Week 60: The Beauty of CRM
Today’s topic is CRM; so how many of you have experience of this? Or are thinking of implementing one of these into the mix? A CRM is an acronym for:
‘Customer Relationship Management’
I have used this system several times throughout my career but it’s different when you want to adopt one of these for your own business. Several implications will apply before you decide to go ahead or not. Let's first take a look at what a CRM is and how it can help you. It's basically a large database system that holds the records of all your customers, clients, contractors and connections. Every business will have one of these end users and successful businesses will want to track them. Often it is assumed that a CRM is just a glorified digital phone & address book and this is true in its simplest form but its capabilities are far beyond anything you can imagine.
I was first introduced to this via my previous sales job and while it is very true that a lot of sales people use this, it’s not limited to this sector alone. In another role as a project manager (none property related) I managed an entire project beginning to end using a CRM system. You can also monitor your marketing campaigns using this. Hence, a CRM is basically the ‘mamma’ of all your business processes. Whether it be sales, marketing, project or events management. Let’s take a look at some of these further:
Contacts: All the information about your customers, suppliers, associates and agents etc. It will hold basics such as name, address, telephone, email plus whatever fields you want it to hold and any notes/updates against them.
Marketing: A simple leaflet drop to ‘houses for sale’ that fit our criteria to see if they would be happy to sell to us. For those that do get in touch, we will need to keep an eye on them, as often they only call for a quick insight and are not ready to commit. These are a direct result of our marketing efforts and we do not want to lose them.
Sales: This could be both agents or investors in my case. I would like to keep track of all the people who I come in contact with or visit and record this onto the system. As agents are working on behalf of the vendors, any good deals that come through would need to be negotiated back and forth before it is won. An investor who we are liaising with on LinkedIn will go through several stages before they sign any contracts to come onto our books.
Projects: A renovation(s) will need stringent monitoring from purchasing to completion and everything in between.
Events: Scheduling in a zoom call with an important client that has potential to become an investor. This will show in calendar against that particular contact with a history of all communications to date
Task: All your ‘To do’s’ are easily accessible against a named contact. Perhaps you would like to place an order with one of your merchants or call your local council. These tasks won’t always have a specific due date but just need to be done.
Social: This is the fun bit. You can control multiple social media platforms through CRM. Who would’ve known a CRM incorporating all things social??
I mean is there anything CRM can’t do? My main aim will be to increase my database and get organised by knowing where each and every one of my leads are in the sales pipeline and make sure the journey is smooth and seamless.