Having a great way to manage your contacts is essential to seeing business success. Without a way to track your contacts and the information about them, you’ll be working blind in most cases. That’s why the CRM market is expected to grow to a value of $113 billion by 2027.
Finding the best CRM system is essential to managing your customer relationships well. Keep reading to learn how to find the best system to manage your contacts.
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Figure Out Your Needs
The first step to finding an excellent CRM program is to figure out your needs when managing your contacts. Each company’s contact management tasks vary.
If you’re a start-up business, your needs will be similar to those of a large corporation. If you’re a small business and manage contacts by phone, you’ll probably need different tools than someone who uses email and the Internet for contact management.
The same is true if you work in specific industries. Some companies will need to track specialized information for their customers. If a CRM doesn’t offer a way to input this information, it won’t work well for a contact manager.
Check for Industry Specific Options
While many companies can get away with using a general CRM, that won’t be the case for every company. Some industries have particular needs. It pays to work with a CRM that caters to what those needs are.
Take a real estate company, for instance. A basic CRM may not give you all the tools you need to connect with real estate software. Without those connections, it’s harder for you to connect your real estate clients with the properties they want.
However, there are CRM tools designed specifically for real estate agents. Always check those options first to see if there are any features you can’t get with general CRM tools.
Consider Your Workflow
Workflow plays a more important role in contact management than people think. In most cases, you aren’t only storing your contacts in a database to keep track of their contact information. You’re using your CRM to manage your entire customer workflow.
This is even more important for companies that have a sales pipeline for their customers. Your CRM program should be able to move your contacts through the customer journey and keep track of where they are in the sales pipeline.
That means you need to be able to do things like store contact notes, email history, client events, and share information. Think about your current customer workflow, how you can improve it, and how you can make it work in your CRM program.
Check Pricing Options
You have a lot of pricing options when it comes to CRM software. Some platforms offer straightforward pricing. They offer you a price per user and only charge for the people who need access to the software.
Other CRM vendors have more complex pricing.
Acumatica pricing, for instance, has a lot of options. They have different prices for cloud services, on-premise software, and other use cases.
They also charge by the seat like basic CRM programs and for training programs. From there, you can pay for any integrations you need.
You’ll need to consider your needs and budget when looking at pricing, so you don’t pay too much and get all the features you need.
Look for Training Options
Having an excellent CRM program isn’t worth much if you don’t know how to use it. While some programs are straightforward and don’t take much to learn, others aren’t that simple. It will take time to figure out how things work.
Check into your training options before you decide to buy a CRM program. In most cases, your CRM vendors have free training documents available on their websites. These documents are enough for most people to learn programs.
Some vendors also offer classes and paid training opportunities. Going this route provides a great way to provide a structured program for your team to learn how to get the most from their new software.
Read Online Reviews
You can only learn so much when talking to CRM providers and doing the free trial of programs. There are certain things about working with software that you won’t figure out until you work with the program for a while.
That’s why looking at online reviews is essential for picking the best CRM system. Online reviews will tell you how the program works, what things people like about it, and what issues people run into as they use the software.
These reviews will also provide a good idea of the price range. If you see a lot of negative reviews from users who feel they got ripped off by their CRM program, you’ll know it might not be a good deal for your company.
Look for Integrations
Most businesses won’t only use CRM software when they run their day-to-day operations. You need a variety of programs that have unique use cases. The question is, can you use those programs together?
A CRM program is there to store information about your customers. Some of that data is located in your other software. You’ll need a way to move that data over to your CRM system.
While you can do this manually, it makes more sense to look for third-party integrations. These integrations will set up a link between your software providers. This means your data gets automatically copied over and synced between your systems.
You’ll save time and money by not having to do everything yourself manually.
Now You Can Find the Best CRM System
There are many CRM programs on the market, so it can get overwhelming when you’re trying to find the best tool for the job. However, now that you know how to find the best CRM system, you have what you need to make a smart choice. Keep the things above in mind, so you find the right program for your company.
Once you get your CRM system, you’ll need a way to make the most of it. Head back to the blog to find more posts that will help you learn how to make the most of your relationships.
