Is a CRM enough?

A few days ago, a business owner gave me a call asking me if I knew any “cheap” crm software for his real estate business office. This company has 4 employees and this year target is over USD$1,500 in commission sales.

Such comment makes me draft this blog entry since it’s the most common mistake small business owners do, which is look down on software investment.

Achieving such a goal, with no clear marketing strategy and no real tools seams odd.

On the other hand, we have known business owners that believe that technology and software are some kind magic and with not effort they will bring millions of dollars in revenue.

In order to avoid these both common mistakes in sales and marketing strategies I most start by clarifying that a CRM or any software by itself you might use to enhance your sales is not enough, you need to go “all 9 yards” on this.

First, what is a CRM? these letters stand for Customer Relationship Management software that will provide you with the chance to gather and work with information regarding your prospects and clients.

A CRM is a digital tool where you will be able to create individual profiles for your customers, holding their contact information and having all the interaction these customers had with your company in one single screen.

For decision makers a CRM will provide a dashboard that will help check upon sales and marketing teams their progress, check on how many deals were closed, and which are behind schedule.

There are plenty of options regarding CRMs, there are some free options out there, but their capability is limited, in our expert recommendation HubSpot is the best, that’s why we work with this company on all our projects.

A CRM setup is not too difficult to implement if your team is open for the change. Software by itself won´t help much if your team has a resistance to use it.

About 9 years ago I worked in a law firm where lawyers and paralegals were reluctant to use the internal software for hour billing and client tracking, later I moved to another firm that had a system and honestly the difference was incredible. In companies that have tracking systems, if its either internal o client oriented, if information keeping is ongoing better decisions can be made and at the end of the day the client wins.

Companies must understand that the most important part of the equation is the client, so having tools and using them will create far more value for the client due to a better sales and post-sale service.

Answering the top question, I believe a CRM is not enough; companies must also create sales journeys in within regarding the clients behavior. This means that choosing the CRM is only the first step, later you must learn how to properly use such tool and create the internal client activities in order to maximize the tool potential.

A CRM will let you group clients, interact with them, keep records of all the conversations with the client, email campaigns and manage better your message towards the client.

My recommendation is seeking good advice from experts, but look wisely, not only reach out the software sales teams, also check for companies that advise on processes and management.

Imagineer CX is more than a digital marketing adviser; we truly enjoy creating and assessing on creating client paths and creating real value for the usage of any digital tool.

If you found this article of use let me know in the comment section or send me an email for further comments.