Guest contributor Russell Frazier provides his take on why all businesses need a CRM system
5 Reasons Why You Need CRM System (From a Marketing Agency View)
I believe every single business should be using a CRM system, no matter how large or small the business.
My company, Visigility, is a digital marketing agency located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We build websites. We also help our clients get more traffic and increase sales through online marketing.
We communicate with dozens of small business owners on a weekly basis, and we see a variety of different systems for managing communication with leads, prospects and customers. Some are very organized, making the customer journey a pleasant one, while yielding great results for the company.
Other systems are very fragmented with little consistency in communication, follow-up and procedures. Forgotten phone calls, poor follow-up or follow-through leave potential customers and current customers feeling neglected, while the company misses out on opportunities to close deals and delight its clients.
If you want your company to grow, you can’t afford not using a CRM solution.
I started my first agency in 2008, and for a couple years, we used a combination of hand-written notes, flagged emails, calendar reminders, spreadsheets and Word docs to track communication with our clients. To say that it was disjointed is an understatement.
After testing several CRM platforms, we finally settled on one that worked well for our company. We saw an instant boost in sales, while our clients’ frustration level was reduced as well. I started another agency in 2014, and the cloud CRM platform was one of the first things I set up for the company.
How exactly can a CRM system help your business?
- Consistent communication – you will be confident that leads are handled with care, because you will be delivering better communication at the right times to keep the sales process moving
- Boost efficiency – by streamlining and automating sales and customer service processes, you will cut down on the man-hours required to serve customers (while doing a much better job)
- More sales (and bigger sales) – when you implement a regular follow-up plan, you understand your customer better and can deliver the right solution to their problem
- Work better as a team – your team members will know what has been communicated to the customer avoiding wasted or confusing overlap
- Refine your marketing & sales processes – a good CRM will provide data insights to help you understand how various steps of the marketing and sales process are working. You can use this learned information to make better choices about marketing channels and sales processes
No matter what size company you run, your investment in CRM will provide nearly instant ROI, as you will be better equipped to serve your customers.
About Russell Frazier
Russell Frazier is a Digital Marketing Specialist & Founder of Visigility, a web design & marketing agency in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s been called a digital business engineer, taking a “whole company” view of the client’s business when planning growth. Russell’s team has worked with hundreds of website owners in the development and marketing of goods and services through proven online strategies that increase website traffic and grow revenue. When he’s not building business or writing, he can be found trail running around Tulsa or teaching one of his many teenagers how to drive. Contact Russell through his website, www.visigility.com or on LinkedIn.