What is a CRM for?
When a company considers the installation of a CRM, either because an employee has sued it or has heard that it is good for their company, having to make an investment for its implementation, the first thing they ask is that the investment that will to have to realize if it is worth it or not and really why it is going to help you and if you are going to have a return on the disbursement that you are going to have to do.
In this article I am going to write what a crm is for and what will be the consequences of successfully implementing a crm and how the company will notice it as it is made and internalized the use of it.
The first use that having a crm will give is order, normally companies that do not have a crm have multiple databases, Excel, lists of contacts in their email managers, or simply lots or blocks of cards that have been picking up and they don’t do much good when you really have to search for someone you’ve met.
The CRM will help us to classify the information we have by segmenting and classifying it so that it is easier to locate later. Normally, it is a very basic classification that is to divide who is a customer and who is not, once done this classification, segment them by other types of fields such as geographic (country, region, province, area, etc.), type of customer (direct, wholesaler, distributor), sector or activity, origin, purchase potential, that is, many fields on which our clients can be classified and that will help us to know the quality of our clients and potential clients, as well as the information that I must collect.
The second use that I am going to make is to create a work methodology in the employees or different departments that use the crm, mainly the commercial one, but also others such as customer service or marketing. The CRM has to create a policy of action in the organization from top to bottom, which determines the way the sales team acts in the entire process of selling the product or service they sell, from what would be the collection of information in a first moment, such as what would be the relationship with the client, what information should we collect when we visit a client, as well as the consequent relationship when they tell us about an incident. All this must be collected in reports, where the commercial directors will verify that the information collected in the crm is adequate and that their commercial team is doing their job well.
For me, this is the most important use that CRM will help you to create a work policy. The tool will not give you this benefit by itself, it will be a consequence of the fact that the management of the company really has an intention. to do so and the consultant to help you implement the crm.
The third fundamental use is that all the information stays in the company, there are no essential people within the organization at a commercial level, when someone leaves or the information is fired, the goodwill of the company remains within the same and any changes that are made, will not affect as much as if that information were not collected. Obviously, this use or benefit is a consequence of the two previous ones, if there is no orderly and systematized database and there is no work methodology, then we will not have the goodwill ordered and there will be no benefit for it.
The fourth use of a crm is the optimization of time, a salesperson loses a lot of time in administrative tasks for the management of their day-to-day, what the crm will do to them through workflow functionalities is to make those automatic shipments so that they do not waste time in tasks that do not give added value and have more time to sell or make visits, which is what will help you achieve your goals.
The fifth use or benefit is a consequence of the four previous ones, which is to sell more, having a CRM will help me to be more orderly in optimizing their tasks, having more time available with which they can sell more, so that It will help the company to increase its income and for the salesperson to sell more, that is, to have more salary and feel more satisfied. As I say, this use or benefit will occur automatically if the previous 4 have done it properly, and this is the consequence of making a commercial policy analyzed, systematized and analyzed by the property and management and middle managers.
For the sixth and last use, it is the analysis of the information, if the information entered in the crm is adequate, it will help us to analyze what has been introduced and helping us to carry out a more accurate commercial strategy since the information we have collected is truthful and complete.
In conclusion, crm can help us a lot within an organization, but a crm is a tool, like a car, that we have to guide, have a routine or use policy and if we do it well it will help us and if not, It could even harm us, which is why it is so important that the management is involved, as well as the selection of the consultant to help us start it up.