I think I get the gist of it. It’s usually a tool that people can use to send newsletters to their customers for example… And schedule sales meetings and the like? But why do you need a specific tool for this? Would be great if someone could explain the basics of CRM in general
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A CRM that you’re talking about is usually a full computer system that does much better than newsletters and sales meetings. I’ve actually seen a nice ad for one of the big CRM providers recently, but don’t want to shill.
Some features that I know of are:
– keeping track of what customers have bought in the past, what service contracts they have, and other data.
– collect leads – as in data about people or companies that may be interested in buying your products (or buying more over what they already bought).
– create offers to entice customers to remain with you rather than switching to competition.
– manage “clubs” with membership and such – that customers then get unique prices or offers.
– manage service for products that require servicing. I know this is important for utilities and some other industries and have seen that at work.
– lots more like manage ad campaigns, billing in some cases, service desk (like a system where people open service ticket when their products have problems).
You are a sales guy for a medical equipment company. Your sales area covers 4 states. Your average sale is $100k
for every potential customer you need to track who the person that actually uses the equipment is, the person who actually has ability to authorize purchases, the persons(s) who own the practice, etc. You need to know the last time you talked to each of them, what promises you made, what questions they asked, etc. Which competitors they are looking at. What quotes you’ve given them. Which email newsletters they’re signed up for, and whether or not they’ve actually read them.
all of this needs to be tracked and organized for hundreds to thousands of potential and existing and former clients.
then your boss happens to run into Dr X at a conference. He can look him up in the CRM and find all this info and determine the status. Is he unhappy? Considering a competitor? Did he just hire someone who could use some training? Knowing this info allows him to approach Dr X like he knows every last detail of the account even though they may have never met before
I’m a GM at a small car dealer. We get roughly 500 internet leads a month, 100 or so phone leads, and 50-75 in person visits. We need to keep track of what each of those people are looking to buy, their shopping time frame, their specific needs and wants, their particular situation, who has spoken with them, how they prefer to be contacted… without a good CRM and staff that use it properly it would be impossible to handle this information load efficiently and effectively. A lot of dealers and sales people are horrible with their CRM but it can make life so much easier, make customers so much happier, and result in far more sales.
To simplify what others have said, it’s basically a database of all your current and potential clients.
I learned about this last year, and still haven’t really implemented it. Think about it, you met a client, chat with them, then don’t see them for a year. Next time you talk to them, are you gonna remember what products they liked? What sport they liked watching? If they have kids?
If you had all that in a database that you or anyone in your company could look up, it will help with keeping the clients close to you and your company. It may seem like a pretty mercenary way to deal with people, but it makes good business sense, especially if you deal with lots and lots of people in your job, more than you could possibly remember.
Also, you could even set it up so you track communications with your client, and have the database remind you when you haven’t contacted them in a while. That way clients don’t get backburnered or fall through the cracks.
Basically, it’s a way to track clients that doesn’t rely on you remembering every little detail, and allows multiple people to share that info easily.
I don’t think CRMs main point is for newsletters.
It’s used to track contacts at customers, progress of a deal, inventory flow. Those kinds of things. A sales person might need to hand off a deal and a CRM tool let’s that happen. You can set them up with gates so certain people need to approve certain stages/prices. You can vie the whole pipeline, evaluate successes and failures.
Adding on to some other posts that mostly get the gist regarding sales and leads. Technology is also a driving factor…
A CRM aggregates customer data from multiple sources/core systems to give you a complete view of your client or lead, without having to visit each individual source. Different departments and divisions within a company will often have different interactions with a client, sometimes also using different back-end systems, and a CRM allows anyone in the company to have a “360 degree” view of the customer’s complete relationship by combining all of their info in one place.
Source: CRM admin
I work for a SalesForce competitor – basically our software integrates with outlook and takes information about contact with customers to generate leads for sales teams. You can feed our ML model a year of sales and it will spit back which customers are most likely to renew, who is cross-shopping, etc.
Your CRM can do more things, that is Salesforce’s schtick, like it can be the ‘framework’ for a service desk where customers enter tickets for repairs or whatever.
Really, CRM means something a little different to everyone who considers it, but in round terms you are answering ‘how do we deal with customers or potential customers throughout their relationship with this company.’ That can be deep, like your CRM tracks the entire thing. You are spending millions with Salesforce for middling performance. It can be simple sales leads and tracking.
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