Your CRM is Holding You Back
Customer Relationship Management or CRM is less about software and more about processes. This distinction may not be apparent to most small businesses and solopreneurs, especially in this age of technology, but it is an important one. If you have customers and you do certain things like call, email or visit to build relationships with them, that is CRM.
However, your CRM strategy can be underpinned by CRM software to make it more effective and easier to scale. If your CRM strategy is effective, then you should be seeing an increase in customer retention, referrals, and sales. If your strategy is not working, you will find it very hard to move any of these needles. To help you figure out how to improve your CRM, here are three ways your current CRM may be holding you back.
Lack of Automation
Automation is the process of outsourcing the repetitive tasks you do during CRM to a third-party, which in most cases is a software platform. If your current CRM requires you to be fully invested in every step of the process, this could be preventing you from maximizing your efforts. Think of it this way, if you had to send every email via regular mail, can you imagine how much time that would take? Considering you send a couple of emails a day, that would mean multiple trips to the mailbox throughout the day.
A poorly automated CRM is the same. It is a time sink and takes more effort while not offering any increased productivity. To fix this, start with mapping out your CRM. Then figure out what steps in your CRM you can automate. Easily-automated tasks include sending a welcome email to new subscribers, sending automated responses to Facebook Messenger inquiries, sending follow-up emails to prospects, etc.
No Team Buy-in
If you are a solopreneur, this may not be an issue for you. However, if you have even a team of one, you will quickly realize that how keyed-in they are to your CRM will determine how successful you are at it.
What does lack of buy-in look like?
Team members have data on new prospects, but this data has not been added to the CRM software you use.
Team members bypass the CRM systems in place when performing follow-ups.
Team members fail to record CRM data points after interacting with prospects and customers.
Team members do not understand how the CRM system works.
To fix this, invest in continuous training and capacity building of team-members on how to perform CRM. This solution could include training on relevant technologies, the benefits of complying with the systems in place, and the general focus the team needs to have on CRM as a business-building activity.
Poor-quality Data
Poor-quality data means poor decision making. If your current CRM is generating poor-quality data, it is sabotaging your efforts at closing more sales. Poor data can result from lack of compliance by team members, errors in CRM process automation, lack of an integrated approach to data collection, incomplete data collection, among others. Fine-tuning your CRM to generate high-quality data can have a dramatic impact on your decision-making process.
For instance, if you knew a prospect had switched from looking for a townhouse to a condo, you would adjust your sales and marketing material accordingly. Also, if a prospect sent an inquiry and it got lost in an inbox somewhere, this may be a lost opportunity. To fix this data gap, focus your CRM strategy on generating quality, complete data. You can do this by using filters, so everything gets filed in the right data buckets, running data audits to establish any gaps in the overall CRM, and properly integrating CRM tools, so the data generated is compiled and displayed properly.
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