What is CRM?
A Client Relationship Management (CRM) is ultimately centered around building upon your relationships with existing and potential customers. A CRM ultimately helps business to stay in tune with these opportunities to engage and build revenue.
Within a CRM you should maintain the goal of tracking all communication in an effort to stay organized and build your rapport with each individual opportunity. A CRM of course helps you to track and win new business but it's purpose is also to allow you to manage after the initial sale to continue to grow your relationships.
What information should be in my CRM?
A CRM should allow you to store your contact, company and opportunity information. Of course you'll want to know that John Smith is a Vice President at ABC Company along with John's phone number and email for future reach out. However beyond that, your CRM should propel you to boost productivity. How many calls and emails are you making in an effort to engage John? Perhaps you abide by the "15" rule of engaging a lead 15 times before putting them on the back burner. You'll likely want to make sure those engagements are happening to then learn what is efficient, what is over-kill and where you may be under-performing.
For your business to grow, you ultimately need to know where it's headed. Where does your revenue come from? Retainers? Placement fees? Elsewhere? Having reliable outcome driven data in addition to forecasting can unlock your business to ensure you have a sustainable plan for growth.
Ultimately, beyond a single opportunity, a CRM should allow a holistic pipeline view of any lead you're attempting to track down. Which contract needs to be sent out? Which lead has been under contacted? Your CRM should keep you goal oriented and focused on the path ahead.
What should my CRM do?
Your CRM should ultimately unlock your ability to gather and collect data. Tracking phone calls? Yes. How about email communication? Absolutely. Sourcing through social media? Yes, that too! Your CRM should be the complete picture while constantly allowing you the ability to enrich your data and seamlessly (and automatically) tracking communication.
What's Next?
Let's take off the gloves and take a deep dive into understanding how Crelate's CRM can help to unlock your business and how you may begin to use it.