How to Create a CRM Strategy for Your Business

Running a business while trying to keep track of leads, prospects, and clients can be a lot to handle. You need an effective CRM strategy to help you manage your clients’ information and communications. By definition, a CRM strategy is a plan made by a business to guide its interactions with potential customers and current consumers.

The strategy will help your team remain on the same page with any changes that occur with each customer. That way, you’ll enhance the customer experience, boost customer satisfaction, and win customer’s trust. An effective CRM strategy can boost customer retention by up to 27%. 

In this article, you’ll learn how to create a successful CRM strategy for your business. Follow these steps:

1. Define your CRM goals

In any organization, goal-setting is important. Goals tell your team where you want to take your business. Your CRM goals should align with your overarching goals in business. CRM software should contribute to your business’s success.

For instance, if your business goal is to boost app engagement or increase sales by X% within the month, your CRM goal could be to get ideal customers to go through the sales funnel and make their first purchase. You could also focus on getting repeat purchases from your loyal customers.

But for the best results, make sure your CRM goals are also specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. SMART goals tell your team the exact targets they need to hit to be considered successful. An example of a smart goal could be to “reduce response time by 50% within three months."

Once you have your goals, break them down into smaller, more manageable chunks or objectives. Your objectives are the specific ways you’ll achieve each goal. For instance, for the smart CRM goal above, an objective could be to use time-based alerts to ensure no responses are delayed. Set timelines for each objective. 

Now that your CRM goals and objectives are set, you can move on to the next step.

2. Understand your customer base

Customer relationship management has everything to do with customer relations and converting online customer engagement into sales. Therefore, the next step in your CRM strategy will be understanding your customer base. To do this, you need to map out the customer journey through your sales funnel. Then, create customer profiles. 

For this, research the interests, demographics, aspirations, behaviors, and challenges that your target customers typically face. Your marketing team can help you with this. Consider interviewing your customer service team as well. Sending customer surveys to your clients can also help.

Here’s an example of a customer profile or a buyer persona:

Ultimately, your CRM strategy will only be effective if you understand who your customers are. Your buyer persona can help you determine your customers’ preferred platform of interaction, among other things. When you cater to their preferences, you can build lasting relationships with them.

3. Select the right CRM software

A staggering 74% of businesses agree that using CRM software enhances customer relationships. CRM software is a technology that allows you to organize these relationships with customers and potential customers. It doesn’t just serve as a central database of customer information. It also helps you track previous customer interactions so you or any member of your team can pick up right where you left off.

To select the best CRM software for your business, assess the tools you use for your business processes. These will inform the right CRM tool for you. After all, your CRM needs to integrate with your existing tech stack. That way, any changes made on another application will automatically reflect and update on the CRM.

Consult the company’s different departments that will need access to customer information. Understand what would make their work easier. Take note, too, of the features they’d like your CRM tool to have. 

With a holistic view of what your business needs, you can now determine the CRM tool that works for you. Remove from your list of potential CRM tools those platforms that don’t have the capabilities your departments requested. Then compare the prices of the remaining tools on your list. Make sure you consider the ease of use as well. Remember, all the relevant departments should be able to easily use the tool.  

TIMIFY passes the ease of use test with flying colors. Plus, it doesn’t just offer customer relationship management features. It also makes online scheduling, resource management, and team planning easy.

TIMIFY can also easily integrate with the rest of your tech stack. TIMIFY offers neat integrations with key software solutions like Microsoft 365, Google Calendar, Zapier, Meta for Business and more. Thanks to these integrations, you can easily send data across platforms. This helps you save time because you don’t have to manually transfer the data from one platform to the other.

4. Implement automation in CRM workflows

Automation helps to streamline CRM workflows and reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks. With CRM software, you can set up specific tasks to be automatically done for you. 

For instance, you can connect your lead capture form to your sales pipeline. That way, whenever a lead fills in the form, their data is automatically filled into the pipeline. This kills the need for manual pipeline updates. It also reduces the number of errors that are made by employees as they manually enter data or move information from one place to another. Here’s a sample CRM workflow that can be automated:

With field-dependent and time-based triggers, a CRM administrator can also automate the following:

• Sending of follow-up reminders to rep in charge of an account
• Notification to account manager about impending expiration date of customer account
• Sending of apology email to customer who complained

Automation saves your employees precious time, allowing them to focus on higher-priority tasks like deal closing. The increased efficiency boosts employee morale and work satisfaction. This then reflects back on how they treat your customers, ensuring positive experiences.

Besides, when you leverage automation in your CRM, you also ensure consistency in the customer experience. With CRM workflow automation, you can provide standardized protocols that are always followed. If the protocols are any good, then the result is likely always an excellent customer experience.

5. Monitor and analyze CRM performance

Your CRM strategy cannot be complete without analysis. A CRM report helps you track the performance and activity information of your marketing, sales, and customer support teams. This data is then represented in a visual format so that it can be easy to view and review results. The data is also easy to share with colleagues. Below is an example of a CRM report.

To determine whether or not your CRM strategy was successful, go back to your CRM goals and objectives. Did you meet them within the specified period? 

You’ll also want to look at general CRM metrics that measure an organization’s overall success. Here are some of them:

Customer turnover: The percentage of customers a business lost given a period.

Rate of renewal: This is a critical CRM metric for subscription-based companies. How many customers renewed their contracts with the company in a month or year?

Length of sales cycle: How long does it take for someone to buy from you? The shorter the sales cycle, the better.

First call resolution: This is the percentage of issues resolved at the first customer contact. You want a high FCR because it means your team is diligent in answering and addressing customer issues.

Customer lifetime value: This metric measures the value of a customer to a business given a period.

Tracking performance helps reveal any inefficiencies that may be present in your current CRM strategy. So, you can make the necessary adjustments. For instance, if customer turnover is high, you might want to look at whether or not customer issues are being addressed quickly with your CRM.

You’ll also need to entertain the possibility that the chosen CRM platform doesn’t really meet the business’ needs in practice. So, encourage your marketing department, the sales team, and customer support to share their experiences in using the CRM platform. Ask their feedback on the following:

• The tool’s ease of integration: Does the tool integrate well with department processes in practice?
• Features and functionality: Do the features help each department with its already-existing tools or are they redundant
• Simplified usability: Is it easy to use?
• Data visualization: Are the reports generated by the CRM easy to understand?
• Data storage: Can the tool store big chunks of data and can they be easily accessed?

If there are major issues, you can create a plan of action. So, you might decide to hold training sessions for your departments if you get complaints the CRM tool is not user-friendly, for example. Or, if you find the tool doesn’t integrate well with your tech stack in practice, then you can decide to scrap it altogether and look for another one.

In closing

If you want to succeed as a business, you need to organize and manage your relationships with leads, prospects, and customers. That’s why a CRM strategy is key.

You learned how to create an effective CRM strategy with this article. Start by defining your CRM goals. Your goals will act as a guiding light and a reference point for the rest of your CRM strategy. Then, understand your loyal customer base by mapping the buyer journey. Customer personas will also help you understand them better so you can communicate with them better.

Also, select the right CRM tool. Ease of use, cost, and capabilities are the key considerations when choosing the ideal software. Also, implement automation in your CRM workflows to reduce errors and boost work efficiency. As a final tip, monitor and analyze your CRM strategy performance so you can make the necessary adjustments if there are inefficiencies. 

Follow these tips. You’ll soon have an effective CRM strategy that can boost your customer engagement, and ultimately, help you reach your business goals.