But what, exactly, do you need to know about each type of customer?

Look beyond buyer personas

Buyer personas are commonly used to describe the types of people who are likely to buy from you. The problem is, personas are primarily a selling tool—so they aren’t designed to be useful after the initial sale. They don’t offer the right insights to help improve the customer experience, build loyalty, or provide the right support at the right time.

For that, you need to understand customers on a different level—their relationship to your company or product, their buying behaviors and motivations, and what makes them happy. While every customer is different, they often share certain characteristics that can help us group them into broad categories that we call types of customers.

Here are six of the most common types of customers, along with recommendations for meeting their unique needs.

6 common types of customers

1. New customers

New customers are those who have just joined your customer base for the first time. When a new customer makes their first purchase, they tend to be more engaged and more receptive to your message than at any other time in the customer relationship. So be sure to make the most of every touch point.

First-time buyers have some unique needs, but they also present unique opportunities. This “honeymoon period” is your best chance to reinforce the purchase decision, build loyalty, and set the stage for repeat business. 

How to embrace new customers:

• Welcome them properly. A well-crafted welcome email (or email series) can help new customers feel appreciated, provide important product information, and ensure they know where to go for help.
• Set them up for success. New customers often need help learning how to use your product or service. Self-serve onboarding resources like walk-throughs, blog posts, demos, and tutorials can help new customers understand your product better and increase stickiness.
• Make help available. There will inevitably be questions your onboarding doesn’t address, so customer service is a must. Make sure your contact information is prominently displayed in all new customer support materials.
• Deepen the relationship. While this probably isn’t the right time for an upsell, new customers can be great candidates for future testimonials, product reviews, and case studies. Build feedback requests into your new customer communications to help identify happy customers who might be willing to sing your praises soon.

2. Potential customers

Potential customers—also known as “lookers” or “prospects” —aren’t actually customers yet. They’re gathering information and exploring their options before making a buying decision. Since they haven’t made a purchase, they’re still somewhere toward the middle of your sales funnel.

Lookers may not be ready to buy yet, but they’re typically looking for a specific product that meets a specific need. That interest level is what separates potential customers from casual website visitors.

The following are some things you can do to move potential customers deeper into the sales funnel and assist with their decision-making.

How to convert potential customers:

• Make a great first impression. You need to create the right experience for your website visitors if you want to turn browsers into buyers. Start with beautiful design and a good user experience (UX), then remove any elements that could be confusing or distracting—like pop-up ads and complex navigation.
• Demonstrate value. Potential customers already have some degree of interest in your product or service, so make it irresistible! Assets like white papers, testimonials, and case studies can show the benefits of your offering without making an overt sales pitch.
• Nurture warm leads. If your potential customer downloads a resource or fills out a contact form, be sure to follow up on that touch point. Adding them to a nurture campaign gives you more opportunities to share information and demonstrate value.
• Offer to help. Make it clear that you’re available to answer any questions a potential customer may have.

3. Impulse customers

Impulse customers make buying decisions in a snap. They are highly emotional buyers who typically don’t spend much time researching their purchase—so they don’t need to be “sold” with a compelling value proposition.

When the mood strikes, the best thing you can do for an impulse customer is get out of their way. Here are some suggestions for appealing to this valuable customer segment.

 How to influence impulse customers:

• Keep things simple. Impulse buyers value an easy and enjoyable shopping experience. The fewer steps required to complete a purchase, the less likely they will lose interest. Remove distractions (like pop-ups) on your landing page and expedite the checkout process with streamlined forms and autofill functionality.
• Offer timely upsells and cross-sells. Once you know what an impulse shopper likes, upselling and cross-selling offers can help you capitalize on their urge to buy. Consider adding “related product” recommendations to various touch points, including the checkout screen, order confirmation, shipping notice, and follow-up emails.
• Enable self-service. Impulse buyers don’t always read the fine print, so they’re more likely to need help with returns and exchanges. Anticipate these interactions and provide easy, self-service processes to keep impulse customers happy (and reduce customer support tickets).

4. Discount customers

Discount customers are the polar opposite of impulse buyers. They know what they want and they recognize the value of your product, but they’re willing to expend a lot of time and effort to find the best deal. Bottom line, they refuse to pay full price.

It’s hard to cultivate loyalty among bargain hunters, as they’re likely to drop your product or service once the discounted pricing expires. Discount customers can be tricky to manage, but here are a few tips.

