The buying habits of consumers have undergone a tremendous change in recent times. Buyers are no longer influenced by big brand names without expecting a better customer experience. They are willing to invest in companies, big or small, that solve their business challenges and offer exceptional customer experience in return. In fact, according to a recent study, 86% of buyers will pay more for better customer experience. For sellers, this means understanding individual customers and creating a personalized experience to improve the consumer-to-brand relationship. Be prepared to go the extra mile to keep your customers happy and set yourself apart from the competition.

But how do you get there? By implementing a CRM software. Actually, by implementing the best CRM out there.

 

What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM for short, is a single window solution that manages customer interactions with your business. It keeps track of customer touchpoints from all channels of communication like website, email, phone, chat, etc., allowing sales reps to improve customer experience by simply looking at all touchpoints in one place. CRM also lets you handle a series of business requirements—manage customer information, send emails, make calls, track opportunities, create sales reports, and measure team performance metrics—in one unified platform.

Benefits of choosing the best CRM

Here’s how the best CRM is different from a good or gets-the-job-done CRM:

Easy to set up and use

If your CRM is complex, your team will refuse to use it, and the CRM will remain on the sidelines, gathering dust. The best CRM is one that’s intuitive and doesn’t need an external consultant to set up and implement. It must be simple enough for your team to learn and use on their own, with only the help of sufficient support articles and resources.

 

Customizability

Regardless of industry and company size, businesses should be able to personalize the CRM according to their daily workflow. For businesses operating in the real estate industry, customized web forms can help convert website visitors into leads. With the best CRM, leads are automatically captured from the web form into the CRM. In another case, SaaS businesses may see a high volume of inbound leads. Here, the sales team must learn how to prioritize leads effectively. This is made easier with a CRM that allows you to segment leads into hot, warm, and cold by customizing lead scoring rules for your business. This helps sales reps strategize leads to direct their efforts.

 

Eliminate multiple tools

Customer interactions may take place through various mediums and channels, which raises the need for conversations to be stored within a single tool.

Meet Marc, a salesperson. The first touchpoint in Marc’s sales process is a cold email, which he sends out using Gmail. He uses an email tracking tool to know when the customer has opened the email. For bulk email campaigns, he uses a different tool. He calls customers from his desk phone and makes notes of the call summary on a virtual document.

As a salesperson, Marc’s time is far too precious to be spent on managing different tools. With CRM software, Marc can cut down on time spent switching between various tools and manually entering data. The best CRM comes with built-in tools like email and phone and analytics like lead scoring. This eliminates the need to integrate systems or pay for additional tools. The leads are ranked and prioritized based on customized rules, making it easier and faster for Marc to sort through them. This would give Marc more time to focus on selling and close more deals.

 

Automation

Salespeople spend less than 36% of their time selling, which is surprisingly low. Digging deeper into the statistics reveals that they spend 14.8% of their time on administrative tasks. In some cases, the salesperson’s time can be measured in clicks. The number of clicks taken to convert a lead to a customer within a software, or make a call to the lead would explain how clicks are a time-consuming part of the salespersons’ life.

The challenge is to reduce the time spent clicking and utilize that time for selling. Automating repetitive tasks can ensure that their time is well spent. In the case of the sales process, the daily tasks include email campaigns, follow-up calls, and lead segmentation. The sales team may be doing these tasks day in, day out for thousands of leads, which makes the tasks monotonous and time-consuming.

For instance, with workflows, you can bulk email campaigns when predefined conditions are met. For a new lead that signs up through a web form, a welcome email can be sent out. This can be automated by setting rules that trigger the email when the “Lead Status” is “New” and “Source” is “Web form.” This saves time for the salesperson who otherwise would have to manually send an email to each lead after validating the source and status.

Some CRMs also offer pre-designed workflow templates that can help sales reps automate routine tasks without having to set up the workflow themselves.