Has your business gone through a growth spurt? If so, like a kid at an all-you-can-eat-buffet, it can quickly outgrow your current model. Throw in our brave new world of remote working, and your workflow can break under the weight of new process requirements.
As though running a business wasn’t already complicated enough, right?!
Do you want the good news or the bad news first?
Okay, let’s start with the bad: this creates friction between your staff, departments and, ultimately, customers. The good news is that in an age where connectivity is a must-have rather than a nice-to-have, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can help connect all these parties.
In this article, we look at 5 ways a CRM can help your business overcome common challenges and how it can prepare you for the next phase of sustainable growth.
Does my business need a CRM?
Does the Pope wear slippers? Assuming he does (almost certainly Hush Puppies 🐶), then the answer is yes, yes, yes. Your business really does need a CRM.
After all, CRMs are powerful tools that help you:
- Sustainably drive business growth faster than a Cheetah driving a Ferrari.
- Smooth out friction between your internal team, suppliers and customers.
- Streamline cross-department collaboration, centralising and managing contact records, securely syncing data, automating those annoyingly repetitive daily tasks and more.
Of course, every business is a unique entity, facing its own set of challenges. As such, the solution always needs to be calibrated to you. Even so, on our travels digitally transforming the marketing and sales workflows of brands around the world, we’ve identified a number of common obstacles. In fact, here at CMA, our own company faced these same challenges after a period of rapid growth. We solved them by developing what would ultimately become our incredibly popular CRM-As-A-Service offering.
In talking to our clients, it quickly became apparent that they too were facing these hurdles. It was a reassuring moment – knowing you are not alone. And, because we think knowledge is to be shared, we’ll let you in on a few secrets that will help inform your commercial decision making as regards integrating a CRM into your operations.
Shhh… 🤫
#1 Unified Source of Truth
- Challenge: Businesses often grapple with fragmented information spread across various platforms.
- Solution: A CRM system offers a solution by consolidating all data into a single, integrated platform, serving as a secure beacon of truth.
- Outcome: This centralisation ensures that every team member, from sales to customer service, operates from the same, updated information repository.
#2 Enhanced Sales Management and Oversight
- Challenge: In the absence of a CRM, sales managers may struggle to maintain oversight, especially if a team member becomes unavailable.
- Solution: A CRM provides comprehensive visibility into the sales pipeline, customer lifecycles and individual performance metrics.
- Outcome: This enables managers to make informed decisions and maintain continuity in customer engagement.
#3 Centralised Customer Communication
- Challenge: Effective communication is key to maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Solution: A CRM centralises all customer interactions, ensuring that messages are consistent and on-brand.
- Outcome: This cohesive approach enhances the customer experience, fostering stronger relationships.
#4 Marketing Integration and Analytics
- Challenge: Without a CRM, aligning sales and marketing efforts can be challenging.
- Solution: Integrating a CRM with marketing tools allows for a unified strategy, leveraging analytics to tailor communications based on customer engagement and journey stages.
- Outcome: This alignment increases the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and sales efforts alike.
#5 Automation and Customer Lifecycle Management
- Challenge: Manually managing customer engagement and follow-ups is time-consuming and prone to errors, especially as businesses scale. This can lead to missed opportunities for re-engagement or upselling and a lack of personalisation in customer interactions.
- Solution: CRM automation streamlines processes, from lead generation to customer retention.
- Outcome: Automating tasks like follow-ups on abandoned carts or sending personalised offers based on purchase history frees up time for strategic planning and personal customer engagement, enhancing the overall efficiency and effectiveness of business operations.
To CRM or not to CRM?
Is that really a question? After all, a CRM system goes beyond a tool for managing customer data. When fully configured and managed against your real-time business needs, it becomes a powerful solution that addresses the myriad challenges businesses face today. From data centralisation to enhanced communication, marketing integration, automation and expert implementation, a CRM can transform the way your company operates.
Yeah, we are a HubSpot
Gold Certified Partner
As a HubSpot Gold Certified Partner, here at CMA our expertise in CRM strategies and implementation is legendary. We understand the nuances of different business models, whether B2B, B2C, service, or product-focused. Our knowledge extends to integrating sales and marketing efforts, leveraging CRM to empower sales teams and utilising the platform’s full potential to drive growth.
Oh, and because we’re the greatest design, marketing and development agency since sliced bread, we are perfectly placed to fuel your CRM with brand storytelling that generates awareness and leads for your sales team.
So, what are you waiting for?
Fill in the form below and you’ll automatically be added to our prospect pipeline by way of our CRM. The right members of the CMA-Team will be notified, next we’ll make the initial engagement then start to track and personalise all aspects of the conversation with you. 😉
