How to Build A CRM Strategy for Your Business

What is CRM strategy?

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy is an approach to increasing sales and improving customer service using a combination of action, technology, and processes. It usually involves sales, marketing, customer service, and other business functions.

The traditional buyer-seller model is no longer relevant. It has been replaced by a customer-centric model. Businesses now have dedicated CRM strategies to manage customer relationships.

One reason is that customers have higher expectations of customer service. If your service is not up to par, they won’t hesitate to go elsewhere.

We tend to think of CRM software when we hear the phrase “CRM strategy”. Software is just one piece of a larger puzzle.

The best customer relationship management strategy includes both people as well as software.

Keep reading for our 8 ways guide on how to develop a CRM strategy that works for you.

What CRM strategy can be used to grow my business?

A CRM strategy is necessary for many reasons.

You will benefit from a good CRM strategy:

• Enjoy a pleasant customer experience at every touchpoint of the customer journey
• Increase collaboration among sales, marketing, customer service, and other departments
• Quickly and clearly identify the most valuable leads and opportunities
• Track your customers and leads as they progress through the buyer funnel
• Targeted marketing campaigns should be conducted
• To guide and inform your business future strategies, create concrete numbers and data insights

Create a CRM strategy starting from zero

Here are 8 ways to develop a CRM strategy.

1. Define your CRM strategy vision

Before you start creating a CRM strategy, it is important to review your business strategy and top-level business goals.

Make a vision of the goals you want to achieve with your CRM strategy. This will ensure that the CRM strategy has a clear purpose right from the beginning.

Consider how you can contribute to the success and growth of your company.

Common CRM Strategy Goals include increasing customer satisfaction, improving productivity, efficiency, and decreasing customer turnover rates.

Your CRM strategy is not an end-all. It will help you in achieving your business goals. It is important to incorporate it into your overall business strategy.

Also read: 10 Best Big Data CRM Tools To Grow Business Sales

2. Define your target customers with buyer personas

Make a buyer persona to represent your ideal customer. It should be as complete as possible.

These are some research methods that you can try:

• Interview your customer service and sales teams
• Learn about different customer profiles and interview customers directly.
• Surveys to customers

You must understand who is buying from you, and why. This will allow you to maintain strong customer relationships and draw quality leads.

It is crucial to have a clear buyer profile in order to be customer-centric. This is essential to ensure your teams are focused on your customers’ needs and expectations.

3. Define your customer journey

You must be able to understand every step of the customer journey in order to master customer relationship management. You must then ensure that each touchpoint provides a great customer experience.

Start at the beginning.

Every customer interaction, starting from the moment they discover you, should be recorded. This could be digital advertising campaigns, email marketing, direct contact, or any other process.

This is where you will highlight areas that need improvement and who is responsible.

Ask yourself these questions when mapping out each stage of the buyer’s journey:

• Which team/process is currently interacting with the customer?
• What can be done to improve these interactions?
• Take a look at the buyer personas you created in Step 2. Based on the information you have about your customer, what is his preferred method of communication? Is there a better way to communicate your message?
• What is the customer trying to achieve?
• What are the challenges that customers face? What can you do to provide better customer support?
• Which content does the customer come in contact with?

4. Establish the processes to provide a 360° customer experience

The areas where you need to improve your CRM strategy planning should be highlighted in your CRM strategy planning.

You’ll now examine the structure of your internal processes. Are you able to offer a 360-degree customer experience with the right resources?

To ensure that all bases are covered, audit roles and responsibilities.

These are some examples

• Presales: What are your skills when it comes to gathering information and analyzing customer needs?
• Sales processes What sales tasks can you automate to improve efficiency?
• Customer relationship management Are you tailoring your offers to customers’ needs? Are your communications relevant and personalized?
• After-sales Do you have the systems in place that can quickly resolve customer issues? How do customers rate your customer service quality?

5. Study the market and determine your positioning

When developing CRM strategies, it’s always a good idea for inspiration to see what the competition is doing.

Ask yourself:

• How does your company fit in the market?
• What is your unique selling point (i.e. What makes you unique in your industry?
• What makes your competitors stand out?
• What are the opportunities?
• What can you learn from your competitors about customer relations?
• What are the current trends in your industry?

6. Identifying your product and service

Spend some time revising and developing your product/service story and defining your value proposition.

What messages do you want to send? What are your benefits? Why should clients choose you over other competitors?

This narrative should be communicated internally. Implement employee training if necessary. Everybody needs to communicate the same message and be on the same page.

This is a great opportunity to establish your brand voice and set best practices for communicating with customers.

7. Invest in CRM software

CRM software can be a great way to advance your CRM marketing strategy.

It’s great for team collaboration, customer information storage, and tracking all interactions between you.

Get input from your teams and evaluate your current business processes to determine your CRM software requirements.

When choosing a CRM software, the main considerations are price, features, and ease of use. Your CRM should be able to integrate with existing tools.

CRM software is part of the all-in-one marketing platform, so integrations with other marketing tools are not a problem.

Once the software is installed, you will need to create rules for how it should be used. To manage user access, designate an administrator. How and when will your teams use the software?

It is also important to define what constitutes a prospect, lead, or opportunity.

It is a smart idea to create a pilot committee to train people on how to use CRM software.

Make sure to clean up your contact list before you import it. This will ensure that you have a well-organized and current database.

Also read: 12 Recruiting KPIs to Measure Your Organization Success

8. Each team sets key performance indicators (KPIs).

Every strategic action must be supported by data and figures. Your CRM strategy is no exception. It is important to be able to measure the progress of your CRM strategy.

In Step 1, you defined your CRM strategy goals. You have now given your CRM strategy goals back in Step 1.

When setting goals for your team, remember to make them S.M.A.R.T (i.e. Specific, Measurable and Achievable. Realistic, Time-bound).

Here are some examples of performance metrics that you might consider including:

• Customer satisfaction
• Customer retention
• Customer churn (when customers leave the company)
• Profits (overall total, totals per customer/account)
• Your CRM strategy’s success depends on how engaged and collaborative your teams are.

Your employees should be involved from the very beginning. Make sure they are informed, educated, and kept up-to-date about all aspects of your CRM strategy.