In this introduction to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) I’m going to show you why it is a critical system for if you want your business to grow.
Almost every kid loves getting mail especially when it’s a gift or card for their birthday, Christmas, or other special occasions. The truth is we never really grow out of this. Most adults still love getting thoughtful cards and gifts for special occasions and your customers are no different. They want to hear from you at the time and place that makes sense to them.
If you have a big family, you know how hard it can be to track everyone’s birthday, anniversaries, graduations, and numerous other special occasions. The same is true for your customers. You need a system to track all of this data so you can connect with your customers at the right time with the right information. A good CRM system can make this level of personalization much easier for your business
In fact, a CRM should be mandatory for every business. The reason SalesForce and Hubspot are billion-dollar companies because CRMs work. Today, I’m going to give you an introduction to customer relationship management and share tips on how to use AllClients, the CRM I use.
Tool: An Introduction to Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
A CRM will help your business to reorganize processes, improve customer relationships, and ultimately increased profits.
For me, a CRM provides three important advantages:
- Technology: record and store customer data to make it easier to organize and for you or one of your employees to take action on!
- Strategy: decide how and when customers should be contacted.
- Process: a systemized way to everything out of your head and into a form that allows you to engage customers and follow-up with prospects.
Having a sales program without a CRM puts your business at a big disadvantage. It’s difficult to do business development while striking a balance between prospecting and closing sales. CRM systems such as HubSpot, Salesforce, and AllClients provide a systemized way to consistently follow-up with leads, set appointment reminders, and see who is in what stage of your sales pipeline.
The Tool: AllClients CRM
I prefer to use the AllClients CRM since it is easy to learn, easy to use, and has the features I need to include:
- Customizable Dashboard
I can customize my AllClients dashboard to display valuable information that matters to my business. For example, I can create an overview of how my numbers look over any given time period. Also, I have the liberty to choose which numbers to display. With this information available at a glance, I am constantly in the know.
- To do plans
With the AllClients CRM, I can schedule my to-do list in order of preference. It allows me to organize my workflow. I can send a thank you email to my clients upon receiving their orders and conduct a customer satisfaction survey, all with a couple of clicks in the AllClients CRM.
- Simplifies workflows
The AllClients system groups my diverse client’s activities into simplified automatic sequences that make my work easy and ensure I never skip essential steps.
- Fast, responsive email templates
The professional and customizable emails featured in the AllClients with the drag and drop design reduce email composition time. The smart design tools, easy email merger abilities, reliable review, and approval feature save a ton of time.
- The agenda assistant feature
With AllClients, I receive morning emails to notify me of upcoming events such as; to-do lists, appointments, birthdays, and others as part of the agenda assistant feature.
Tips: How to Get the Most Out of Your CRM
The AllClients CRM is the best on the market for my business. It helps me stay top of mind with clients 3,6,9 months or even a few years down the road when they are ready for my services.
Here are my top three tips to get the most out of your CRM that you can apply if you’re using AllClients or any other CRM system.
- CRM customization
You need to invest the time to customize it to fit your unique business needs. There are some easy customizations that you can start out with such as adding your logo and templates. Once you have these down you can explore more complicated customizations such as adding third-party plug-ins to make the CRM even more powerful for your business.
- Onboarding/ Employee training
Once you’ve customized your CRM you need to start using it. If you have employees helping you with these tasks you must provide them with training on the CRM system along with some onboarding time for them to get used to working in the new system. Additionally, you (or better yet, your employees!) should create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to implement to make sure you’re getting the most out of your CRM. Also, review these SOPs at least quarterly and make changes as necessary.
- Update Database information
Garbage in, garbage out. Your CRM is only going to be as good as the data put in and updated in the system. You or an employee should be entering data, updating customer information, and checking the data for accuracy regularly. Prospect contact information, notes, and other important details should be entered into the system as soon as possible so the data is easily accessible and actionable.
Quote: “Follow up and follow through until the task is completed, the prize won.” — Brian Tracy.
Brian Tracy was a well-known American Canadian investor, public speaker, entrepreneur, the president and CEO of three multi-million-dollar companies in the U.S. Brain Tracy is a self-made millionaire who hustled his way up from humble beginnings. Born in Vancouver in 1944 to Canadian parents, Tracy dropped out of school at an early age and engaged in hard labor demanding jobs until he started his traveling career in his early 20s.
What’s next?
The toughest part of good follow-up and follow-through isn’t willpower or persistence. It’s about having a good system in place to make it automatic for your business. Making the sale on the first contact is rare, riches are made in the follow-up. A CRM will keep you top of mind with your clients, prospects, and network so you can enjoy the benefits of consistent growth and results.
I want you to have more money and time so you can enjoy the freedom you deserve! This tool, tip, and quote article is a glimpse into the insight I provide my clients on a regular basis to get stunning results. In last month’s tool, tip, and quote I showed how you can increase your client bookings by 50%.
My mission is to help business owners who have a burning desire to take action. I provide the best business advice conflict-free to help you eliminate a problem, double your income, brainstorm an idea, and solve any of the hundreds of issues that come up when you’re a business owner.
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