Customer relationship management systems (CRMs) help businesses to operate more efficiently, shorten their sales cycles, grow revenue, and more.
They boast pretty high ROI—nearly $9 for every $1 spent. But you won't see any of that if you don't know how to use your CRM the right way.
This post has 16 pro tips that will show you how to use a CRM the right way—so that you can maximize your ROI.
What is the average ROI for CRM software?
Let's first go over some stats for customer relationship management software ROI.
- The average ROI for every dollar spent on a CRM is $8.71. This is a 38% increase from $5.60 in 2011.
- CRM can boost sales by 29%, productivity by 34%, and forecast accuracy by 42%.
- A CRM that is fully integrated with other internal applications can increase productivity across sales, service, and operations and lead to a 20-30% growth in business.
- CRMs can improve customer retention by 27%.
- CRM can boost conversion rates by 300%
- The ROI of a CRM software system, when properly implemented, can exceed 245%.
Why use a CRM?
If you’re reading this post, you most likely already use a CRM and therefore don’t need much convincing as to why you need one. But if you’re not using it right, you may be missing out on some of the benefits they offer. So let’s do a quick run-through of why businesses use CRMs:
- ROI. See above. Almost nine bucks on the dollar!
- Revenue. Better customer experience and more efficient operations means more sales which means revenue growth. In fact, CRM applications can increase revenue by 41% per sales representative.
- Improve the customer experience. Customer experience has always mattered, but to put some numbers behind it, 75% of sales leaders say that customers and prospects have higher expectations than they did in the past. Keeping all your contact history in one place allows for you to stay on top of engagement and to remember important details that matter.
- Make better decisions, and faster. The most successful businesses are those that lean into the data to guide them. CRMs provide a wealth of insights that can help you decide how to structure your sales team, how to optimize your processes, and which channels and employees are worth investing more resources in.
- Streamline operations. Workflows and automation take mundane processes off your reps’ plates and free up their time for more important tasks. And when everyone’s following the same process, team members can be interchangeable while still providing a consistent customer experience.
- Improve cross-department collaboration. Even though sales representatives probably uses it the most, a CRM can, and should, be accessible to marketing, customer service, customer success, and operations departments to keep everyone aligned.
- Be more competitive. CRMs empower teams to provide better customer experiences, expand into new markets, open up new revenue streams, and create more satisfactory work culture—all of which help them to be more competitive both as a service provider and an employer.
Side note: We have a roundup of the best CRMs for home improvement businesses if you're interested.
How to use a CRM (the right, revenue-generating way)
All of the benefits above sound great, right? Well, if you want to reap them all, you need to make sure you’re using your CRM the right way. Here are our top tips to help you ensure you’re getting the most out of your CRM:
1. Train your employees to use your CRM properly
I'm about to hit you right between the eyes...
- 50% of sales leaders say that their CRM is difficult to use
- 53% of employees felt the need for more CRM training
- 18% say this has caused them to lose opportunities or revenue.
- 76% of sales leaders report that their team doesn’t use the majority of the tools in their CRM
This is…not good.
That being said, make sure that every employee gets a full training on the software, including sales managers. Just the basic, but full training is all that's needed. The more the team uses it for the basic purposes, the more proficient they will get at the more advanced features.
2. Make sure it has the features you need
Proper training is important, but if the CRM doesn’t have the features to match your tasks and processes, you’ll have zero incentive for employees to get trained on the software, and even if they did get trained on it, it wouldn’t bring benefits to your business.
Common barriers to full and proper CRM usage include:
- Manual data entry
- Lack of integration with other tools (57% of sales reps feel their systems are poorly integrated)
- Sales funnel tracking difficulties
- Bad data
- Too complicated
Make sure your CRM offers the levels of automation, integration, tracking, data integrity, and ease of use that your organization needs. If not, it may be time to change CRMs.
3. Establish house rules
A CRM serves as the one source of truth so that improves connection and consistency in your operations.
With it, contacts can be passed from one team member to another and still receive the same great service. Roles and responsibilities can get passed from one employee to another while still maintaining the same processes and reports.
But all it takes is one person who doesn’t diligently update their notes or input their data to disrupt that operational fluidity. So make sure you establish house rules that make sense for your sales processes.
For example:
- Track and log every interaction with every customer and contact.
- After every interaction, immediately schedule a follow-up.
- Every marketing campaign needs to have a UTM tracking according to an established naming convention for source, medium, and campaign.
4. Add contextual details
One of the key purposes of a CRM is to store all of the contact’s information in one place so that you can reach out with context.
This is important for communicating with new leads, as you come to the table knowing how they encountered your business, what they’re interested in, what their pain points are, and more, so you can cater your communication.
It's also important for maintaining solid relationships throughout the customer journey. As you communicate more with someone, be sure to add in the little details like name pronunciations and anecdotal notes. Customers will appreciate when you recall small details. It shows that you listen and also that you care enough to resurface them.
