How to choose the right CRM for your business?

LANE Digital
Mar 4, 2022
9 min read

Choosing a CRM for your business is a big decision. There are many criteria to consider, and finding the right software for your needs is not easy. In this blog post, we will give you some criteria for selecting a CRM to take for 2023. We will also look at the pros and cons of the different types of CRM available on the market. So, without further ado, let's see how to choose the right CRM.

What is a CRM and what is it used for?

CRM, or customer relationship management, is a strategy companies use to track customer relationships from pre- to post-sales. A CRM system is software that stores information about customer and prospect interactions with employees.

Marketing and sales touchpoints—including email, phone, website, live chat, and social media—are closely monitored, providing employees with detailed context about a customer's activity.

So, with a CRM, no more wasting time finding information on a particular customer. You're entering the era of organization. It positively forces you to be structured and centralize all information about a customer or prospect.

Next, CRM saves a lot of time on somewhat technical tasks. It often includes features for matching or sorting information, which are much easier to do than with an Excel spreadsheet.

It is much simpler, for example, to find all customers who:

are between March 2021 and January 2022,
placed an order of more than 1000 CHF (but less than 1500 CHF),
have known you through Facebook, in particular through such Facebook Ads advertising campaign,
and are based in Geneva.

Finally, CRMs naturally open up opportunities. Indeed, the primary business of CRM publishers is lead generation. Their goal is to provide a truly tailored tool for keeping up with the latest trends.

Without further ado, let's take a look at its main advantages.

The benefits of CRM for businesses

The advantage of having a CRM system is having a central database for all customer information. Because a company's most valuable and important asset is its customers.

Here are 5 main advantages of CRM integration:

Customer Data Management . By organizing all prospect and customer information in one place and then automating data entry, CRM software facilitates the smooth running of the sales process.
Sales Reporting. A CRM tracks quota achievement and activity metrics such as emails sent, calls made, meetings booked, opportunities created, and deals closed.
Accurate sales forecasting . A CRM system generates an accurate sales funnel, making it easier to forecast future sales and effectively manage your team's pipeline.
Customer segmentation . By segmenting prospects based on parameters such as location, deal size, or closing date, you can identify specific regions or industries to sell to and compare your average selling price and sales cycle.
Scaling a sales process . A repeatable sales process is essential for testing new sales moves and strategies. Without the information stored in a CRM, you risk shooting in the dark. To spot behavioral patterns and trends in effective and ineffective sales behaviors, you need this data. Otherwise, you won't be able to effectively grow your team or business.

Now you're thinking that all this is great, but how do I know if my business needs a CRM? We'll answer that in the next section.

Choosing the right software for your business

How do I know if my business needs a CRM?

There are some situations where a CRM isn't necessarily useful.

For example, if you work alone and only need 2 or 3 clients per year to make a living, a CRM is not mandatory.

This is the case for:

A technical expert (IT specialist for example) who finds long-term assignments without too much difficulty and is content to prospect for opportunities,
Or a tax lawyer who works on mergers and acquisitions for 1 to 2 years full-time and whose address book can provide him with work for the next 10 years.

But these are very special, even rare, cases.

This is why most businesses really need a CRM!

The questions you should ask yourself when assessing your need for a CRM system are:

Have you ever forgotten a prospect's name?
Do you regularly spend several minutes searching for a prospect's contact information?
Is managing your data becoming difficult?
Are there several people in your company contacting customers or prospects?
Do your customers often interact with multiple people on your team?
Do you need a better way to measure your sales team's productivity?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, your business could benefit from a CRM system . Adopting one sooner rather than later will help you avoid frustration and save you from future headaches.

Now you know that a CRM tool is essential for managing your business customer relationships. Let's get to the heart of the matter: how to choose the right CRM?

Criteria to consider when choosing a CRM

There are many CRMs to choose from, and many seem similar to each other. Choosing the best one really depends on your goals.

To help you, ask yourself these questions:

Why do we invest in CRM?
What operational business challenges do we need to solve?
What processes are we missing that we should implement?
How many people will use the CRM?
How much customer information do we have?
What other software do we use that CRM should integrate with?
What budget do we have?

The biggest mistake many first-time CRM buyers make is evaluating vendors before deciding on their own goals. By focusing on vendors, you end up reverse-engineering their offerings to define your needs, rather than focusing on areas of real business value for your company. For example, a mobile CRM sounds cutting-edge, but if you only run an on-site inside sales team, it might not be the best solution.

If multiple solutions really look the same, we recommend:

Contact the supplier and review your list of requirements with a sales representative.
Read product reviews and ask your peers what system they use.
Compare prices and focus on the features you need.

If in doubt, you can turn to professionals. LANE , for example, can help you not only find the most suitable solution for your business on the market, but also implement it in an optimal and integrated manner, while training the people involved.

Small business owners purchasing a CRM for the first time often underestimate the number of features they would need.

Additionally, using an overly complex system means you'll have to invest even more in setup and customization, which can be both wasteful and unnecessary when your challenges can be solved using less robust systems like these "CRMs."

In the next section, let's look at the features you need to know if you are an SME.

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SMEs: what are the essential features for choosing a CRM?