How to satisfy discount customers:

• Explain the deal. Most discount seekers enjoy research, so give them clear and complete information about the terms of your deal. Make sure they understand exactly what they’re getting, in terms of discount pricing and/or increased value.
• Deliver exceptional service. This is not a customer who’s just going to “let it go” if a coupon or promo code doesn’t work properly. Keep your customer support team up to date on the details of every promotion so they can ensure a smooth transaction every time.
• Provide added value. Before your discounted pricing runs out, reach out with a new or extended offer—especially if it’s something they can’t get anywhere else. Going the extra mile might be enough to keep the discount customer satisfied.

5. Angry customers

Whatever your business, angry customers are inevitable. And while they may be difficult to handle, unhappy customers are a valuable source of feedback. When managed properly, their complaints can uncover critical flaws in your product, service, or processes.

It’s important to remember that angry customers are frustrated for a reason—and delivering good customer service can turn angry customers into your biggest fans. Here are some tips.

How to handle angry customers:

• Have a plan. A confident, positive approach can go a long way toward defusing a difficult situation. Make sure your customer support staff is well-trained, so they aren’t caught off guard by angry customers.
• Practice empathy. One of the most effective ways to handle an angry customer is to simply hear them out. Try to see things from their point of view. Wait to offer a solution until you fully understand the issue, or the customer may end up feeling dismissed.
• Take appropriate action. The resolution to a problem should always fit the circumstances—whether that’s a refund, a replacement, or even a letter of apology. For example, a discount on future purchases will only frustrate a customer who never received their order.

6. Loyal customers

Loyal customers are the gold standard for any business. They love your company and your product. They make repeat purchases year after year. And if you’re lucky, they’re also devoted brand advocates who share their positive experience at every opportunity. 

That said, customer loyalty should never be taken for granted. Long-term customer retention requires deliberate effort, to ensure your fans don’t lose interest over time.

 How to retain loyal customers:

• Highlight their success. Featuring your best customers in a spotlight article or case study can help to increase their exposure, while providing you with a valuable sales asset. You may also consider offering an incentive for referrals and testimonials.
• Invest in loyalty programs. Offering a loyalty discount or bonus program can help to strengthen a long-term relationship. Depending on how they’re structured, loyalty programs can also be a valuable source of behavioral and purchase data.
• Learn from your best customers. Ask for feedback from long-term customers. Find out about their experience; ask how they use your products. Then apply your learnings to improve the customer experience for others or shape future product enhancements.

Delight every type of customer with a customer-centric solution

Today’s customers want relationships, not transactions. At the end of the day, knowing each customer at an individual level—and giving them what they need—means having the right data. From basic contact information and purchase data to deeper insights like customer behaviors, attitudes, and preferences, the right CRM puts customer data at your fingertips so you can deliver an exceptional experience, every time.

Insightly CRM was designed to help teams build lasting customer relationships through a simple, scalable platform. Insightly’s unified solution aligns cross-functional teams like sales, marketing, and customer service on a single, shared data platform with a single customer view. The result? Unprecedented transparency, better decision-making, and a seamless end-to-end customer experience – for all types of customers.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, or request a personalized demo to see how it can help your company achieve its business goals. 

The post 6 Types of Customers and How to Delight Them appeared first on Insightly.

These steps are ideal to help you to focus on the problems you are looking to solve and the goals you have. Combining these activities with some objective data will give you an edge to finding the right CRM for your organization. 

Research commissioned on CRM selection

Insightly recently partnered with Ascend2, a B2B research firm, to get insights into how people make this important decision and ways to help them make it a successful one. The report, Choosing the Right CRM to Align Teams: An inside look at how sales, marketing & customer service teams are leveraging their CRM for a better customer experience, is now available for download and review.

The new data reveals how more than 500 sales, marketing and customer service professionals choose a CRM and how they are leveraging their CRM to ensure a best-in-class experience for their customers. 

The report indicates that a customer relationship management (CRM) system can provide businesses of all sizes and industries a host of benefits, and that these systems can be a catalyst for achieving the goals of individual departments and the organization as a whole. 

Finding: CRM is key for delivering exceptional customer experiences

Among the benefits of effectively using a CRM is delivering exceptional customer experiences.

That bodes well for those seeking a CRM since improving the customer experience is a top strategic priority in the year ahead for 55 percent of respondents, second only to growing revenue. 

Further research found that less than one in five respondents rated their organization’s customer experience as exceptional, which is important to note because companies that report the best customer experiences are 2.5 times more likely to report significant revenue growth than all others.

