Benny Canady
Your customer relationship management (CRM) system is one of the most important tools you have for managing your business. It helps you track your leads, customers, and sales opportunities, and it helps you improve your customer service.
But if your CRM system is outdated or overly complicated, it's not performing as well as it could for your business. An ancient CRM system can be slow, inefficient, and difficult to use. It may also be missing essential features to keep up with the more up-to-date tools you and your customers use.
You may have multiple vendors to manage your CRM and your website's Content Management System (CMS), however, you can bring those two systems under one roof for better integration and lower costs. Time is money – if your team spends time managing data and dealing with tiny CRM/marketing automation issues instead of selling or other strategic activites, it is costing you. We're not making this argument based on hard costs- it’s practically a wash there, but the soft costs can kill you.
Here are a few reasons why it's essential to make a CRM transition during slow business times:
Reasons To Upgrade Your CRM
- Position yourself for growth: When the economy starts to improve, you'll be ready to take advantage of the increased demand. By investing in your business during a downturn, you can grow faster when the economy recovers.
- New features: New CRM systems come with a variety of new features that help you improve your business. These features can help you track your leads more effectively, close more deals, and provide better customer service.
- Better performance: Older CRM systems can be slow and sluggish. Upgrading to a newer version can improve your CRM's performance, making it faster and more responsive. An inclusive system also helps manage almost all your CRM technical requirements.
- Increased flexibility: New CRM systems are more flexible and scalable than older versions. This means you can easily add new features and functionality to your CRM system as your business grows.
- Good time to adjust strategies: It’s a good time to review recurring costs to see if they still make sense or if there are other ways to address them. Services like SEO optimization may no longer be necessary, or having all those add-on expenses with your current CRM might be included in alternative solutions.
- Refresh your website CMS: If you feel trapped by an agency managing your website, where making simple changes and keeping your content fresh is an elongated process you'd love to handle in-house, it might be a good time to break free and control your destiny. Although technology startups and smaller companies are web agencies' bread and butter, are you sure you truly need them? (Check out our article: Why HubSpot is Our Preferred Platform for more on this.)
- Support may be easier and cheaper during slow times: If your business is slow, agencies and consultants are often slow too. If you push, you may get a better deal, better transition completion times, and more focus. It never hurts to ask. But, of course, you must do your due diligence and check out your options.
Don't just take our word for it. Our customer, IsosTech, a top Atlassian reseller and implementor, began a tech stack consolidation project across their website, sales, and marketing systems in February 2020. They could have halted the project at anytime and re-deployed money towards salaries and business expense. They didn't and have gone on to double growth from pre-2020. Read about IsosTech's migration and consolidation journey here.
Steps to Upgrading Your CRM
If you're ready to upgrade your CRM system, there are a few things you need to do.
1) Make a Choice
First, you need to choose a new CRM system. Several different CRM systems are available, so it's essential to research and choose one that's right for your business.
How to Know If Your Problem is CRM
2) Data Migration
Once you choose a new CRM system, you must migrate your data to the new platform. This can be a complex process, so it's essential to have professional help you. This can also present a terrific opportunity to clean up your data.
3) Team Training
Finally, you must train your team to use the new CRM system to help them get the most out of it and ensure your business continues running smoothly.
Upgrading your CRM system is a big decision but can pay off in the long run. Upgrading to a newer, more secure, and feature-rich system can improve your business's efficiency, productivity, and profitability.
Need Help With Your CRM?
Does this sound familiar in your day-to-day ops?
- There is too much critical data and key contact information on spreadsheets or on local staff desktops/laptops
- Management and sales lack visibility into the sales process and the pipeline
- It is difficult to provide reliable forecasts to investors and key stakeholders
These issues and other data headaches mean you desperately need to get your data in order with a working CRM that will support your business. We can help!
Our team helps small businesses and tech startups:
- Determine which CRM and sales solution is right
- Define and build unique lead and deal properties (fields)
- Define and build Deal Stages and Sales Pipeline(s) based on existing sales processes
- Classify data into actionable segments
- Cleanse and load CRM data from multiple sources
- Inventory existing sales content and load key pieces for trackable use by sales
- Integrate SFDC and any other team tools
Let's get to work! Schedule a consultation and let our experience pay off for you!
