The Best Strategy To Utilize CRM Software and Retain Your Customers

Let’s Make This (Customer) Relationship Work

The customer relationship is one of a business’s most important relationships. As companies grow and expand their customer base, their sales and marketing activities can become more complicated. Companies that have more than ten customers and two employees need to manage customer relationships in a way that benefits the business and the customer. This is called Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

What Is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

CRM allows a business to manage its relationships with its customers. CRM systems are helpful because companies can’t remember all of their customer’s data and details. Knowing customer details can mean the difference between business success and failure.

Names, addresses, phone numbers, and billing and shipping information are just the basics required for your sales and marketing activities to win in any competitive environment. However, many businesses need to go even further to scale efficiently and grow.

Below are just a few examples of the type of granular detail that can be stored in a CRM system:

• What did the customer buy before?
• What information have we sent them in past interactions?
• When is their birthday?
• What are their kids, pets, or spouse’s names?
• What are their likes and dislikes?

Why Do I Need CRM Software?

Businesses need and rely on customer data to help personalize and develop stronger bonds with clients. Why? Because no matter the size or enormity of your brand, people want to do business with people they like. Customers view their relationship with a business positively when it personalizes their experience.

Positive relationships can lead to repeat customers. Think about visiting your local neighborhood restaurant where the owner greets you by name. When a restaurant remembers your birthday, your favorite drink, or how you mentioned a recent vacation, you feel like you matter to that business. You love that restaurant. You want to go back again and again. You probably recommend it to your friends. Those feelings can hold in any customer-facing business, even if you are an insurance broker, attorney, or consultant.

How Do I Get Started?

I’ve had small and medium-sized business clients use everything from Microsoft Excel to expensive CRM tools like Salesforce. What system, software, or procedure you decide to use depends on several factors, such as the type of business, size of your business, and customer requirements.

Here are three things that will ring true, no matter the solution you choose:

1. It doesn’t work unless the data is uploaded and people are committed to using the system. That takes time, training, and dedication. Train everyone who needs access to the data, then train others as a redundancy. Don’t ever skimp on this.
2. CRM data must be kept up to date, so build it into your daily sales and marketing process. Don’t think you or someone else will/can go back and enter the data later. Later always comes, but the data never gets entered. Or worse, insufficient data happens when someone enters data from memory and forgets important details.
3. The CRM tool must be flexible because you’ll need to grow with it and maybe even into it. Especially with smaller businesses, everybody must understand the CRM system. No company can afford to stop and start over when the only person managing the CRM changes jobs, calls in sick, or worse, is hit by a bus.

Find the Right CRM System for Your Business

Many people use Excel when they first start. It’s free, and that’s great if you are a whiz at Excel. Sadly, most people are not. Look at what others in your industry use when determining what CRM software suits your business needs.

Here are my recommendations:

I like Hubspot and Insightly for the smallest businesses because they offer a free version for one or two users, making them good budget options.

For medium-sized companies with some level of marketing sophistication, the premium features of Hubspot, Insightly, Zoho, and Salesforce can be good options.

Other CRM software options include:

• Pipedrive
• SugarCRM
• Oracle Netsuite
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Zendesk
• Freshworks
• Apptivo CRM

If you want to see how vital a CRM tool is to a business, just Google ‘CRM statistics 2025.’ I warn you: you’ll see lots of stats from CRM companies, but they basically say the same thing — proper use of a CRM system allows your business to grow.

It is up to you to build relationships with your clients, and CRM can help. CRM will help manage and evolve business-client relationships for continual growth.

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[Editors’ Note: To learn more about this and related topics, you may want to attend the following on-demand webinars (which you can listen to at your leisure, and each includes a comprehensive customer PowerPoint about the topic):

1. Data Privacy Compliance
2. Data Breach Response: Before and After the Breach
3. Turning an Idea or Product Into a Business

This article originally published in October 2018 and was updated on April 23, 2021. This article was most recently updated by the Financial Poise Editors.] 

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