What is CRM Software?

Customer relationship management (CRM) software helps you grow sales by enabling you to store and update customer records, track sales pipeline opportunities, and assign tasks to your team. Advanced plans include the ability to automate workflows and create custom reports.

Using a CRM solution saves time and money, as your team performs fewer manual tasks, such as browsing locally-stored spreadsheets. Additionally, you can be confident in CRM data accuracy, as it’s easy to update and is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection.

There’s a lot of variety on the market, so choose the features and interface that suit your business best. Some providers offer basic functionality, like contact and pipeline management, for a low price or even for free.

Others specialize in more advanced features, like Artificial Intelligence (AI) recommendations. There are also sector-specific solutions, such as those built for real estate, and products that integrate easily with helpdesk and email marketing software.

Different Types of CRM Software

The three main types of CRM software are operational, analytical, and collaborative. While each performs specific functions, many solutions on the market offer a blend of all three. Here are the main characteristics of each:

Operational CRM

Operational CRM helps you streamline the process of closing deals. You can import contacts from a spreadsheet or third-party software, update data fields like name and job title, and add information about the contact’s company, such as annual revenue. In pipeline management, you can assign each contact or company to a stage, such as Qualification or Opportunity Won.

Other features include adding notes in customer records, scoring lead value, and automatically adding new contacts from website forms. Operational CRMs include or integrate easily with email marketing solutions, where you save templates and automate emails to specific customer segments.

In addition, you can automate tasks based on pre-set rules. For example, a contact with a specific job title and company revenue is automatically moved to the Qualification stage.

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM has powerful reporting features and supports critical business decisions, providing data on predicted revenue, the likelihood of closing a deal, and sales rep performance. Analytics use data from operational CRM features, including pipeline value and progression, closed deals, and sales teams’ customer engagement.

A great analytical CRM solution includes customizable reports, where you filter a specific data set, such as closed deals from the first financial quarter. You should also be able to customize your analytics dashboard and visualize charts for monthly sales growth, predicted revenues, and other key metrics.

On pricier plans, some providers offer AI assistants which use pipeline insights to recommend actions likely to close deals.

Collaborative CRM

Landing new clients is a team effort across departments, including sales, marketing, and customer service. A collaborative CRM product includes multiple user accounts and categorizes them into business areas.

Basic collaborative features include assigning leads to team members automatically, creating tasks for other coworkers, and seeing who last updated a customer record. A shared CRM calendar includes all scheduled calls, emails, and tasks for the team.

Enterprise CRM solutions, made for large teams, include social networking feeds. This enables coworkers to share updates and requests about pipeline opportunities, avoiding time-consuming email threads. Integrations with popular internal communications software make it faster to access customer records from your chat window.

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Why Businesses Need CRM Software

CRM software saves you time and money when used effectively. It brings down admin costs, reduces uncertainty, and keeps data in one place. Crucially, it increases your ability to win new deals and increase revenues with fewer opportunities slipping through the cracks.

Here are the main benefits of using CRM systems:

Tracking customer data

CRM software stores your customer data. This includes name, contact details, and company characteristics, as well as notes and communication history. Employing alternative methods, such as using spreadsheets or paper documents, involves time spent locating information with uncertainty about its accuracy.

Thus, keeping all your customer data in one place saves time and money. In addition, it enables you to quickly connect leads to opportunities in the pipeline, equipping your sales reps with important information. Automation features, such as assigning a score to prioritize lead value, will use customer data to enable smart business decisions.

Analyzing your sales pipeline

CRM analytics and reports are invaluable to your sales efforts. Insights such as the value and stage of a pipeline opportunity help prioritize the most high-value deals to focus on. Also, the likelihood of closing a deal, combined with an estimated deal value, provides your finance department with a revenue forecast from new projects.

Compared to alternative ways of analyzing pipeline opportunities, like calculating metrics in a spreadsheet, CRM analytics are automated and updated in real time, thus eliminating admin and saving time. It’s also more accurate and, if using AI to provide recommendations, enables better decision-making.

Enabling marketing campaigns

Email follow-ups with product information and meeting requests are key to closing deals. CRM tools make this process quicker as they automate pre-written emails based on customer record changes, such as advancing to a new pipeline stage.

Using a CRM solution for email campaigns makes your marketing more personalized, hence bringing higher engagement rates. For example, you can insert data fields like customer and company name in your email content. You can also segment leads by characteristics such as industry type and target them with separate email templates to maximize conversion.

Automating manual tasks

Saving time by automating manual tasks is a major CRM benefit. From calculating lead scores to assigning sales reps to specific opportunities, the basic principle is to set a rule according to contact or pipeline characteristics and create a workflow, after which the software automates tasks.

For example, a typical workflow includes qualification emails, calls with sales reps, sending pitches, and negotiating prices. Tasks you can automate include emailing a request for feedback, creating tasks in the team calendar, and sending meeting invitations.

By freeing up your sales reps’ time, they can put more attention into pitch preparation and customer relationship building.

Choosing the Right CRM System

Alongside the main features your business requires from a CRM solution, you should consider the following factors when making a decision:

• Ease of use: An easy-to-use solution enables you to quickly locate and use a certain feature, such as minimizing the number of clicks required. Overcomplicated features can make your staff less productive.
• Setup time: Getting a CRM system up and running immediately is a huge asset. However, if you want to customize certain features, setup can take longer.
• Price: Consider not only the cost but also how many users are included in the plan, whether there is an additional per-user cost, and if annual billing is cheaper overall than a monthly subscription.
• Add-ons: Your business may benefit from specific add-ons, such as customer helpdesk functionality or document storage. Alternatively, check if the software integrates with third-party solutions.
• Customer service: Look for a generous support package, including ticketing, email, and phone service. Check whether additional support hours can be purchased as well.
• Interface: An effective CRM interface is not too cluttered, has a modern feel, and works quickly without technical bugs. Employees are more likely to get behind a solution with a friendly interface.