Changing your CRM is common

The study also found that over one-third of organizations will be shopping for a new CRM in the coming year and 45 percent of respondents listed improving customer experience as a top priority in driving the consideration of a new CRM. And for those who currently use a CRM platform and are looking for a change? For those in a manager or director role, the biggest complaints about current platforms being used are missing or inadequate features, cost and difficulty of customization. VPs and executives were more concerned about scalability and costs.

Alignment drives growth

Only one-in-five organizations surveyed report having aligned technology and customer data used by marketing, sales, and customer support/success teams. On the flipside, over one-third of companies with completely aligned technology and customer data across their marketing, sales, and customer success teams saw a significant increase in revenue last year. It’s clear that alignment among teams drives growth.

Benefits of an effective CRM

The top benefits of effectively utilizing a CRM according to those who are extremely satisfied with their solution, include better customer data (44 percent), more organized/streamlined processes (43 percent) and higher sales/faster growth (40 percent).

Across all teams, dashboard visualization of reporting and analytics is essential. Creating a unified view of the customer is imperative to providing an exceptional customer experience.

Over two-thirds (68%) of those surveyed report having customer data stored in multiple locations. Storing customer data across several different platforms limits access across teams and ultimately results in an uninformed and disjointed journey.

A 360-degree unified customer view often includes the following data: 

• CRM and customer data
• Behavioral data
• Marketing channel interactions
• Sales representatives’ interactions
• Support tickets
•  Project status

By enabling this unified customer view, organizations are given a better understanding of the customer. This allows for improved personalization and a better overall customer experience, not to mention more efficient workflows and processes.

The problem with enterprise CRMs 

The data shows that ‘over-buying’ is a real issue in regards to enterprise solutions. It seems that flashy marketing campaigns and big name sponsorships may convince organizations to over-invest in an enterprise solution (e.g. Salesforce) that is really meant for the Fortune 500. Two-thirds of enterprise CRM users are from departments with 50 employees or less. This signals that these organizations have likely over-invested in a solution they likely underutilize. 

The resulting data shows that enterprise CRM users are significantly more likely to complain about initial and ongoing cost of their CRM (41% of Enterprise CRM users list this as a top complaint vs 24% of all others). Clearly, the chosen solution is not a fit.

Integrating with existing systems 

For 40% of those surveyed, integrating a new CRM into existing systems is a major challenge during the implementation process. A CRM that can speak to the rest of your technology stack ensures data accessibility throughout your organization and enable a unified view of the customer.

The most useful integrations according to those surveyed are QuickBooks, ADP, and WordPress, but this varies by who you ask. Sales puts Zoominfo among the top of this list while Customer Success and Ops professionals place a higher value on Workday.

For 40 percent of those surveyed, integrating a new CRM into existing systems is a major challenge during the implementation process. A CRM that can speak to the rest of your technology stack ensures data accessibility throughout your organization and enables a unified view of the customer. 

Project management and CRM is a logical progression

It seems like a natural progression that a prospect becomes a lead, a lead becomes an opportunity, and an opportunity becomes a customer. After that, most CRMs end and projects are moved to a PM tool for execution. A full 93% of those surveyed would adopt a project management tool that was native to their CRM tool to have this continuity rather than exporting data to yet another system. Note: Modern CRMs, like Insightly, have project management functionality built right in.

Failed implementations are costly – in many ways

With any new tool in your organization, the risk of failure is there. Successful adoption is the goal of course, but it doesn’t just happen. Having a plan and a team to guide the process is vital. Failed implementation of a CRM can cost organizations greatly. According to the survey, not overcoming these challenges results in employee frustration, wasted staff time, and missed opportunities for revenue according to 51%, 44%, and 43% of those surveyed respectively. 

In short, every implementation is important, but this is one you have to get right. Steal this proven process from the Insightly implementation experts. 

Methodology, get the full report & more

A custom online questionnaire for the “Choosing the Right CRM to Align Teams” survey was fielded throughout the month of April, 2022 to a panel of 511 professionals representing sales, marketing, customer success, and related operations teams and who self-identified as management through higher-level job functions such as directors, VPs, and executive roles. These individuals represent business-to-business (B2B) organizations in the US with 50 – 500 employees across several industries.

Get your copy of the full report and/or watch a webinar presentation of the results from the head researcher. 

Ready to align your teams? Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, or request a personalized demo.

The post New research to help companies choose a CRM appeared first on Insightly.

Today’s sales organizations are facing challenges unlike any they’ve seen before—but the most successful teams have always been flexible, agile, and adaptable. The key lies in recognizing potential pitfalls and finding smart ways to overcome them.