The CRM selection criteria are as follows:

Contact management . CRM systems provide a searchable database to store information about customers, prospects, and relevant documents.
Pipeline management and sales forecasting . Your CRM should make it easy to visualize your entire sales pipeline and move deals from one stage of the sales process to another. No more mental calculations to figure out what's closing this month.
Reporting and Analytics . Sales managers can use their CRM to track their team's activity and revenue growth to guide team coaching and sales forecasting.
Process standardization . CRMs help standardize business processes through unified task lists, calendars, alerts, and templates.

Of course, there are other CRM features that can be included:

Email Integration
Email tracking
Call recording
Interaction tracking
Software integration
Data enrichment and collection
Rankings
Mobile CRM

Feel free to review on sites like G2Crowd , GetApp or Software Advice to be sure to choose the right CRM, or to go through a specialized consulting company .

Now you know the importance of a CRM for your sales team, and you also know how to choose one. It's time to learn about the tools available on the market and what an expert can recommend.

Choose the CRMs we recommend for you

It's quite simple: there are hundreds of CRM tools.

Now, there are already fewer serious and professional CRM tools, but surely a few dozen...

To make things easier for you, we have selected a few tools for you.

Hubspot Sales Hub : A powerful and easy-to-use sales CRM that includes sales engagement tools, configure-to-quote (CPQ) functionality, and robust sales analytics for growing teams. This CRM has a vast ecosystem of application and solution partners to create an exceptional end-to-end customer experience.
Salesforce : Highly appreciated by many users, it is a CRM rather suited to large companies that want to accelerate sales, automate tasks and make smarter decisions in order to develop the business more quickly. Salesforce CRM offers: prospect and contact management, sales opportunity management, workflow rules and automation, customizable reports and dashboards, a mobile application.
ActiveCampaign : This is a highly integrated CRM that we recommend especially for those involved in e-commerce. The tool allows you to create automation based on customer engagement. For example: sending emails, upselling, etc. More than 75% of ActiveCampaign customers use its more than 850 integrations, including Microsoft, Shopify, Square, Facebook, and Salesforce.
Pipedrive : Basic and very easy to use, this tool is ideal for small businesses that don't necessarily have a very large sales team. When you use Pipedrive, nothing falls through the cracks, allowing your team to spend less time filing and more time selling with CRM software that's both agile and powerful.
Freshsales : A CRM that also has great potential for e-commerce players. It integrates seamlessly with Google. It features a beautiful, modern, and clean design. You can create WhatsApp campaigns and create quotes directly on the platform.

Is “made in Switzerland” important to you?

Honestly, this isn't a common question our customers ask. But it's a topical one. It's always a good idea to support Swiss companies, if you're a Swiss company, of course. If that's the case, you should know that there are Swiss CRMs like Bexio or InvestGlass .

As you can see, there are a wide range of CRM tools available on the market. Choosing a CRM will depend on the size of your business and your goals. If you'd like to learn more about these software programs, our consultants will be happy to help.

Now it is important to know what the CRM trend is for 2022.

The Biggest CRM Trend for 2022

If we have to make one overall prediction for technology and CRM in 2022, it's that more businesses will use technology to eliminate or automate what they don't want to manage, while achieving better results on the tasks they do focus on.

The recipe for this is a powerful CRM , automated workflows where possible, and a connected application stack where data moves freely between your applications.

If you're wondering, how big does your business need to be to have a CRM ? The answer for 2022 is: a company with just one employee is big enough.

When you're managing contact information, juggling a busy pipeline, and tracking client data, you can benefit from using a CRM. These are familiar pain points for freelancers.

So, while not all organizations are ready for sophisticated standalone analytics platforms, more and more SMBs are viewing CRM analytics as a must-have, not a nice-to-have.

To conclude on how to choose the right CRM

When you're developing your sales process, it's essential to have a CRM that can efficiently handle activities. Because competition in this market is fierce and there are so many different solutions offering similar features, the choices can be overwhelming.

But don't panic, the experts at LANE Digital Consulting can identify the one that will meet your company's specific needs and create buy-in among your entire sales team.

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The summary in 3 questions:

CRM: What is it?

A CRM, or customer relationship management system, is a software tool used by businesses to manage their interactions with customers. The program stores customer information and automates certain processes related to sales/marketing campaigns through various channels such as emails, phone calls, etc.

Why have one?

Whether you sell a product, provide services, or deal with customers of any kind, if your goal is to grow your business, you need a CRM. It's often said that it costs money, but it generates profits in return thanks to its effectiveness in building customer relationships, which translate into sales leads and loyalty over time.

What are the benefits?

Here are 6 benefits of a CRM to improve your customer relationships:

Knowledge and the capacity for infinite segmentation;
Increased loyalty with better anticipation of needs;
Faster communication, but also more secure, because there is no risk of data breach;
And finally, it creates an incredible relationship between companies that use it as their primary form or method of contact.

I'm ready to integrate HubSpot CRM into our team. What's next?

A common misconception about CRM systems is that they're clunky, complicated, and difficult to implement. But modern CRM systems no longer require the difficult setup they once did. They're quick and intuitive to use, eliminate many manual administrative tasks, and can be set up in minutes. HubSpot CRM is one such system.

However, if you're new to using a HubSpot CRM or simply want to see what HubSpot can do, LANE's experts can help. As a HubSpot partner, we'll install and configure your CRM before training your teams on best practices.