[CRM or Customer Relationship Management software](Top 11 CRMs in 2020: The Best for Your Business) is very crucial for the growth of any business.

It is one amongst the software that can help you in converting leads into customers. Still, according to many external sources, 63% per cent of all CRM implementations face adoption issues and hence fail.

It's nothing new, whenever a new rule, update or software comes - it will take time for your staff to adapt to new changes, but that doesn't mean it will never work out it is all about learning, failing and repeating until and unless the goals are achieved.

Nothing works out in one go and if it fails once doesn't mean that it won't work out in future.

Did you know? Customer Relationship Management solutions are shifting the way organisations execute their marketing and sales processes. But this change comes at a cost, and that must be kept in mind before you roll out the system.

Most systems fail in making an impact basically because of majorly these reasons:

• Lack of adequate governance
• Lack of education & goals
• No Follow ups
• Lack of Data Discipline

What Frustrates Sales Teams & Managers About CRM?

• They require a lot of manual input of leads in detail, which turns out to be time-consuming and gets ignored by salespeople because they have more important things to do.
• The implemented CRM software does no good for the sales teams as they can't analyze the behaviour of customers and their intentions so that they can make data-driven decisions.
• Usually, the CRM systems are designed keeping sales managers in mind and not the teams - meaning collaboration is not quite easy.
• The CRM is not easy to use and can not be integrated into existing systems.

Want to generate more leads and turn them into paying customers using CRM? Here we bring you the keys to successful CRM implementation based on constant research and development by our CRM experts.

CRM & Sales Strategy Should Be First Priority

Before you even think about adopting potential solutions, it is very crucial to have a clear vision of how your business will be interacting with the clients throughout their complete lifecycle (it will include all stages of buyers journey from acquisition, pre-sale, during the sale, post-sale services.

If we look at past scenarios, CRM was put in for various functions including sales automation, contact centre and marketing.

Delivering a seamless customer experience surely requires integrated support across multiple aspects of marketing, sales and customer service, so mapping your customer's journey is an essential aspect. You need to ask yourself

• How do customers interact with you? The channel of communication.
• What would be the best way for attracting your target audience and moving the prospects down the sales funnel?
• From where does a sales transaction start and at what point would it end?
• What about post-sales activities?
• How would you define the opportunities for keeping them in the communication loop, building loyalty and starting the cycle again?

The journey for each industry will be different. There would be a drastic difference between B2B & B2C interactions and customer journeys.

And again, an essential question would be the channels you will use and how they will be supporting each other.

Again they all will be different across the industries, retailers would have web stores, on the contrary companies who manufacture goods and deal in bulk orders would surely avoid selling their products directly to the customers in small quantities.

Objective of the CRM strategy should primarily be what you want to use the CRM for - the functions you want it to support - whether they are sales or marketing. Apart from this - the key metrics you want to keep track of with your customers.

Choose a CRM that Fits Your Needs

Decided to implement a customer relationship management software? Be sure to set some goals. Before CRM implementation begins, ask your team and yourself some questions:

• What is needed from CRM?
• What do we want to achieve by implementing a CRM system?
• What CRM features does my team or business need?
• What are the problems that we want to solve with the CRM system?

By defining the goals, you would establish metrics that you can use for measuring progress. This is why it is required to identify your company’s needs clearly before beginning with the CRM implementation process.

That's why it's vital to identify your company's needs clearly before implementing a CRM.

There are different types of CRMs, and each offers specific features for achieving particular goals.

Operational CRM

Operational CRM streamlines the business processes that include Marketing Automation, Sales Automation and Service Automation. The main of these types of CRM's is to generate leads, convert them (into contacts) and capture the required data followed by providing service throughout the customer's journey.

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM helps the top management, including, marketing, sales and support managers or personnel for determining the better way for serving customers. In these CRM's data analysis is the primary function; it analyzes customer data that comes from various sources for getting better insights about the current status of the company. It helps all top management in making better decisions based on data.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM's are often known as Strategic CRM's.

They enable an enterprise to share customer's information across various business units, including industrial units, support team, marketing team and sales team.

For example, the feedback provided by customers to support teams could turn out to be a resource for marketing teams that may help them in future for approaching targeted customers.

A collaborative CRM helps in uniting all groups to aim for one goal - using all the information for improving the quality of customer service, attain loyalty and acquire new customers for increasing sales.

