In today’s business landscape, any tools to help you stay organized are incredible and that's exactly what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems do. Whether you’re a freelancer or have several thousand employees, a well used CRM can keep you ahead and informed.
What is a CRM?
Let’s start here. A CRM in its most basic form is a place to store information on customers, clients and contacts. Almost like an ultimate address book that allows you to do more and understand more about your businesses relationship to other businesses and each person who works within them. Here are some ways a CRM can help you:
Workflow Management:
Whether you’re working with one team or multiple teams on a single project, this one stop system allows you to track exactly what you’re doing in a project. You can even track minor details and information along each step to keep yourself up to date.
Sales Management:
Track customers, leads, opportunities and sales in one place! Even track different types of leads separately so your business can see where improvements need to be made or structure marketing campaigns accordingly.
Marketing Campaigns:
Most CRMs today are able to intelligently group your customers, clients, teams and more and help you create unique marketing campaigns for each. Want to have a monthly newsletter? This is the place to launch it.
Analytics:
Use internal dashboards to track whatever metric you want! Location of clients, interest, sales, responses to marketing campaigns launched through the CRM, etc.
This is just the surface! Each unique CRM has its own additional unique features. While I could go into details about which one you should choose, my advice is to ask your peers. There are literally hundreds of CRM services available, some of them are better known than others but that may not necessarily make them best for your unique business. So many CRM ranking sites are looking at the CRM through a particular lens that may not necessarily meet the needs of your business.
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