A CRM is exactly what its acronym implies,  A CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGER, a system created for managing and maintaining the customer relationship. This technology is used for organizing and maintaining your organization’s relationships, strategies and interactions with customers and potential customers. A good CRM helps to ensure that you buyer’s journey is an efficient one that benefits an improves your organization’s business.

What are the most popular CRMs?

According to Google, the top 5 most popular CRMs in the US for 2022 are:

• HubSpot CRM
• Pipedrive
• Netsuite CRM
• Salesforce CRM
• Monday.com CRM

How does an effective CRM help a small business?

As mentioned before, a good CRM can help to ensure that your buyer’s journey is efficient, effective and benefits your organization’s profits through customer satisfaction, retention, and advocacy. A good CRM can help alleviate sprawl by addressing the organizations customer & prospect-related needs all in one place. HubSpot CRM, for instance, as one of the leading CRMs for 2022 offers its client tools not only to manage communication with clients, but to manage deals, create & deliver marketing campaigns, house documentation and receive important analytics from reporting that are essential to long term success.

Who needs a CRM?

While there is a logic behind ALL organizations benefiting from a CRM, some organizations may benefit more than others. For instance, organizations with sales and marketing teams, organizations with long-term accounts to manage and those who may be experiencing trouble organizing customer data. Some examples of industries who may benefit are information technology, real estate, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors.

How does a CRM drive efficiency & growth?

A good CRM is much like Batman’s belt, stocked with tools which can be utilized to reach your organization’s sales and marketing potential. Deal monitoring, email tracking, social media scheduling – many CRMs have a tool for that!

These tools can help improve client retention by utilizing collected data to identify at-risk accounts so these relationships can be nurtured and encouraged to buy at the right moments. Also, since CRMs are an affective way of improving internal communication within your team, it makes all this valuable information available at everyone’s fingertips. A good CRM offers optimization and automation in marketing as well. Promotional campaigns and communications can be targeted, delivered, and promoted with relevance to the customer in mind. A good CRM will provide you with important analytics related to your customer base which allows for your business to gain better insight into what kinds of communication your audience best responds to. All that trickles down into one successful piece of software!

What types of CRM are there?

There are three main types of CRM systems.

Collaborative:

These CRMs break down traditional silos and ensure all teams have access to the same data. This allows your organization’s departments to work interdependently.

Operational:

This type of CRM employs more touchpoints and automation to streamline the organizations work and offload some of the tasks in the buyer journey which may not require a personal touch. This may be a good option for growing businesses with a smaller workforce in that it can help them to provide a high level of service as they grow.

Analytical:

An Analytical CRM’s primary focus is analyzing customer data and organizing it in a way that is useful to your business. This is used to determine how to successfully navigate the sales process.

Some CRMs combine all these options like your business’s own personal customer success superhero! Believe it or not, HubSpot CRM (again, one of the top CRMs for 2022) really does combine all these powers in one hard hitting platform, so you don’t have to choose!