Necessary CRM Features For Your Business

CRM or customer resource management is a crucial part of growth in every organization today. A good CRM system helps improve operations and acts as a conduit for customer retention in the industry. Decent CRM technology can also help increase customer satisfaction, giving customers a reason to come back to your organization.

Small organizations and new startups can definitely benefit from a CRM solution, as the extra help can bring better customer loyalty and give a good return on investment. Sales and retention are two extremely important part of generating new business, and a CRM can help prioritize outcomes related to both these heads.

CRM solutions go beyond data in the organization to provide you with a tool for seamless interaction between staff members and customers. In this article, we take a look at some of the features and functions that should be present within a CRM solution. CRM solutions come with a range of functions, but at their core, they should boast of the following features as a must;

Content Management

Content is king, and most businesses rely on it for results and success. The content you create can be either promotional or informational. Content can either be created to hand out to customers for future growth potential or can also be for internal documentation and processing. All whitepapers, emails and forms are managed internally for the best results.

Rather than managing your content externally, you should go towards a CRM that includes content management systems within the box. The CMS that comes included within your CRM solution can manage your content documents in one place.

Daily Dashboard

It is highly necessary for your CRM system to provide a daily dashboard, which your sales personnel can look at and follow. Sales personnel need insights into a number of metrics on a daily basis. These metrics include progress against targets, the number of deals personnel have closed during a working day and the outstanding sales deals that need to be completed.

The stats mentioned above can vary from day to day, which is why it is necessary that organizations maintain a daily dashboard, which is updated on a daily basis and includes statistics pertaining to sales performance for each day.

Automation

Automation is the need of the hour today, and a good CRM system should work based on automation. A good CRM solution should make it possible for the team to automate a few processes and derive results from them later.

With the right automation tools and solid real-time progression in the organization, your sales and PR team can automatically monitor updates over time. Without proper automation within the CRM solution, organizations will have to rely on sales personnel and other team members to monitor progression in the ranks. Staff will have to track data through the pipeline and make sure that it is properly worked on for the best results.

Given just how busy employees mostly are and the fact that there is a lot on your plate already, automation can come in handy to give decent results. Automation can handle most of the processes, while you can work on the updates that come through.

Read –  Challenges of CRM implementation

Managing Contacts

Contact management is by far the single most important feature that organizations should look to add to their CRM solution. A good CRM solution should go beyond the feasibility of just identifying and listing contacts to manage all contacts in a thorough manner.

CRM contact management isn’t just limited to phone numbers, names, birthdays and email addresses. In fact, the contact management feature available in a CRM solution is handy for building relationships and forming bonds that stay for long.

The contact management feature in a CRM should be able to track activity and save a wide range of data related to the business. The solutions should provide activity tracking, should include data related to interactions and should also include in-depth research on contacts and communication with them.

The multi-point feasibility offered by a CRM solution makes it easier to manage contacts in one place and amplify the connection between sales, PR staff and customers. All the stakeholders are then connected together in one place.

Task Management

The ultimate objective of any CRM solution is to get tasks done in time and improve efficiency. Your users should be able to manage a wide variety of tasks in one place. Your ideal CRM solution should come with task management solutions such as Kanban boards, which help prioritize task completion and give all those concerned a unique view of tasks. Without a decent task management feature, you will not be able to enhance efficiency in the manner you would want to.

Sales Pipeline

A sales pipeline comes in handy for giving a brief view of leads in the sales process. The sales process can differ from organization to organization, which is why it is good to have a pipeline that you can call your own and can distribute across different steps.

A CRM solution should come with a unique pipeline for your organization and should point out where different prospects rank on the pipeline. The pipeline should also identify deals that are about to be finalized right now and deals that will be finalized in the time to come. The pipeline is a strategic feature that allows all concerned sales personnel to keep tabs on the sales process and where sales stand currently.

This article should give you a basic idea of the features that your CRM should have. You should go for a CRM solution provider that can comprehensively cover the features above and more.