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A CRM can improve your sales process, but it’s essential to choose the right one for your needs. To help you choose the best CRM, consider these factors.
Table Of Contents
Your Goals
Before you look into CRMs to see what new fancy feature is promoted this week, take a moment and ask yourself: What exactly do I NEED? What are my goals? To those ends, what features must my CRM contain?
After you think about your absolute must haves, what are some secondary goals that you would like solved in your CRM? These are the non-essential features you would like, which you either do in another system or don’t do at all.
If you’re unsure of the specifics of what you need or the broader things to look out for, we have you covered.
1. Industry Specific CRMs
Some of the big name CRMs are highly customizable, but that often means more work upfront to get your system to where it needs to be. Some CRMs are tailored to fit specific industries, such as SaaS, technology, or finance. Search the Internet for CRMs by industry to find some hidden gems.
2. Native Functionality
As noted in the goals above, your must-have features should be native to your CRM. Let’s compare functionality that’s integrated vs. native to your tool.
Cost
Integrations can be expensive, and you may need to pay for add-ons to get the most out of the software. Be aware that many CRMs have tiered prices. This means that while it may have native functionality, it may cost more than your integration. Keep an eye out for this one!
Setup
Configuration and setup of integrations can be complex and time-consuming. Native functionality wins here because it’s already built into the system.
Data Quality
Integrations can break down, which results in bad data, which can cause data type mismatches or format inconsistencies, which can pollute your data quality and reduce the dependability and accuracy of your system. Data that is native to the system should not have this issue.
Too Many Systems
Too many integrated systems can slow down your CRM. However, some CRMs are slow on their own. Demo products when possible and ask your rep about the speed of the system. Don’t forget to get IT involved as they can help you to understand the technical jargon.
Integration challenges
With an integration of a third party software, organizations may need to invest significant time and effort to ensure a seamless flow of data. Not every team has the time or resources to learn the ins and outs of the integration, which can create dependency on third-party vendors. Native solutions don’t have this issue, but can come with their own challenges.
3. Integrations
I know that we just talked about the downsides of integrations in the section above, but they can be a great bridge when native functionality does not exist. Many CRM companies come with out of the box integrations to many systems and provide a seamless flow of data. Below are a handful of key integrations that you may find to be extremely useful.
Integration with email platforms like Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, or other popular email clients is essential. This integration allows users to sync their emails with the CRM, track email interactions, and associate emails with specific contacts or leads.
Calendar
Enables you to manage your schedule directly within the CRM. Calendar events can be linked to specific contacts or accounts in the CRM. This enables you to access customer information and history before each meeting, which allows for better preparation and more personalized interactions. After a meeting, you can easily schedule follow-ups directly from the CRM, which ensures that post-meeting actions are promptly recorded and completed.
Marketing Automation
When you integrate your CRM with a marketing automation platform, such as Eloqua, Marketo, or Mailchimp, it enables automated lead nurturing, targeted campaigns, and better tracking of marketing efforts and their impact on sales.
Financial Management
This allows sales representatives and customer service teams to access relevant financial data, such as customer payment history, outstanding invoices, and credit limits. This information is valuable for understanding a customer’s financial health. If you select a financial management tool for integration, it’s imperative to ensure compatibility with the CRM and proper data security measures to protect sensitive financial information.
Customer Support
Customer Support Integration with systems such as Zendesk or Freshdesk allows for a unified view of customer interactions and support tickets, which enables better customer service and issue resolution.
Other Business Tools
There are endless tools that can integrate with CRMs. Before you purchase a CRM, see if it can integrate with other tools that you currently use. Even better, see if the CRM can replace some of the tools you use to help reduce the number of integrations.
4. UI/UX
While different systems have different features based on problems they want to help you overcome, many of them have a confusing user interface and do not provide the most user friendly experience. You can get a free trial of many CRMs today. Be sure to sign up and click around to get a feel for the interface and experience.
One key element to keep an eye out for is circular data. No matter where you are in the system, you should be able to see and navigate to the associated objects. For example, if you have a deal with Acme Corporation and their Head of Operations. If you are on the deal screen, you should be able to see Acme Corporation as the associated company and their Head of Operations as the associated contact. Furthermore, you should be able to click into each to navigate to the company and contact. The system should be circular.
5. Deal Tracking
While most systems enable you to create customized fields, deal stages, and the like, there is one key function that is especially useful.
Week Over Week Changes
We all need to start to look at our data today against what it was at previous points in time.
Imagine you are the head of sales in your Monday morning meeting with 10 reps, each of whom has 10 deals in their pipeline. It would be nearly impossible to know off the top of your head which deals had a change in close date, total contract value, or deal stage since your call last Monday. When you easily have access to deal changes, you get a better view into what’s really going on with your pipeline.
Few CRMs have this functionality, but it is something that everyone should look out for.
