Have you experienced the frustration of spending an alarming amount of money on a CRM system for your team, only to have it sit like a rather embarrassing white elephant in the office? 

Most businesses understand the value of having a good CRM in place. Many businesses have tried. Sadly, too many businesses have failed to benefit from this essential business system. 

The reasons why so many CRM implementations fail tend to be the same across all industries and sectors. Which of these have you experienced?

What’s the Point of a CRM?

Common knowledge tells us that CRM software is a vital tool for managing customer communication, building relationships, closing sales faster, and increasing overall profitability. Ask any customer service staff member or indeed anyone in the sales team, and they will agree that these factors are the backbone of a business.  

Surely then, when management invests in a brilliantly intuitive system that will make everyone’s life easier, streamline processes, and keep customers smiling, we should all be on board. Apparently not, and here’s why.

Lack of Strategy

Investing in CRM software doesn’t automatically solve all your problems, much like buying a car won’t help you if you don’t know how to drive. 

A CRM tool must work hand-in-hand with your CRM strategy. What is yours? What are your business objectives? What are your customer needs? What pain points are you currently experiencing? How are you going to measure your progress?

Answers to these and similar questions will lay the groundwork for a CRM strategy that works for your business and help you to choose the right software.  We all want to grow our business and increase revenue, but we can only do that if we have a constant pipeline of paying customers. A CRM strategy will assist you to focus on the right areas such as client retention, referral business, or a faster buying cycle. 

Team Resistance

It’s a universal truth that people don’t like change. Unfortunately, that can result in your team getting stuck in the rut of “the way it’s always been done” and miss out on the benefits of a great business tool.   

Moving away from a 5-year-old spreadsheet into unfamiliar territory is going to cause some discomfort, especially if it means more work.

One way to overcome the inevitable resistance to new systems is to take the time to train and educate your team. Showing them how it works, clearly mapping out what you expect from them, and highlighting the benefits will result in their support.  

If your staff can’t see the why, they’re certainly not going to care for the how. 

Providing the training and ongoing support during the honeymoon period will allow them the time and understanding to commit to a new way of working. The success of your CRM system may require that you spend time with various department heads to ascertain the impact of these changes and to anticipate adoption issues. 

Consistency

A CRM system is far more than a glorified database but at the same time, it’s only as good as the information that it holds. 

A critical factor to the success of your CRM implementation is that it must fully integrate with all your other systems, and most importantly, it needs to be the primary data source for all team members. 

A problem that many businesses run into is that some team members use the new system, and others aren’t as diligent. Some input the correct data timeously and others do so when they remember. It really is a team effort, and it may even be worthwhile incentivising your staff during the early stages of the implementation. 

CRM Implementations That Work

If you’re still considering a CRM implementation, take a quick look at these statistics:

• CRM can boost conversion rates by 300% (Source)
• 50% of teams improved their productivity by using a mobile CRM (Source)
• CRM applications can increase revenue by up to 41% per sales representative (Source)
• CRM is known to improve customer retention, by as much as 27% (Source)

We know that finding the right system for your business and making it work can be difficult. However, we also know that the benefits far outweigh the effort required to get these new, improved business processes off the ground. 

We’d like to encourage you to book a discovery call with our team and we’ll give you all the information and support that you need to grow your business. 

Call us on 0800 689 0837.Need more info? Discover how to Set up Your CRM System for Success in 6 Steps here https://www.stormspace.co.uk/crm-hack/