So you have a CRM for your business, or you’re thinking of getting one. What exactly should you expect your CRM to do for you?
This is a great question and the answer really depends on you. If you are a CRM newcomer, it’s best to focus on learning the basics and gradually allow your expectations to grow. Alternatively, if you’re tech savvy and you understand marketing automation, then you can expect much more.
Novice CRM Users
About you: You have your own business and you’re great at doing whatever your business does.
For illustration purposes, let’s pretend that you are a residential real estate agent. You know the real estate housing landscape for your area, you know how to close deals, and most importantly, you know how to schmooze! While you are an excellent agent, you are really a zero when it comes to knowing about marketing, software and technology. But that’s OK – You will still benefit from having a CRM.
CRMs come in all shapes and sizes and at the beginning of your CRM journey, you don’t need all the bells, whistles, and marketing automation functionality that some CRMs offer. If you can use a computer, you can use a CRM.
Expectations a Novice CRM User Should Have:
1. Your CRM will be the central depository for all of your contacts.
This would include your past clients, current clients, prospective clients, and the leads you are nurturing. But it doesn’t stop there, you would also add to your CRM referral partners, lenders, escrow officers, appraisers, and any other contacts that relate to your real estate business.
For each contact, you will have their basic information like name, email, phone number, physical address, and any other information you find important, like birthdays and anniversaries.
2. Your CRM will keep track of your notes and to-dos for each specific contact.
You have your contacts all in one place now – that’s a great start. The next thing you should expect your CRM to do is to keep track of client notes and important to-dos.
Every time you have a conversation with a client, jot some notes down… IN YOUR CRM! And then the next time you bring up that contact, your notes will remind you about things you previously talked about. This may not seem important, but in some cases, it could be vitally important. At a minimum, reviewing your previous notes before a call will make you look and sound like a professional who cares enough to remember client details.
Now that you have a system that keeps you organized when a client tells you to call them back in 6 months (the time they’ll be ready to do a transaction), you would add that action item to your CRM as a to-do and then you can forget about it. Your CRM will keep it logged and 6 months later, you’ll be notified that it’s time for you to take action. Forget the sticky notes and stop trying to keep everything straight in your head, just put it in your CRM.
These are just a few of the basic functions a novice CRM user should expect from their CRM. Pretty simple – isn’t it?
Learning to use the basics of your CRM is the first step and will be a huge value to your business. You are now way ahead of the “old you” who was relying on your memory to do things and keeping your contacts and their information scattered in various places.
Don’t think you have to do anything more here with your CRM. If you find a system (CRM) that keeps you organized and reminds you about important tasks – Be happy! Be proud of yourself! You are on your way!
And if you ever feel like you want to venture into the deep end of the pool, the advanced CRM functionality is there waiting for you.
Advanced CRM Users
About you: You have your own business and you’re great at doing whatever your business entails.
We are going to use the same example as before and pretend that you’re a residential real estate professional. You know the real estate housing landscape for your area, you know how to close deals, and most importantly, you know how to schmooze!
Hey! You sound a lot like a novice CRM user! But here’s the difference:
✓ You know your way around CRMs.
✓ You understand the value of marketing automation.
✓ You are comfortable with a bit of technology.
I would explain to you what you should expect your CRM should do for you, but, heck – if you’re an advanced CRM user, you already know this stuff! But for the benefit of the novice users who are still reading, let’s cover a few advanced CRM concepts. (Besides everything the novice user is using in the CRM).
1. Your CRM will handle your email and text marketing.
You’ve heard of Constant Contact and Mailchimp… right? They do email and text marketing, but you will still need a CRM to manage your contacts. If you have a great CRM (like AllClients) you will get all the email and text marketing functionality, PLUS all the CRM functions, all built into one system.
2. Your CRM will automate your marketing and follow-up tasks.
Attracting new clients is usually a several-step process. You send emails and text messages, you make outbound calls, you may send snail mail, and you do all of these things over a long period of time. Marketing and follow-up campaigns can have 25-50+ steps and can run for weeks, months, or even years.
Here is an example of a simple marketing campaign trying to attract a new lead:
Day 1: Email out a Free Report with valuable information
Day 3: Follow up with an email
Day 5: Follow up with a text
Day 8: Have your assistant call them and leave a voicemail
Day 10: Send another email
Day 14: Call them
Day 20: Send them another text
These campaigns contain multiple steps – and if you’re not using a CRM, guess who’s manually in charge of completing these tasks? You! When you use a CRM these tasks are automated, so you only need to get involved when it is your time to do something: Like on day 14 when you need to call them.
Your CRM Will Help You Do More
Advanced users will use their CRM to build and launch lead-generating landing pages. They will be able to analyze their client data by segmenting and sorting data in different ways. And they will have everyone on their team using the CRM, sharing contacts, assigning tasks to one another, and more.
As you can see, what you should expect your CRM to do for you, well… depends on you! It can be a simple tool to help you get organized, and it can also be the engine that runs all of your marketing. The important thing is that you have a CRM in the first place. If you don’t have one yet, or you are ready for an upgrade, start your free trial of AllClients today.
