Choose the right CRM

Customer data is crucial for any business because it directly impacts sales, customer relations, credibility, return on investment, and more. To outperform competitors and boost conversions, it’s crucial to gather customer data into one single platform to deliver better customer experiences. Customer relationship management (CRM) software will be your best bet to accumulate data from multiple sources like social media, email marketing, surveys, etc., thus helping your business thrive.

What is CRM software?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software manages sales, customer services, data, and more to help your companies run smarter. It streamlines your business operations, building customer loyalty and enhancing lead generation. CRM is becoming an integral part of most business operations, as per a source, companies using CRM observed a 45% increase in sales and a 39% improvement in cross-selling and upselling success. Typically, all the major CRM software are built to a B2B data model whereas, for the B2C model, businesses are better off with a simple contact management system. However, if a business operates in a mixed environment (B2B and B2C), it makes a CRM system worth the investment.

Here’s how CRM Integration helps companies:

  • Manages existing customer base
  • Converts prospects to loyal customers
  • Enhances customer experiences 
  • Streamlines your marketing and sales efforts. 
  • Improves analytical data & reporting 
  • Boosts lead generation and ROI
  • A cloud-based CRM helps your team to actively collaborate in real time.

Select the best CRM for your team

Deciding on the best CRM suitable for your business requirements is the foremost thing. The right CRM solution for your business can be chosen based on its capabilities and benefits because each CRM comes with its own unique set of capabilities and advantages. 

Following are the three different types of CRM

Operational CRM

It allows you to automate sales, marketing, and service processes by accumulating customer data on the cloud to save time and effort.

Example: Salesforce CRM

Salesforce Sales Cloud is an all-encompassing CRM solution (example of operational CRM) that facilitates three core areas of customer interaction -sales, marketing, and service processes. Businesses with heavy customer focus can automate tasks including (but not limited to) deals, discounts, approvals, auto-filling orders, and assigning leads to the right sales reps for a smooth pipeline transition. When you add a new lead to your sales cycle, it helps you build a timeline of your interactions with them. It enables managers, sales reps, and agents to access current customer information and access the history of all previous interactions.

Analytical CRM

It gathers data and enables data visualization delivering insights about your customers and their interactions with your business. 

Example: HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is an example of analytical CRM With built-in reporting and analytical tools. It allows you to measure sales funnel performance at every stage, and transforms raw data into actionable insights for better performance tracking and making informed decisions. It even creates a list of contacts of closed deals through attribution reporting so you can corroborate those deals. For more advanced analytics, unlock its Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub.

Collaborative CRM

It focuses on the ways you can interact with your vendors and distributors. It brings together your sales, marketing, and service teams to get insights from shared customer data and fulfill customer needs.

Example: Microsoft Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 for Sales is an example of collaborative CRM (also referred to as strategic CRM) that allows co-working capabilities. It helps teams collaborate on sales deals across departments and locations, share files and simultaneously work on documents. Businesses that heavily depend on cross-department communication and that need to track customers across multiple channels can gain a lot from this CRM.