Top 10 CRM Features and Why You Need Them
Here are 10 vital features that your CRM system must have:
1. Lead and Pipeline Management
What is it: The ability to manage, classify and prioritise leads and simplify handling of customer pipelines.
Why it’s important: Lead management helps engage leads of all kinds by simplifying the tracking process. This helps you get real-time updates about the status of leads and prospects and follow up with them based on the urgency, demographic or other business factors. Many software solutions also include the ability to score leads to give a comprehensive and objective understanding of each lead.
Similar to lead management, pipeline management helps you understand which stage of the sales cycle a customer is at, what actions they take and when they become a prospect or lead. This information can help you customise the pitch and proposal for maximum impact and persuade them with the right marketing material.
2. Sales Analytics and Forecasting
What is it: Gathering data-driven insights analysing past sales performance and anticipating future numbers.
Why it’s important: By helping you identify crucial insights from past campaigns and sales cycles, you can be better equipped to deal with future challenges. Advanced CRM tools allow you to collate and analyse data from different sources such as social media, website traffic and email campaigns to provide more reliable and accurate figures.
What’s more, they also help businesses forecast pragmatic sales goals based on the existing pipeline. These forecasting models can help you focus on building the right campaign assets and mitigate the impact of unforeseen challenges. This feature can also be helpful for businesses wanting to set short-term goals, expand to new territories and set performance targets for the team.
3. Remote and Mobile Access
What is it: The ability to use the CRM system anywhere, using any device.
Why it’s important: Enabling salespersons and managers to have remote access to CRM tools and software is essential to make the most of its features. Besides receiving valuable real-time updates about leads and clients, increasing mobility can help team members access crucial insights and data even when they are not at their desks. This is also a vital feature for teams that perform sales while working in the field.
Similarly, it makes onboarding new customers or signing them up for updates a seamless process. Studies have shown the productivity and sales of team members can increase by up to 15% when using CRM applications remotely
4. Customisation and Scalability
What is it: Changing different features and interfaces as per business requirements.
Why it’s important: Customisation helps improve the flexibility and usability of different CRM tools and features as per your unique business model and needs. It is crucial to know whether the CRM you choose can integrate seamlessly with existing software systems, incorporate productivity tools, or change the layout or user interface as required.
Additionally, enabling changes in data fields, generating custom reports and integrating third-party APIs can be critical. Similarly, the scalability of the CRM solutions helps you determine whether the software can grow as your company and business needs evolve. Checking whether the solution can offer advanced data, security and lead management features can future-proof your business.
5. Customer Support
What is it: The availability of company representatives to help you install and use the system effectively.
Why it’s important: Customer support can help you troubleshoot challenges, particularly during the initial stage of installation and adoption. Having a designated customer support representative can give your team the confidence to use new tools and features efficiently. Similarly, the service provider should conduct onboarding and ad-hoc training sessions for the team based on your team’s unique requirements.
So, check for comprehensive FAQ pages, availability of support staff, automatic submission and resolution of technical issues and other resources. Also, clarify the level of support available for different types of challenges and whether your service provider will offer customised, real-time or automated solutions.
6. Contact Management and Segregation
What is it: The ability to segregate, classify, tag and manage contacts smartly.
Why it’s important: Contact management helps you capture different customer data points, such as their name, address, phone number, email, social media activity, purchase history, age group, profession and other demographic markers. Managing these fields as per your business requirement can help businesses arrest data decay, keep the sales pipeline fresh and relevant, organise customer profiles and engage leads effectively.
Contact segregation capabilities are essential to classify and organise all your business contacts in groups for easier management and engagement. Gathering customer insights and executing marketing campaigns becomes easier with these features as it enables a higher degree of personalisation in the marketing content and approach.
7. Workflow Automation
What is it: Automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks with a high degree of accuracy.
Why it’s important: Workflow automation is possibly one of the most vital features businesses can use to optimise campaigns. You can make your sales and marketing processes more productive by setting up custom rules and workflows. Setting these rules allows companies to deliver customised content, send follow-up messages, track communication, shorten sales cycles and monitor progress without any active human intervention.
This feature also simplifies other crucial business processes such as order processing, tracking and inventory management. Workflow automation can free up precious time and resources and increase the focus of the sales team, which can be better spent cultivating valuable customer relationships.
8. Third-party Integrations
What is it: Allowing crucial integrations from third-party service providers.
Why it’s important: Whether it’s a simple integration, such as an email or productivity tool, or more complicated software solutions like enterprise resource planning, human resource management system or business intelligence tools, being able to access and integrate services of third-party vendors can make the CRM platform easier to use.
These alignments between different tools and systems help add utility as team members can access all crucial information and take the necessary action within the same application. This compatibility is even more important if you regularly implement email marketing, lead generation and customer engagement campaigns.
9. Document and Storage Management
What is it: Offering adequate storage space to save crucial documents and promotional material.
Why it’s important: Studies suggest sales professionals can spend up to a third of their time looking for the right document or writing the right message to leads and clients. Having an easily accessible content and document library which embeds relevant documents after the completion of each task and shares marketing assets automatically can help your team function more efficiently.
Having all crucial documents, like proposals, quotes, brochures, white papers and reports securely in a single place for easy access can create s synergy between different team members. This feature can also make it easier to record, store, share, update and manage all marketing-related documents in a centralised and consistent manner.
10. Task and Collaboration Management
What is it: Allowing users to simplify assigning, tracking and collaborating on different tasks.
Why it’s important: Task and collaboration management features can be vital to optimising workflows, data collection, approvals and other processes. This can help manage team members effectively and set clear goals with realistic timelines. As members of sales and marketing teams may have to use several different applications, having a simplified workflow that clearly breaks down their top priorities can help them work more efficiently.
These features also ensure that employees with different skills, availability and location can collaborate seamlessly through a single interface and simplified communication.
How to Find the Perfect CRM For Your Business
There are three major ways to get a CRM solution for your business:
1. Do Your Research
The first one is the more challenging way but almost always guarantees successful results. It involves spending the time and effort researching different vendors, comparing their offerings, conducting interviews and finalising the one most aligned with your business needs and expectations. Despite being effective, this method can be time-consuming.
2. Go with the Most Popular/Expensive Vendor
If you are short on time, the easiest way is to go with the vendor who is the most popular or expensive in the industry. This is the easiest way to get your hands on all the features that your competitors are using. The downside to this approach can be that you may end up paying for several features that are of no use to you and, in the worst case, may end up using the CRM system inefficiently.
3. Consult an Expert
The final way gives you the best of both worlds. You get solutions quickly, yet they are based on your personalised business requirements. You can talk to software experts and consultants, like Scope It Services, to explain your business challenge, and they can recommend the most suitable solution available in the market.
Top CRM features: Conclusion
The final way gives you the best of both worlds. You get solutions quickly, yet they are based on your personalised business requirements. You can talk to software experts and consultants, like Scope It Services, to explain your business challenge, and they can recommend the most suitable solution available in the market.