How to use a CRM

CRM stands for customer relationship management, and that is exactly where its value lies: managing and supporting external customer relationships while simultaneously integrating internal staff. CRM is much more than simple software applications or business processes; it is a pathway toward a business culture that is more conducive to success and harmony.

One of the greatest values of a quality CRM is its ability to bring teams together and allow greater access of data throughout a company. Through a single source of truth, all members of your organization can provide mutually beneficial information. With mutual access, collaboration and quality communication proliferate throughout the organization, unifying staff in a singular pursuit for a greater customer experience.

CRMs generate significant value through digital transformation, specifically through the ability to create greater visibility into customers and their interactions with your company. The greatest example of this ability is through a concept known as Customer 360, referring to the 360-degree view a CRM can grant through the consolidation of data.

When deciding on the right CRM for your organization, you must first make sure you fully understand how your technology currently operates throughout departments. It’s important to involve key stakeholders from all sections of your business to understand where the biggest opportunities for growth lie. The process of exploring CRM options will be productive in itself, as it will allow you to rethink what you want technology to accomplish.

Investing in the right CRM requires buy-in from those that will be working with the system, and there are several key strengths of a CRM system that will help to illustrate its true value. Focus on the increasing visibility of data, throughout teams and departments, the superior analytical tools used to help support missions and goals and the customizability and personalization of communications with the different demographics you serve.

Industry-specific CRMs are targeted at a smaller market. Which means that the maker of a manufacturing-specific CRM application is only marketing their products to manufacturers and competing not only against other industry-specific CRMs but mainstream products that also position themselves as solutions. A vertical CRM application only has a small slice of a limited number of customers. That also means a significantly smaller community of companies, developers, partners and others that provide support for a product.

Smaller CRM providers will likely have less money in the bank than their mainstream competitors. Investing your time and your data with these companies is riskier. Relying on them to have the funding necessary for keeping their product up to date and integrated with other key applications is also more of a gamble. Capital is important for a software company because you’re not just buying a product, you’re forging a long-term partnership.

CRMs and virtual selling tools aren’t capable of helping truly develop, build or manage relationships because they look through the wrong lens altogether. Their purview is focused from the lens of the selling team or organization. Selling tools capture the sales’ team interaction points while completely neglecting the other 90% needed to develop and build relationships. If you shift the focus to the buyer, you will see something quite different.

Ninety percent of the decision process of buyers is made when the seller is not in the room. Therefore, you are dependent on your internal champion being able to articulate the key value points to your solution. The need from buyers is far deeper than just slick brochures or engaging PowerPoints. These are just the data points you desire for your CRM, but they are one-directional and do not propel a deal with consensus.

The next technology evolution should be focused on the buyer — on helping your buyers to reach decisions in their preferred way. It means powering your CRM with buyer-driven data points produced through your buyer-enablement software, where the focus is not on the management but the leadership of the complex B2B relationship. This also positions your sales team for success by providing them what they need to meet the buyer’s journey.

When choosing your new CRM, there are many factors you should consider — a major one being scalability. Despite being thrown around like a buzzword, scalability is quite important. For a business, it means that an application can change quickly according to the business’ requirements. Whether you need the core features or the full set, and whether you have 10 or 500 users, the CRM can adapt within moments and with a few clicks.

TMP’s role

Here at TMP, we fill in tech gaps using customer relationship management tools specific to each client, utilizing knowledgebase software. We focus on technology, analytics, process and people and our customer-centric approach guarantees success and happy clients.