As we move to the midpoint of 2022, we’ve compiled this list of top sales challenges for 2022, along with tips and recommendations for navigating them successfully.

Challenge #1: The Great Resignation

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 48 million people voluntarily left their jobs in 2021. This unprecedented exodus from the workforce—dubbed “the Great Resignation”—has hit sales teams especially hard, with average turnover rates estimated around 35 percent.

Even in the best of times, attrition makes it difficult for sales teams to operate effectively. Sales leaders are forced to focus on hiring and onboarding instead of strategy and execution. Performance suffers as depleted teams struggle to meet revenue goals. And morale declines as those who remain are left to pick up the slack. The best way to protect your team—and the bottom line—is by retaining the employees you already have.

How to manage it

Here are some tips to increase retention and minimize the impact of the Great Resignation:

• Show your appreciation. This should be obvious, but employees are less likely to leave when they feel valued. Take the time to recognize accomplishments and celebrate milestones. Invest in sales training and provide opportunities for career growth. Most importantly, treat each person as an individual—not just a cog in the sales machine. 
• Clarify your employer value proposition. Of course your comp plan should be competitive, but retaining your sales talent is about more than money. Give them something to believe in! Develop clear messaging about your company’s culture, your mission, and your products—and show how you’re making a difference in the world. (This is especially important for Millennials.)
• Uncover the real problems. Despite your best efforts, some people will inevitably choose to leave. As painful as they may be, exit interviews are your best opportunity to discover the issues that are driving talent away, so don’t treat them as a formality.

Challenge #2: Coming out of “pandemic mode”

As we emerge from more than two years of pandemic-induced uncertainty, sales teams everywhere are struggling with the questions of a new reality. Live events are starting to return, but will they ever be the same? How do sales meetings work when my prospects work remotely? Are the virtual processes we put in place on-the-fly appropriate for the long term? 

The fact is, the Covid-19 pandemic forced businesses to innovate, and some of those innovations are more efficient and effective than the old way of doing things. Rather than waiting for a return to “normal,” smart sales teams are seeking a way forward—which requires a creative, hybrid approach that blends digital channels with traditional in-person interactions.

How to make it work for you

As you prepare your team for post-pandemic selling, here are a few recommendations:

• Learn how to work virtual events. In-person conferences are making a comeback, but virtual events are likely here to stay. Without a traditional booth to make connections and book meetings, you’ll need to get creative with your event strategy. Every virtual event is different, so investigate the event platform and agenda to identify the best networking opportunities. Then get involved with the event itself. Attend as many sessions as possible and participate in sidebar chats to make organic connections. 
• Adjust tactics for digital leads. A greater percentage of leads are likely to come from digital sources (rather than trade shows), so you may need to fine-tune your nurture tactics to move them through the funnel. Email remains a go-to channel for sales communications, but consider adding a personalized video to build rapport without face-to-face contact. 
• Invest in training. Now more than ever, sales is an evolving field. A proactive approach to training will keep your team up-to-speed on emerging skills that can help them sell in a virtual-first world. Regular training also keeps everyone aligned and ensures you’re all working toward the same business goals.

Challenge #3: Gen X buyers take the reins

We’ve touched on the Great Resignation, but there’s another employment phenomenon that’s impacting sales teams: the Great Retirement. The Baby Boomers (currently 58-76 years old) are retiring in droves, and the Covid-19 pandemic only accelerated their employment exodus. As of late 2020, nearly 30 million Baby Boomers had retired—and a year later, more than half of adults age 55+ had joined them.

As Baby Boomers vacate long-held leadership roles, a new and different cohort is taking control of B2B buying decisions. Generation X is a much smaller population than either Baby Boomers or Millennials—so they’re frequently overlooked—but understanding the nuances of “Gen X” is now critical to selling success. 

How to embrace it

As you navigate this new generation of B2B buyers, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Gen X values authenticity. Unlike Baby Boomers who don’t mind being “sold,” Gen X buyers value marketing that is personal and authentic. Earn their business by becoming a trusted advisor. Your sales messaging should demonstrate how you can help them achieve a specific business result, like saving money or avoiding risk.
• Gen X questions everything. As the original “latchkey kids,” Gen Xers were often left to fend for themselves, and major economic events like the dot-com bust shaped their formative years. As a result, Gen X buyers tend to be independent thinkers who value data and unbiased research. They want the straight, unvarnished truth—and they want to see the proof, not just the pitch.
• Gen X is tech savvy. Born between 1965 and 1980, Gen Xers have spent their lives adapting to new technology. While they aren’t digital natives, they’re comfortable with a wide variety of digital channels and tech platforms. But they’re also a nostalgic group, so the occasional direct mail campaign may land well—if it’s authentic and well executed. 
• Gen X has unique communication preferences. While Gen Xers are often stereotyped as loners, the isolation of the pandemic affected Gen X buyers just as much as everyone else—so they’re likely ready for some face-to-face contact. Their feelings on phone calls are somewhat ambivalent—they’re more likely to answer than Millennials, but far less likely than Boomers.

