A dozen things to consider about your CRM….SMB segments think again!

I would like to begin today’s discussion with a question. What are the things that you ‘really’ consider before deciding on a CRM?

My personal belief in the answer has gone down a little especially dealing with Indian customers. For a country that still agrees on a vehicle’s value based on it’s mileage (as in ‘how much does it give?’) not really caring if its a car or a ship or a space ship, it becomes extremely challenging to sell a world-class CRM at the end of the day. The only question that is consistent throughout is ‘why is it so expensive?’. So truly, should we give a thought to the quality or the price? Answer is both. Its you who need to decide if you are willing to compromise on a couple of thousands or a couple of product features.
Ask yourself, if CRM A is priced at X and CRM B is priced at X+100, which one is actually solving my problems? Can I willfully spend that extra 100 and possess a solution that I am proud to show off OR should I keep looking at my pocket feeling happy for a while only to realize the future is full of hidden costs?

Let’s take a look at a dozen features that your CRM possesses. If not…look again:

1. Is your CRM giving you a 360 degree view of your customers, contacts, accounts, opportunities? Meaning, click on one and get the fastest insight of related information in a central repository.

2. Let your sales reps find it as helpful as a friend. Let the system refine which accounts and deals to work on as a priority, get instant and real time data and not waste time digging information in files/folders

3.  Does your CRM sync up well with applications that you use on a daily basis such as Google apps, MS Outlook?

4. Is your CRM helping you to be on top of every deal? Are you able to quickly communicate within your team for updates, status checks through your CRM?

5. What about forecasting..how accurate is your CRM in giving you forecast reports?

6. Analyze and maintain your marketing campaigns, know the ROI of each. Does your CRM talk to you?

7. Create your own dashboards and see what your Team is doing at a glance

8.  Ask if your CRM allows you to make a global search of anything (leads,contacts, accounts) with only a single click

9.  Does your CRM give you the option to tag your partners (dealers/distributors) with respective deals?

10. Ability to customize on your own- do you need to involve Developers each time you wish to configure or customize something in your CRM? If yes is the answer all the time, it is time to change

11. How easily can you export your existing data to the new system?

12. Make sure there are no hidden costs after you purchase your CRM package

Once you discover that your chosen solution answers the dozen parameters, stay confident. Need a free consultation from the experts? Click here and good luck!

Pic courtesy: Google images