When You Need Em Ask Neadom: CRM for Your Business
Hey guys, this week on When You Need Em Ask Neadom, we're gonna talk about CRM for your business. What do they mean? What do they do? How can they help you out? Stay tuned, we'll see you then.
What Is CRM?
Hey guys, welcome to another week of When You Need Em Ask Neadom. Today we're gonna talk about CRM. CRM—what does it really mean? If you're familiar with the term, great. A lot of people really don’t know what it means or how it works.
In short, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It’s the ability for us as an organization to manage our customers’ information and our relationship with them. This may include communication, quoting, invoicing—anything that helps manage the relationship with the customer. That’s really all CRM means at the end of the day.
Why Should I Have a CRM?
So, what does it do for your business? Why should you have one?
I can’t tell you how many businesses don’t have a CRM but would benefit greatly from one. Sure, there are some businesses where it might not help much, but in most cases, managing your customers is essential.
If you’re a retail organization, your POS system or customer loyalty program might serve as your CRM. Retail is highly transactional, and it’s hard to capture company data. That’s why loyalty programs exist—to keep in touch with customers.
But in businesses with longer sales cycles or where trust-building is key, a CRM is absolutely critical.
Customer Tracking
One of the most powerful uses of a CRM is in communication and customer tracking. Now, I don’t mean Big Brother-style tracking. I mean understanding the life of your customer—how you got introduced to them, how they’ve interacted with your business.
Let’s say you run a LinkedIn marketing campaign and gain three or four new customers. You enter them into your CRM and track how they came to you. Now you can measure the effectiveness of that campaign. If it cost you $3,000 and brought in $100,000 in revenue, that’s a win.
CRMs help you track this kind of data. You’ll know which marketing efforts work and which don’t. For example, some businesses use Groupon and find that those customers aren’t a good fit. Without a CRM, they wouldn’t know that.
Sales Process
CRMs also help with sales process management. Let’s say you hire Joe in sales. He’s a go-getter and is working on several big deals worth $250,000. Then Joe leaves—maybe he wins the lottery or moves away. What happens to those deals?
If you have a CRM, you’ll know exactly where each deal stands. Maybe quotes were sent and you’re just waiting for approval. With a CRM, everyone—sales, marketing, internal teams—is on the same page. You can manage the customer relationship in one system.
Implementation Pitfalls
Now, before you rush out to buy a CRM, let’s talk about pitfalls. The biggest one? Implementation.
The number one rule is: Garbage in, garbage out. If you’re not entering complete and accurate information, your CRM won’t help you. You have to keep it updated and clean.
Adoption and Buy-In
Next is adoption. Everyone in your organization must use the CRM—from management down. If someone refuses to use it, they’re holding your business back. Every mature business uses a CRM, and most professional salespeople won’t work without one.
If someone won’t adopt the system, they may not be the right fit for your team.
Assign a Champion
Once you have buy-in, assign a CRM champion. This person (or team) should be the expert—someone who knows how to build workflows, enter new customers, and generate reports.
Don’t rely on a consultant to manage your CRM. It won’t work. You need someone internal who believes in the system. And if that person leaves, make sure you have a backup. Otherwise, your processes will fall apart.
Final Thoughts
That wraps up another week of When You Need Em Ask Neadom. We talked about CRMs and how impactful they can be for your business. The key takeaway? Assign someone in your organization to be the CRM expert. That’s how you’ll get the most out of your system.
If you need help with this, reach out to us online at Kotori Technologies.
