The #1 Benefit of Using a CRM in Your Business

As a CRM and marketing enabler, we're often asked "What is the #1 benefit of using a CRM?"

It's not an easy answer because, truthfully, experienced marketers know that it doesn't really matter how you view it, you'll constantly find a new benefit of using a CRM.

Marketing Old School has Some Challenges

Let's go back to the beginning shall we?

Marketers would use a 3-by-5-inch card and a Rolodex.

Everything you would ever want to know about a customer was written out and stored for future reference. The card system required a great indexing and for everyone to learn how to use it so that they could find anything.

When personal computers appeared in the workplace, Excel spreadsheets were designed to store customer information electronically. Office technology advanced and simple database software arrived on the market offering capabilities that made these previous manual techniques appear clumsy. The downside of Excel was the age old problems of sharing and how to make sure everyone was using the latest version.

CRM Software Sits at an Entirely New Level

Your customer database (probably Access) has done a good job of storing information about your clients and letting you retrieve the information easily.

When you convert to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, you'll take your database to an entirely new level able to give you even more inter-connected relationships which is fantastic for segmenting and personalisation.

CRM Capabilities

In general, CRM software offers a range of capabilities designed to manage customer data and interaction, and to automate sales, marketing, and customer support. This short list of features provides an overview of some of the things CRM systems can do for you:

• Contact Management - tracking interactions with contacts
• Sales Force Automation - automate follow-up plans, order processing, and even inventory management and order tracking
• Sales Forecasting - analyse sales forecasts
• Email Marketing - integrate email marketing with sales pipeline automation
• Online Collaboration between Work Groups - sales, marketing, customer service, and other departments can all access and update the CRM's centralised information storage

In some cases, CRM systems are expanding to include basic Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) features. At a minimum, many company executives are already looking into integrating their CRM with their ERP implementation.

The Benefit of Using a CRM in Your Business

Converting prospects into customers moves into high gear when you gain an understanding of the prospect's needs and make a consistent effort to remain top-of-mind.

You can position your business to offer timely follow-up when your salespeople assign prospects to a predefined contact plan. The CRM system will automate tasks, send emails in the form of measurable campaigns, and notify sales people when they should make a phone call or schedule a meeting.

It's this consistency of "on message" communication enabled by CRM software that turns more prospects into customers than ever before.

And, with predefined plans and processes, you can reduce the negative impact of having to train and re-train your sales force.

Targeted Marketing Opportunities

Marketing is most effective when it targets a specific . A CRM system will let you easily separate prospects and customers and match your marketing message to speak directly to different groups.

Optimised Customer Service

CRM software allows your sales team to be more personally attentive to your clients from all that stored reference information.

When your order processing is incorporated into CRM, employees in sales, service, and accounting have instant access to a customer's order status, and any number of employees can answer questions or address order problems.

Increased Customer Retention

Your ability to provide a more personalised service to your existing customers typically improves their experience and increases loyalty.

Having an audit trail of who and what is being said to customers gives you a shorter recovery period should things go wrong. Getting your customer back on track and happy with you faster. A real wow factor at a time of customer self-service and over used off-shore call-centres with limited authority to assist. A surprisingly significant benefit of using a CRM.

Enhanced (Internal) Teamwork

A CRM improves communications among your teams. When employees in different departments have fast access to the same information about a client, they'll feel more involved and actively set out to improve a customer's experience.

And, when employees across different departments are more connected, it will only help to improve their effectiveness as a team.

Historically, CRM systems were the realm of large corporations.

Today however, the industry is seeing the fastest growth amongst small and medium-sized businesses.

CRM software has enabled large companies to reduce the cost of personalised service to clients.

Now, smaller companies can capitalise on the even closer relationships they forge with their customers by using CRM to make that connection even stronger.

That has to be a big win and, in our view, the #1 benefit of using a CRM today.