For a successful business, customer relationship management is essential. But this crucial task is time-consuming, tedious, and also prone to human error.
With various CRM software options available , finding a system that optimizes multiple functions of our company can be a challenging and critical decision.
How do we know which features and functionality we should prioritize in software selection?
Customer Relationship Management software helps automate and manage the customer life cycle for sales and marketing departments.
The program consolidates customer information into a single repository so managers can better organize and manage relationships, automate common processes, and monitor performance or productivity.
But to get those benefits, you need to select a suitable tool. Let’s break down the top 9 features you’ll find in good CRM software.
1. Contact management
You will be able to store contact information of all your leads or prospects, such as names, addresses and social network accounts, in an easy-to-search database.
While all CRM software offers contact management functionality, you’ll want to look for a design and usability that make sense to you. How are the fields arranged? Does it feel easy to use and is it logically organized?
2. Interaction Tracking
Platforms that look more deeply at the interaction between Marketing and Sales, such as Hubspot’s CRM , allow you to track interaction history to document conversations with specific contacts.
Think about how many times a lead will change hands as they go through your sales cycle. You should choose the CRM software that allows the necessary parties to collaborate together and the information is accessible to everyone.
3. Lead scoring
Similar to the contact management feature, the key here is to ensure that the lead management process flows and flows in a way that makes sense for your business and your team.
Have a sales team member review these features so the software can score your leads, speeding up your sales process.
4. Email Integration
Integrating email enables the management and segmentation of contact lists, as well as creates a centralized base for both internal and external communications.
Think about how your team primarily communicates. If you’re not used to collaborating within one platform, you may want to prioritize CRM software with email integration capabilities.
5. Document management
Document management is a great CRM feature if you have a large team involved in your marketing and sales efforts.
Collect, upload, store and share documents on a centralized platform, making it easy for everyone involved to access information. This ensures that all team members are informed and promotes a seamless, consistent, and consistent experience for your customers.
6. Sales functions
If the nature of your products or services often requires back and forth on contracts, quotes and proposals, then implementing that process within your CRM software is a very useful feature for developing sales processes.
7. Sales pipeline management
If you have a very long sales cycle, it may be a good idea to prioritize this feature when purchasing good CRM software. Having a bird’s-eye view of your entire sales pipeline will help prevent prospects from stopping or abandoning the process.
8. Workflow automation
Platforms with the greatest range of features allow automation of repetitive tasks, creating workflows that trigger actions or send follow-up reminders for upcoming actions.
9. Reports
With real-time reporting or analytics functionality, you can generate documents based on factors like geography, the stage of the life cycle the prospect is in, and even individual sales team member reports.
This kind of detail allows you to effectively troubleshoot issues as they arise, and maintain a deep understanding of the entire process.
Conclusion
Although the system you select should be the one that best suits your company’s needs, an effective management program allows users to standardize workflows and processes associated with sales, marketing, and customer service. client , to improve coordination between these teams.
Good customer relationship management software also enables your business to better manage interactions, support maintaining relationships through trusted systems and processes, and integrate key marketing, sales, and service processes across departments.
These platforms allow users to access customer and lead information in meetings. And some solutions enable users to sync information across multiple devices, providing up-to-date customer information from any access point at any time , revolutionizing the way a sales team is managed today.
