Why a CRM Solution is essential for your sales team

What is CRM?

While CRM is often discussed within the context of business software, the concept refers to how companies relate to customers throughout the sales cycle. So, it refers to both the tools as well as the activities and strategies used during the customer life cycle, along with the general philosophy of the company's approach to managing customer relationships.

CRM is a suite of tools that can cover marketing, sales and services, storing customer information to help marketing teams find new customers, sales teams to improve sales, and improves customer service. It provides a collaborative approach across your business’ teams and serves customers well.

Why is CRM Good for Your Business?

There are many reasons why CRM solutions are such a powerful resource for businesses, with some highlighted below:

• All your customer data is in one central system, so you have a comprehensive understanding of different customer groups. In turn, this improves customer experiences by streamlining customer interactions.
• Automated and AI-enabled systems across sales, marketing and service teams help to align them and enable them to work cohesively. It frees up time so staff can spend their time on strategic tasks.
• More accurate sales forecasts and learning where to allocate sales resources for maximum profitability.
• Effective targeted marketing communication, and easy to monitor internal and external deadlines.
• Collaboration with marketing and sales teams, and consistent execution of the company sales policy.

CRM is able to manage a sales process for service-based business by providing a step-by-step sales process that can be altered whenever necessary. Being able to track customer interactions and feedback you can work to improve customer satisfaction and therefore increase profits.

Equally effective for products or ecommerce businesses, CRM can manage and nurture leads, and improves customer retention by providing information about your customers to predict their behaviour and encourage repeat business.

Choosing Your CRM Solution Provider

There are a lot of businesses able to provide CRM solutions, however be aware that not all providers are created equal.

When researching the types of CRM, various factors are considered depending on the needs of your company, but there are at least three specific areas where the CRM provider is just as important as what the system can do:

• CRM setup.
• Field selection.
• Internal staff training.

What this means is the best CRM providers will have the tools and support designed to help during the transition and implementation phases of the process. Some of the most comprehensive CRM solutions include:

• Salesforce - this company has been around for a while and has shown great results. It offers brilliant customisation and integration functions, has AI algorithms built in and accurate sales forecasting.
• Keap - this is a very strong platform but does need a bit of time to learn it, which is provided.
• HubSpot - one of the best platforms, this starts as a free service that integrates easily with other platforms, and scales up in features with their paid options.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM - competing with Salesforce, this system has powerful business intelligence integration for data insights, built-in AI features and a mobile-first approach for easy access.
• Oracle CRM - vast customisation and integration capabilities are excellent but may be a bit more costly.
• Continuum - Web Force 5's platform and website design tools greatly simplify the decisions surrounding CRM setup and field selection because they are so intuitive. Personalised attention means we will be with your business every step of the way.

While providers can vary significantly in terms of the features they provide and the cost, careful evaluation is needed to determine the most appropriate one for your business. Web Force 5 has the knowledge of many CRM providers and can assist you when selecting the one to suit your needs.

Intuitive, Easy to Use CRM

Some CRM software is complex, and it can be difficult to understand how to use them. At Web Force 5, we believe CRM solutions should make your life easier, not more complicated! CRM software, including our Continuum platform includes a variety of features and has been designed for people who aren't tech savvy.

Providing all the practical features your business needs, built-in and easy to navigate, we can offer a CRM solution that includes:

• Fields and tabs that you can customise.
• Custom sales pipeline to track leads.
• Forms that can be created and edited on your website in minutes so you can capture visitor details.
• Import or export your database at any time for quick updates.
• A notes system so you can track correspondence and set email reminders.
• Detailed reporting capabilities.
• Integration with an email marketing system.

Our team wants to see you succeed so we don’t just give clients the software and disappear. Each of our clients is assigned an account manager to be available to offer advice about improving the performance of your website.

We are all aware that technology is always changing! Our clients won’t be left behind or be stuck with poor CRM systems and website development tools while the internet keeps moving. Here at Web Force 5, we are constantly upgrading and improving our suite of tools and services to ensure your resources are up to date to leave you free to focus on doing what you do best.

Web Force 5 provides clients with an intuitive, simple content management system along with an array of website design and development tools designed to help businesses achieve more from their sales efforts.

We offer full Customer Relationship Management consultations so speak with a specialist consultant today to find out more.