Okay, I’ll be the dummy: what’s the value of a CRM? I feel like other people in the industry know something I don’t.
I’ve gone on calls with Salesforce and can’t figure it out. We already have a mass email client, we already track our tasks in software for the team to see, we don’t need a widget to ask people if they have questions and we don’t do e-commerce so the nifty features like automating emails for those who leave an item in their cart doesn’t apply.
What am I missing??
Hi @MaxwellMiky,
A CRM is the place where all interactions and relationships with your prospects and customers are stored. Ideally, this includes interactions with all departments, marketing, sales and customer service. That way, all departments can see at which point in their buyer’s journey a contact currently stands. It could be as banal as sales knowing that customer service are currently trying to resolve a severe issue – and that sales should hold off on that upselling call. Or marketing not sending email campaigns pushing contacts to book a meeting with sales – when some of these contacts are already talking to sales.
You’re 100% right, this can be done with other systems than a CRM. The beauty of a CRM however is that all that information lives in one place – and ideally you don’t have to integrate systems and make sure that each solution is talking to every other solution. The CRM would be the single source of truth. When you look at a contact or company record in your CRM, you know that all of the information is there, including information on past mass emails and tasks.
Broken down to its very essence: With a CRM you and your teams don’t have to cross-reference multiple systems. The latest information of where you currently stand with a prospect or customer can be found in your CRM. (If it’s maintained well, at least. As most solutions, CRMs will do their best to make this easy for you but it’s not 100% automatic. Some things need to be logged manually.)
A lot of companies are still using Excel files to keep track of prospect and customer interactions. And while that works, it’s just not convenient. Same goes for multiple solutions: It works, but it could be nicer. That’s a CRM is for.
This post does a good job of explaining why companies should use a CRM.
Hope this helps!