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ECRM in a Nutshell
Advice for Choosing Your Online Customer Relationship Management Application
Finding the right online CRM solution for small to medium-sized businesses is critical because finding, keeping and adding customers is crucial and cash flow can be tight. Before you even start talking to CRM vendors, consider the following tips. Not only could they save you a lot of grief, they could save you a lot of money.
Understand who you are as a company, where you want to go and the role your customers play. Outline your broad and specific customer-related business issues before you make the purchase and consider your overall business process from the time a customer is approached until they make the first purchase and long afterwards.
Not all CRM products are capable of supporting the business processes of every company. So it's very important to understand how you want to approach and manage your customer relationships.
Look for a solution that fits your needs, not the other way around. You shouldn’t have to change your business to fit the application. Find a customizable solution that can grow with you and won't eat up all your cash - a system to get you the reports, the metrics and the dashboards you need to get you where you want to go.
Choose a solution that's easy to use. If your salespeople can’t figure it out quickly, they tend to give up. But even software that's relatively simple often won't get used without the proper carrots and/or sticks – like withholding commissions until the salesperson has entered customer data into the system.
Make sure your CRM solution will keep your data safe. When considering a CRM solution, make sure you think about security and discuss any issues you may have with vendors.
Hire experts to help with implementation and training. Get help with the initial implementation. Small businesses are time strapped. Having somebody come in, or train you virtually, helps you get through the process fast.
Set realistic goals and periodically measure your progress
Many small businesses set unrealistic goals, starting with the amount of time it will take to install and roll out their new CRM software to the entire sales force, as well as other users.
Make sure you have a way to measure success.
Ready to explore CRM further? Call or email O’Neil: 866–659–0824 or sales@oneildata.com.
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