6. Reporting
When you consider a CRM, it’s easy to overlook reporting. It’s something that every CRM has, but it may not be up to par. Here are 5 things to look out for:
Cross Object Reporting
This enables users to access and combine data from related objects to create comprehensive reports that include information from multiple sources. An example is if you want to see a listing of all open deals and the associated contacts. Without cross object reporting, you can only look at deals or contacts; not both.
Cross Object Filtering
This enables users to filter data from multiple objects to create a report for a single object. An example is if you want to see a report of all open deals, but only the ones that have the CEO as an associated contact.
Customizable
Some systems only provide out of the box, pre-built reports. This severely limits the capability of what you can report on.
Easy to Read
Reports aren’t worth a thing if they aren’t easily digestible. I have had managers and reps that have looked at reports with complete confusion because the visuals were too small, too condensed, or laid out in a poor fashion.
Click Through
Reports can be extremely helpful to both reps and managers. If you can look at summarized data and click into it to see the underlying data, you will find your life to be that much easier. Imagine you see a report that shows you had 10 deals close last quarter for a total of $100K, but cannot click through. The report is used for one thing and one thing only, seeing the number of deals close and the total. If you click through, you can see what those deals were, how much each one was, who was the owner, the exact date they closed, and more.
7. CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote)
CPQ helps businesses streamline and optimize their quote and proposal process. This is particularly useful for companies that offer complex products or services with various customizable options, price tiers, and configurations. If you get your hands on a demo keep an eye out for the following. If you can’t get a demo, be sure to discuss these thoroughly with your sales rep:
Customizable Pricing
Check if the CRM enables you to customize your pricing beyond a few dropdown select options. Think about the way you currently do pricing or the way you would ideally like to do it, and try to replicate that in the system. This is especially important if you have a complex pricing structure with dependencies and formulas.
Customizable Quotes
Your CRM should have the capability to customize quotes and pull in data from your deal, and associated company & contacts.
Approval Workflows
To have pricing is not enough. Your system of choice should enable you to forward pricing for approval. For managers out there, it should enable you to receive notifications when a rep asks for an approval; and of course approve or reject the pricing. The same goes for quotes.
Email From CRM
CPQ wouldn’t be complete unless you could also send the quote from your system to your prospect.
8. Contracts
Contracts management in your CRM system helps to streamline contract creation, improve collaboration, increase efficiency, and reduce manual work.
Create
If possible, you want the ability to create a contract from an existing template that pulls in data from your deal, associated company & contacts, and CPQ because it saves a tremendous amount of time. Think about your current process to get a contract crafted if it’s done manually vs. the click of a few buttons.
Edit & Share
The ability to create a contract from existing CRM data is a great feature, but not enough on its own. You also want to be able to edit the data and share it with your team who can also edit it.
If you cannot edit and share the contract internally, you’re back to a manual process: export the contract from the CRM, edit it, email the team about your edits, have countless back and forth emails which clutters your inbox, email the final version to the prospect, and then remember who has the official final version.
Email From CRM
To create a contract and edit it all within the CRM only to have to export it and then manually email the doc to your prospect would be a shame. Your system should enable you to email your contracts.
Redlines & Signature
The contract process would not be complete without redlines and the ability to sign. Look to see how redlines are done, if at all within the system.
Database
Lastly, if you found a great system that can handle all of the aforementioned, it would complete the package to be able to securely store your contracts within your system.
9. Activities
Users should be able to send and receive emails directly within the CRM, enabling seamless communication with leads, prospects, and customers.
Calendar & Tasks
The CRM should allow users to schedule appointments, set reminders, and create tasks for follow-ups, ensuring that important interactions are not overlooked.
Log Calls
Users should be able to log and track phone calls made or received with customers, providing a record of communication history.
Notes
You should be able to record notes, meeting summaries, and any other interactions with customers to maintain a comprehensive history of engagements.
10. Customer Support
Customer support in a CRM enhances customer service capabilities, streamlines support processes, and provides a unified view of customer interactions. This integration leads to improved customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, ultimately contributing to the overall success and growth of the business.
11. Budget
The reason I left the budget for last is because it’s a bit tricky. The question shouldn’t necessarily be how much can I spend on a CRM, but how much should I spend on a CRM. This really depends on the value you will get out of it.
If your CRM can replace a number of third-party tools, then a higher budget should be allocated vs. a CRM that replaces nothing.
Pay attention to:
Value
Remember how this post started; with your goals. Ensure that the product you purchase has the functionality to help you solve your key issues and help you accomplish your goals. The list of possible goals to track in your CRM is a post on its own: see here.
Pricing Tiers
Ensure the CRM pricing is in line with industry standards and compare pricing packages for available features. If you get access to a free trial or get a demo from a rep, you may see functions that are only available at the higher tiers.
Hidden Costs
This ties closely to Price Tiers. Check for hidden costs such as support, updates, additional licensing, and integration costs.
To Be Continued – Find The Best CRM
Please note that this is not a comprehensive list. There are always more things to be on the lookout for when on the hunt for the best CRM for you and your team.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this article next month for more important elements to look out for.