Tips for Choosing a CRM - Part 5 - Position for Success
You’re nearly there!
The journey to implement a CRM can be short and sweet or long and laborious. If you’re going it alone, take it slow and steady. While most CRM products will allow you to change your thinking/direction on the fly and update your system, there may be some data updates you need to do to clean up for the new direction or more training for the team.
Your team will appreciate a slower introduction of a product alongside their day-jobs rather than a fire-hose of new information to work on.
The number one thing people always overlook …
…Adoption. This is the #1 failure point for any CRM deployment. As a business owner, you want your team to use the product to provide benefit to your business. As a sales person or customer rep – they just want to meet their sales targets. How will you drive adoption to the system?
If your sales team hates using your CRM, they’re going to use it as little as possible.
They’ll manage email conversations in their Gmail inbox, they won’t track phone calls, they won’t add info about any leads or deals—your customer data will be incomplete and inaccurate. And it'll be much harder for whoever is running the sales team to make a data-informed decision.
Tips to Encourage your adoption;
Being transparent with your team by explaining why you are investing in a CRM and how it might affect their work
Give a plan of action of when you will start using the CRM and stop using old methods of customer relationship management, like spreadsheets
Get them involved in the implementation process to give them an investment in the new system
Schedule training for employees with your CRM’s vendor or implementation team
Follow up by asking if there are any questions or concerns
Encourage feedback, both positive and negative
Success Tip #1
Make sure you’re looking for the right thing
CRM software is usually designed to manage relationships with customers and prospects with the overall goal to increase sales volume.
ERP, on the other hand, is used to manage internal business processes rather than customers.
The main goal with ERP software is to reduce overhead and costs by making business operations more efficient.
Success Tip #2
Watching your costs with Project Scope Creep
With most CRMs, there are multiple configuration options and customization features. Using a CRM product ‘out of the box’ is very rare unless you’re using it as a glorified address book.
But at the end of the day, you’re looking for a CRM that will help drive your business, and that will inevitably require some form of customization.
Your options to customize will depend heavily on the platform you select.
Success Tip #3
Bite off small chunks.
It’s so exciting to work on a CRM implementation and very easy to get carried away with the features that it can provide. Break out the project into manageable chunks.
Smaller, more frequent iterations of your implementation will gain regular ‘wins’ with the team, build confidence and prevent them from feeling overwhelmed.
Some Wild-Card Gotchya’s
How many people will use the CRM?
License cost can add up quick. A seemingly low monthly cost can become quite the investment when multiplied by number of people and features needed.
And in most cases, with software subscriptions, this is a per-month investment. Not only that, but there is a variety of different licensing models and levels per software product. Each influencing the feature set that is available to your team.
CRM Products to Consider
With a wide range of products out there, here are some to get you started in your CRM Journey.
Mid/Large Sized Businesses
Microsoft Dynamics 365
$121 CAD /Usr/Mth
https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en- ca/
Flexible
Highly Customizable Integration with Office365 Integrated Platform Automation
SalesForce
Varies on Features
https://www.salesforce.com/ca
Large Userbase
Multiple addons for features Customizable
Workflow automation
Small Business
Zoho CRM
$12 to $45 USD
https://www.zoho.com/crm
Free Tier to start Integrations
Bitrix
Free to $158 Depending on features
https://www.bitrix24.com
Mobile App Integrations Available
Insightly
$29 to $99 USD
https://www.insightly.com
Lead management Workflow automation Integrated Telephony Mobile App
Sugar CRM
$52 to $80
https://www.sugarcrm.com/
Marketing orientated
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Applies To:
CRM Products - General