information is often scattered across multiple locations, resulting in a lot of wasted time and different dates.
• Contact information is added and managed by hand , which is error-prone and takes up a lot of your time.
• You don't have a good overview of whether your sales activities are worthwhile at all : How many prospects are attracted? How many of them accept your offer? Who is responsible for each deal?
• When someone emails or calls your company, there is no overview of the previous communication , which often leads to confusing situations and frustrated contacts.
• Not everyone has access to the customer information they need when they need it . When colleagues get sick, it is not easy to find out which prospects they were working on and what was already discussed. This makes collaboration a complex undertaking.

2. Set clear goals for what you want to achieve with CRM

Determine exactly what you want to achieve by implementing a CRM strategy and software. CRM is designed to help your business achieve its goals of managing and improving customer interactions. So you need to identify what those goals are. Then break them down into smaller, more manageable goals so they're easier to achieve, and think about your tactics. Note: This plan should be easy to implement later.

To give you an idea of how to set clear goals and come up with a clear plan of action, here is a simple example:

So one of your business goals could be to keep customers better. You could then break down this overarching goal into the following sub-goals:

• Provide great customer support : Improve your customer service by minimizing the time it takes to respond to customer inquiries or to fully resolve them.
• Communicate consistently and manage expectations : Send out newsletters to inform about your services, discounts or events.
• Take customer loyalty measures : target loyal customers with exclusive offers.

3. Identify how you will measure success

With the right metrics, you can assess whether your efforts are paying off. Most companies typically define success in three areas: With their CRM strategy, they can save costs, increase earnings or improve customer benefits.

• Save costs : Think of metrics like a shortened sales cycle, faster sending and management of invoices, less time spent adding or updating contact information...
• Increase revenue : more sales, more customers, up- and cross-selling opportunities, increasing the number of products sold per customer...
• Improving customer benefits : a higher customer retention rate, repeat purchase rate vs. one-time purchases, customer lifetime value...

4. Get your employees on track with your CRM strategy

Everyone in your company needs to understand the strategy you're going to use to approach your customers. A few tips to get your employees on board:

• Educate them on the importance of strategy : share your current challenges and the goals you hope to achieve.
• Familiarize them with the new strategy : Inform them about planned initiatives and forthcoming changes, and how it will benefit everyone involved.
• Involve them in the launch : let them participate in your new initiatives.

Optimize your customer management and increase your success with the powerful CRM solution from CRM Software. Take advantage now and get started! Learn more about our extensive features and request a free demo . Get advice from our world-class support team and revolutionize your business with CRM Software. Get started now and become a CRM specialist!

What is CRM software used for?

Originally , CRM solutions were only intended for the following:

Essentially, such a CRM solution gave companies a clear overview of customer information in a single place – information such as name or address, but also more detailed data such as information about previous purchases, location, company size, communication history and much more.

Over time, the functionalities have been expanded, making them even more useful. The data in the CRM increasingly became the launch pad for smooth business processes . Here is an overview of some typical features of CRM:

Sales and distribution management

CRM programs allow salespeople to capture and analyze lead information in one place. A CRM provides a clear view of each step in the sales process : what leads you have and who is responsible for them, which sales opportunities should be prioritized... A CRM also provides information on sales performance and creates maximum transparency by clarifying who is doing what acts on every lead.

analyses

CRM can give you precise insights into who your customers are, what their needs are, what your best sources of leads are and how much they buy from you... Depending on what other features your CRM has to offer (such as time tracking, project management ), you can also use it to assess your team's performance, recognize your turnover, read your time spent and much more. This accurate level enables you to make informed, strategic decisions to improve and advance your business based on up-to-date information.

customer care

A CRM can also include a support function that links all customer interactions (e.g. complaints or questions communicated via email or telephone) to the respective customer profile. This gives you an overview of the entire communication history and all interactions.

project management

A CRM program that links sales management and project management saves time in sales administration and can move directly from an accepted project proposal to project management. In addition, you can use it to easily keep your customers up to date on the project status and to track the life cycle of your project. For projects that are budgeted based on actual effort (“time and material”) , time tracking capabilities can be an added plus.

Invoicing and workflow

With numerous systems, companies can optimize their daily processes by automating recurring tasks such as creating and sending offers or invoices.

Benefits of a CRM

1. Share information easily

The more valuable and relevant the information you get from your customers, the better you will be able to respond to their needs and provide them with a pleasant experience. A CRM allows you to neatly store all of a customer's interactions with your company (meeting reports, phone calls, emails...) - in one place. In addition to the relevant information that you need to offer your customers excellent service (such as address information, company size, industry...), you can also collect additional information. For example events they attended or offers they downloaded from your website: all relevant details to share with your employees.

2. Improve customer service

As soon as a customer contacts you, your team pulls out the relevant information - such as previous interactions, purchases, preferences or whatever else might be useful. There is a company-wide shared inbox to store and respond to customer questions and feedback. This allows you to quickly access the communication history and give your customers the right answer quickly .

