What is a business without its customers? Keeping communication lines open with your customers can greatly improve customer satisfaction. This can result in returning customers and referrals.
While interacting with your customers may seem straightforward enough, being organized with their data is crucial. A dedicated system that supports your customer-related data is imperative if you want to stay organized and forward-moving.
Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, is the strategies, tools, techniques, and various technologies businesses use to develop, gain, and sustain customers. It is also closely linked to sales and marketing.
CRM software is a system that helps businesses quickly organize all their communications with leads and existing customers. This makes it easier to convert leads into actual customers and nurture relationships.
Having CRM software for your business replaces the multiple databases, spreadsheets, and apps you use to track client data. You get a unified and time-efficient system that organizes and manages your customer data in one place.
You may think your current setup is working just fine. Your team has a list of customers in a spreadsheet and your leads in an email marketing tool. For a while, that may work.
However, as your business grows, so will that list. Soon, it will become overwhelming, and you and your team will have a hard time keeping track of everything.
Having data stored in different platforms can create discrepancies across databases, especially if your files aren’t updated in real time. You may also lose leads or disappoint current customers.
While your business may be able to survive without a CRM system now, it would be best to integrate one sooner rather than later.
Adopting a CRM system doesn’t have to be expensive, either. Plenty of free systems, like HubSpot, provide powerful tools that can elevate your relationship with your customers.
HubSpot CRM is a cloud-based platform that provides users with tools to better support business growth. With the help of HubSpot CRM, businesses can now focus and strategize on providing quality marketing, sales, content management, and customer service.
HubSpot is relatively simple and easy to use. The tools available to you are presented on an intuitive interface, making the transition from your previous system less daunting.
The database allows you to create contracts, deals, log tasks, edit reports, and other customer-related tasks in one platform. Cross-team access is also quicker and more seamless. All the data in a shared location also makes it easy to manage all the information.
HubSpot CRM is 100% free to use. Free features include email tracking, email templates and scheduling, contract management, document sharing, Gmail and Outlook integration, and live chat.
These are solid and robust tools. They are perfect for upgrading your current marketing, sales, and customer service without draining your company’s budget.
You and your team no longer have to log interactions with customers and ensure they’re updated in other databases and spreadsheets.
Because everything is in one system, all the emails, calls, meetings, and interactions are automatically collected and aggregated. The team can easily keep track of every contact on your list, regardless of their buyer’s journey stage.
Understanding your customers better allows you to be more deliberate with your positioning. Your strategies will be more effective because they target the right audience.
A CRM is perfect if you have specific sales or marketing strategies that require lists of contacts who fit certain criteria.
The CRM makes it easier to sort through your list, filter customers, and contact those specific customers. You can segment your customers based on location, stage in their buyer’s journey, age, and any other relevant data you’ve collected from them prior.
The CRM's data is always searchable. The software also tracks a prospect’s activity and helps remind the team to follow up with certain prospects.
This makes it extremely helpful when you need other team members to jump in for someone unavailable.
Picture this: someone in sales calls in sick, and a lead reaches out to close a deal. Instead of waiting for that salesperson to return to finish the job, someone else can help.
This would be possible because they could access previous correspondence and other relevant data through the CRM. This made it easier to pick up where the previous person left off without inconveniencing the customer.
All internal and external communication can be managed using CRM software, improving employee engagement programs. Cross-team and cross-organization communication are more effective because everything is in this centralized system. This will also help you prioritize employee experience.
Your team members no longer have to switch between files or worry about databases that haven’t been updated.
Having an effective sales team means laying down the groundwork. Planning strategically and making informed decisions requires a deep understanding of the team’s performance and the foreseeable trends.
HubSpot CRM makes collecting all the necessary data for sales reports easier. It also automates sales performance forecasts for you.
Because your data is accessible and easy to analyze, you can strategize on a larger scale. Your sales team can quickly review and identify the best sales processes and scale them up as your business grows.
You don’t need to worry about outgrowing your CRM system, especially when you experience a boost in small business growth. HubSpot CRM grows and moves with you to improve your sales team’s performance.
As your company grows, you learn that engaging with your customers is more than just replying to their emails and messages. It’s following up on leads and providing after-sales support. You create reports, analyses, and forecasts. You create growth for your business through these effective systems and strategies.