So, before beginning with CRM implementation, you need to decide upon your future goals, strategy and purpose of CRM.

Want help in selecting the right CRM system for your business? Book a free consultation with Cloudify today.

Structure the Data That You Plan to Measure & Manage

Structuring data takes a lot of time and resources, which is money and CRM implementation partners or professionals do become frustrated when they get asked to input data they know is of no use.

What's the point of tracking something which is of no use? If you want your CRM implementation to go on smoothly, take into consideration how the information or data that you are structuring will get utilized for managing and improving business development.

Your CRM Implementation Strategy & System Should Also Include Having the Ability to Link Data & Records Across the System

This is one of the most crucial CRM implementation steps. The main point of having a database is directly proportional to linking the information so that any user can gain rapid insight into the context.

For example, if the manager asks a salesperson randomly about the deal he closed two weeks back, the revenue it generated then the salesperson doesn't have to go through data sheets in excel or multiple files for finding out the information. Here the point is a CRM provides management to measure return on investment, which is the key for every business.

The CRM Should Integrate With Other Systems

For a successful CRM Implementation Strategy, knowing what Customer Relationship Functionalities people may value and what they probably lack can surely help you in improving and making the users love the new wave of change.

Let's take a look at the features that are popular and effective at the same time.

Did You Know?

Email marketing & Calendar management is one amongst the most widely used functionalities of CRM software, stated by a research conducted by Capterra. To make your systems more effective and profitable, we suggest you opt for some extra features.

Social Media & Monitoring Capabilities, along with the ability to pull in prospect's information from social media, is desired by 25% out of 500 CRM users, as per Capterra.

Update: Were you aware that you could add your Facebook leads into pipedrive automatically? If not, now, you know.

Mobile Access, in this fast-paced world, is essential. Sometimes your employee may be out of the office or travelling when suddenly an unplanned sales meeting pops up.

In this case, the staff can easily use their mobile phones for rectifying queries without any obstacles. According to a report by Capterra, more than 48% of CRM users now access it from smartphones and 45 from tablets.

Automate Redundant & Repetitive Tasks

Gone are the days for manual data entry work from one system to another system. Implementing Artificial Intelligence can help you in unlocking the full potential of your CRM.

Calendar Management, social media monitoring, email marketing or entering data is vital for any effective CRM implementation. However, it can take up too much of time, and if these tasks are not automated, they're still old school, not smart.

Workflow automation for CRM systems can probably help you in increasing the productivity of your staff, increase ROI, save time so that they can focus on better tasks like generating leads. Automation can probably help you in:

• Gathering and analysing massive data in real-time.
• Provide you with accurate insights, wholly based on the analysis.
• Rank or prioritise the leads that are more likely to turn into opportunities and deals.
• Send emails to potential clients.
• Recommend further steps to be taken to your professionals.

Related use cases: Glycospot | CHS Container

Provide Your Staff With Ample Training & Give Them Time To Adopt

To achieve good results with your latest CRM, your employees need to be synchronized as well. There are tonnes of approaches for training, but nothing works better than a practical one.

You can talk to your CRM implementation partner for giving an overview to your employees and help in training them. Here are a few training methods:

• Role-based training allows employees to easily understand what they exactly need to do in correlation to their job function.
• It could also be a mix of official guidelines and some personal involvement by top management.
• Bespoke training or fixed agenda training conducted by your CRM consultant and management.

Also, don't forget to have a dedicated person who will be running the project; it could either be a project manager hired by you or some external sources for managing things.

CRM Implementation process is a project that requires a lot of preparation, dedication and cooperation across your organization.

There are multiple things that you may need for being ready, which includes allocating resources, having people on board, rolling out a consistent and crystal clear plan of action, choosing the right CRM and CRM consultant.

Most importantly, you need to prepare yourself for a shift and change your mindset and adopting a CRM would change the way you do business altogether.

Implementing CRM is not just adapting to a new system. Still, it is a new way of thinking and functioning, keeping the customer at the heart of your business and centralising the information in a database.

Hence, the right information is available at the right time to the right people. It is a strategic business approach which unites technology, employees, internal processes and data management across the entire organization, which is aimed at attracting and keeping customers.

Want to know more about CRM and CRM implementation?

Book a free consultation and speak to our CRM experts.