3. Automate tedious everyday tasks

Just think about how many small tasks go through before a deal is sealed. Assigning tasks and calls to your employees often creates confusing situations where not everyone is aware of their respective responsibilities. With a CRM there are practical overviews for this. Or when creating and sending invoices! With a CRM program, you can use appropriate templates that your prospects can view, comment on, accept, and sign online. CRM solutions allow for tons of automation so your team can focus on closing deals and building customer relationships .

4. Improve internal communication and collaboration

CRM solutions not only facilitate communication, but also have a positive effect on internal processes. By sharing customer information, other team members can easily take on a colleague's responsibilities (for example, when they're on vacation or leaving the company) by working with the same information from a single centralized application.

5. More meaningful analyzes and reports

Because all data is stored in one place, data analysis becomes more efficient. Dashboards provide quick access to information such as sales targets and performance reports . With better data, you can more often base your decisions on concrete data and thus move your business further forward.

Useful CRM integrations

CRM can do wonderful things for your business, but you might still be scratching the surface: Today, CRM solutions can integrate with hundreds, maybe thousands, of useful business apps.

There is no one CRM that has all the features you need for your business, and you may want to continue using some tools that have proven themselves for your needs.

A CRM integration is a link between two software applications, thanks to which information can be used by and exchanged between both .

Integrating your CRM with other programs has immediate benefits :

1. Accounting

CRM and accounting tools can exchange critical financial data with each other . With an accounting integration you can automatically add A/R invoices to your accounting tool or automatically update the payment status of invoices in accounting tools like Exact Online, Yuki, Octopus or Twinfield.

2. Calendar

When you link a calendar integration with your CRM, you can sync all the calendars you currently use with each other and add all meetings, events, tasks and calls to the calendar of your CRM tool as well . Most CRM tools connect to popular workplace integrations like Office 365 Calendar, Google, Apple iCloud and Microsoft Exchange.

3. Chat

Do you use chat tools like Slack to communicate with colleagues who are on the go? Let's say you just closed a deal and are now updating the information in your CRM tool. Slack can instantly send a chat message to let your team know and ensure all information is synced to Slack .

Examples of CRM

A wide variety of companies worldwide use CRM software to improve customer relationships, sales processes and their internal communication - and for even more. Here you can find out how these companies managed to develop a successful CRM strategy and effectively introduce CRM software.

CRM as a marketing tool

Optimize your marketing with CRM to strengthen customer loyalty. Personalized CRM marketing allows you to respond individually to your customers and increase their loyalty.

In an age of information overload and online communication, it is important to stand out from the crowd. With CRM marketing, you can get to know your customers better and engage in targeted communications that address their personal goals.

Don't let your advertising messages pass your customers by. Through a personalized approach and tailor-made service, you can build long-term customer loyalty and increase the effectiveness of your marketing.

CRM as technology

When we talk about CRM as a technology, we are referring to the software used for customer relationship management (CRM). Nowadays, many companies rely on cloud-based CRM systems, also known as CRM cloud systems.

Discover the advantages of a cloud-based CRM system for your company. With cloud-based CRM software, you can access your customer information anytime, anywhere. Increase the efficiency of your customer relationship management and optimize your work processes.

Learn more about the power of a CRM cloud system and how it can help you make your business more successful.

CRM cloud system

With a CRM cloud system, you can store all your information online and the whole team can easily access it. From customer information to quotes, invoices, calendars and time tracking to communication history - all this data is stored online. So you have all the information you need in one central place.

Learn how a CRM cloud system can help you efficiently manage your data and facilitate information sharing within the team. With central storage and easy access to all relevant information, you can optimize your work processes and increase productivity.

Discover the advantages of a CRM cloud system and take advantage of the opportunities to manage your company data securely and conveniently online.

The advantages of an online CRM system

Always work online with a CRM cloud system and have everything you need right at your fingertips. With your laptop and an internet connection, you can easily access the CRM system via the website. From there you have access to all important company data.

Discover the numerous advantages of a CRM cloud system:

Learn more about the benefits of a CRM cloud system and revolutionize your customer relationship management.

Easy access with a mobile CRM app

Working mobile without a laptop? No problem! Many online CRM systems now also offer mobile apps. Mobile apps are becoming increasingly important, and it's hardly surprising. According to Statista, mobile devices account for more than 60% of global internet traffic. With this growth in mobile internet traffic, it is only logical that CRM follows this trend.

With a CRM app you can manage all your customer management from the comfort of your mobile phone. Not only is it easy, but it delivers better results! In fact, research by Inoppl Technologies shows that companies using mobile CRM achieve 65% of their sales goals compared to just 22% without mobile CRM.

Learn more about the advantages of a CRM app and take advantage of the flexibility and efficiency that mobile CRM offers you. Optimize your customer data management and increase your sales success with mobile CRM solutions.