Customer relationship management tools
There are lots of great customer relationship management (CRM) tools out there that you could use in your business. With so many options, it can be difficult to choose, especially if you’re going to invest money in one. Use the advice below to find some of the popular customer relationship management tools available on the market.
What is customer relationship management (CRM)?
It’s highly likely that you have seen the letters CRM somewhere in your business day-to-day. Customer relationship management, or CRM, are the tools you use to manage all your interactions with (potential) customers. Used properly, a CRM system can help you stay connected with your customers, streamline your marketing and improve your profits.
Your CRM system will store all your customer data in one place, and will let you identify sales opportunities, manage your marketing campaigns and record any customer issues. That information will then be available to anyone in your business who needs to access it. This also helps to make sure that tasks don’t drop off if someone goes on holiday or gets ill.
If you want to learn more about managing your sales, you might be interested in applying for fully funded (free) training thanks to the Skills Support for the Workforce programme. To find out more, get in contact.
Why does a CRM matter?
You can operate your business well without having a CRM system in operation, but you could be losing out on lots of extra sales by not understanding your customers.
Your CRM system will give you a clear overview of your customers in a customisable dashboard so you can monitor the things that really matter to your business. You can see their previous history with you, who they’ve spoken to in your organisation, what purchases they’ve made, even their social media activity.
As you can tell, you can really track their likes and dislikes, and send targeted marketing campaigns to them. Knowing exactly what your customers are interested in and where they fit into your business can be invaluable for increasing the number of sales you can make.
Popular customer relationship management systems
There are so many different CRM systems out there that you can use for your business. We’ve pulled together some of the most popular options for you to have a look through.
Salesforce
Salesforce offer the tools you need to manage your relationships and help you with marketing automation, turning potential customers into sales. They can even help you evaluate your effectiveness. It has customisable dashboards that you can use to monitor the key element you’re interested in and is linked through to social media so you can send out messages without leaving the site.
However, it can be tricky to get your head around when you start using it, as there are so many features to get used to. You’ll have to spend a bit of time familiarising yourself with how it works and adopt a little trial and error with its reporting tools before you figure out what works best for you.
Zoho
Zoho is quite popular with smaller businesses and its mobile app means you can access the site quickly and easily, no matter where you are, for real-time updates on your progress. You can match sales leads to specific team members to make sure the customers with the most potential are always being taken care of. They work on a monthly payment basis, so you can change your plan with them as you need to, and they offer different plans to suit your needs and budget.
Insightly
Insightly was specifically developed for small business owners. They have a free version that will allow you and one other person to access information about customers and track the stage of different projects. You can easily integrate MailChimp, Quickbooks, Hubspot and other popular content management systems if you choose their paid service. Insightly doesn’t offer as much integration with social media as some of the other CRM systems do. As such, if you have a big social presence, you might want to look elsewhere.
Freshworks
Freshworks offer a number of different services for your business, but their tailored CRM system, Freshsales, helps you to capture customer activity information, use built in phone and email messaging and find the best potential sales leads. Like Zoho, it works on a monthly payment plan that you can upgrade or downgrade at any time.
Hubspot
Hubspot make it really easy to organise, track and grow your contacts and manage your customer’s journey from subscriber to happy customer. Their basic CRM is free to use, but you can get lots of add-ons to give you more detailed information about what your customers want. You can use the tool to track your impact on social media, create landing pages for your offers and create progress reports.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive automatically tracks your emails, calls and other marketing actions. They keep things simple and don’t offer a lot of add-ons so you can focus on the actual pipeline of your customer’s sales journey. It can help you identify where you might be losing sales and pick the customers who are most likely to buy so you always know where to focus your attention.
These are by no means the only options available to you, they are simply some of the most widely used customer relationship management tools. Take the time to browse other options and look through their various prices and features to find the best system for you. Most offer free trials that you can use to test whether or not the system fits your needs which we’d really recommend you use before committing to paying for a CRM system.
Articles
Help is one call away: how the Growth Hub helpdesk can support you
Are you thinking about starting, growing, or scaling your business? Hear about how the Growth Hub helpdesk can help you by providing the latest business support, tailored to your needs.
New support for York and North Yorkshire businesses as leading regional media figure joins the Growth Hub
Mike Pennington, a familiar name in the UK media industry, has recently joined the York & North Yorkshire Growth Hub as a Business Relationship Manager. In 2023, he'll be bringing his expertise to businesses in our region and connecting them with the Made Smarter scheme.
York, North Yorkshire and East Riding employers urged not to miss out on free skills training
Employers across York, North Yorkshire and East Riding are being reminded that it’s their last chance to take advantage of free training and support through the Skills Support for the Workforce Programme before the it ends in March 2023.
Events
15th February 20239:00 am - 5:00 pmFREE
15 Feb - Harrogate Co-Lab: Business Support Drop-In Session
This free drop-in service based in Harrogate can help answer your questions and direct you to relevant business support, resources and programmes.
22nd February 20239:00 am - 4:30 pmFREE
22 Feb - Pitching Perfectly - To win new business
Are you a small to medium sized food or drink business that wants to win more business and need to plan the perfect pitch? This full day workshop will help you understand what buyers are looking for and give you the confidence to pitch to them.
01st March 20234:00 pm - 6:00 pmFREE
1 March - Ian Howard- The Enterprise Growth Roadmap
In this two-hour session, Ian Howard will introduce The Enterprise Growth Roadmap. Regardless of where you are at right now, whether you are just launching your business, trying to make sense of the number of opportunities available to you or looking to attract external investment, the Enterprise Growth Roadmap Planning Workshop will help you create a framework to develop your own growth strategy together with some simple steps to help you implement it.
Resources
Glossary of Climate Change Terms for Businesses
A free digital glossary defining the key climate change terms relevant to businesses, to help you understand and engage with sustainability resources and support.
2022 Seminar Recordings
We have recently hosted a programme of in-person seminars and other events, some of which were professionally recorded and can now be viewed on our website.
Seminar Recording : Access to finance: Funding growth
This workshop will provide guidance on cost based pricing, calculating your costs before deciding an appropriate margin, as well as covering market based pricing asking questions such as: What value do you add? What are you worth? How do you position yourself?