How to address everyday business challenges using your CRM system

It's one thing to have a CRM, but it's quite another to use it properly.

Getting the most out of your CRM is important because, quite simply, that's what it's there for. It's the same as having all these great apps on your phone – email, calendar, social media, news, weather - and then only using it for phone calls.

Many businesses face the same challenges - growth, customer service, marketing, and budget - but these same businesses are unaware that the answers may already lie at their fingertips.

A good CRM can help with everything your business does - but only if you know how to use it correctly.

Have a look at some common business challenges and how your CRM can help you resolve them.

Challenge: Your business isn't growing

Using your CRM to its full potential can help you identify and bring in new leads, categorising them quickly and accurately. Knowing which leads are 'hot' enables you to focus on opportunities that are most likely to lead to a deal, focusing on the low-hanging fruit before moving on to more complex prospects.

With complete and accurate information about your clients in your CRM, your sales and marketing departments can better understand your customers, improving visibility, service and retention. Happy customers are also more likely to recommend you, increasing referral rates and continuing the cycle.

Challenge: You're losing customers

Worse than simply not growing as a business, there's a chance you might be actively losing clients. There can be many reasons for this, but the first step is finding out why, and that's hard to do without a fully integrated CRM.

It's difficult to help your sales or service teams succeed and keep them accountable without seeing what's going on behind the scenes. Perhaps they're finding it challenging to keep up with clients needs because the customer journey is not tracked. Important client details can get misplaced or lost, especially if one of your employees leaves the company with that information.

Keeping client information in one place, accessible by everyone at every stage of the end-to-end process, is the best way to keep informed about the customer's journey, keeping the client happy and retaining their business.

Challenge: You're wasting time and money

From the moment you engage with a potential client, whether through a Facebook ad or they walk onto your shop floor, they are part of a process that can end in a sale and, best of all, a repeat customer.

Collecting and understanding customer data is vital to ensuring your business creates a consistent and positive experience. However, handling that customer at every stage also needs to be as efficient as possible.

Using your CRM to track clients, their orders, what stage of the process they're in, which department is handling them at any given time, and who's following up after concluding business makes life easier for everyone.

It reduces wasted time, improves workflow and boosts productivity, increasing the bottom line through sales and cost reduction.

Challenge: Your system is out of date

If you're using four different programmes to keep track of clients, accounts, calendars and payments, your system is outdated. A good CRM system is designed to keep everything in one place, making life easier.

If you have a spreadsheet filled with names and numbers, don't worry, it can all be imported into a new system. Orders and shipping information is all part of it too. Everything is brought together into one neat, easy-to-use CRM that shows you data, sales, analytics and whatever else you want, all on one screen, accessible from anywhere through the Cloud.

We can help you get the most out of your CRM

Microsoft's Dynamics CRM does a whole range of smart and innovative things - but no one organisation uses it in exactly the same way. That is where Adaptable comes in.

Our job is to truly understand your businesses and use this knowledge to transform your CRM, customising it for your unique circumstances. We enable you to achieve the greatest possible value from your ongoing Microsoft investment.

Grow your business through customer retention and upselling, cut out inefficiency and build customer relations with a personal touch.

It's all possible when you get the most out of your CRM. Let us show you how.

Contact us today if you would like to know more about how you can utilise Microsoft to its full potential.