Challenge #4: Remote work limits expansion opportunities

“Land and expand” is a popular sales strategy—and with good reason. Starting small and building on that foundational relationship lets you earn more business and land bigger deals throughout an organization. Studies show that 84% of B2B buyers start the purchasing process with a referral, and peer recommendations influence more than 90% of B2B buying decisions.

Of course, expansion becomes more difficult in a remote workplace because your customers aren’t having those everyday water cooler conversations. That means you’ll have to get creative—and proactive—if you want to connect with internal decision-makers.

How to overcome it

Following are some ideas to help jumpstart your expansion efforts:

• Do your homework. Develop a clear value proposition to explain how your solution can help different parts of the prospect organization. The selling points that resonated with your initial contact may not have the same impact in another department.
• Use all the tools at your disposal. Tools like LinkedIn and ZoomInfo make it easy to identify additional prospects within an organization. Your CRM data can also provide extensive insights on the people who make purchase decisions at your target company.
• Be proactive with outreach. If you have a solid relationship with a contact, ask for referrals. Requesting introductions to specific people is usually more effective than a blanket referral request—which makes your prospecting research even more important.

Challenge #5: Lack of alignment between sales, marketing, and success teams

Internal alignment isn’t a new challenge, but it’s even more common among remote teams. In many organizations, the tools to enable remote work were selected hastily and implemented haphazardly, leading to poor integrations and siloed communications. And remote teams tend to communicate less overall, which creates more opportunities for misunderstandings and conflicting priorities. 

Misalignment has significant consequences, including tension between teams, poor customer experience, and missed revenue targets. So it’s in everyone’s best interest to give sales, marketing, and success teams the tools and support they need to work together effectively.

How to fix it

Here are some tips to help you build (or rebuild) alignment between internal teams:

• Leverage technology to improve communication. Real-time chat tools like Slack, Google Chat, and MS Teams can go a long way toward replicating face-to-face conversations. Because they’re so easy, they encourage more frequent and informal communications.

• Schedule recurring meetings. Regular sales team meetings are a must, but you should also schedule monthly or quarterly meetings with marketing and support teams. Meet in person when you can or use video conferencing to increase engagement on remote calls. 

• Get on the same platform. Giving everyone access to the same data is a huge step toward improving alignment. A unified CRM platform (like Insightly) serves as a single source of truth, to give cross-functional teams a 360-degree view of each customer. 
• Optimize integrations. When evaluating your tech stack, consider the tools your team already uses. Any new additions should integrate easily with the tools your team relies on, to increase adoption and utilization.

Meet your toughest sales challenges head-on with Insightly

At the end of the day, the solution to most sales challenges boils down to three things: consistent processes, internal alignment, and deep customer insights. The right CRM puts these goals—and more—within reach.

Insightly CRM was designed to help growing teams develop and manage customer relationships through a simple, scalable platform. Insightly is the only solution that aligns sales, marketing, and services on a single, shared data platform for unprecedented transparency and a seamless end-to-end customer experience. And with its intuitive user interface, Insightly CRM puts customer insights at your fingertips for more strategic decisions and better business outcomes.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, or request a personalized demo to see how it can help your company achieve its business goals. 

The post 2022 Midpoint: Solving the Top 5 B2B Sales Challenges appeared first on Insightly.

Why your healthcare business needs a CRM

Healthcare, like many industries, is built on daily interactions with customers (in this case, patients). Providers must build strong relationships with patients if they seek to stay in business. As the number of available providers continues to increase, it is easier than ever for customers to shop around and find a new healthcare provider. The key to creating meaningful relationships that retain patients for the long term is to truly understand their needs.

Healthcare organizations looking to manage their customer relationships using a disparate set of tools or multiple spreadsheets cannot gather the insights needed to create great experiences. Instead, it takes a comprehensive solution for storing and accessing all your customer data. With a healthcare CRM, you can keep track of all your patient details from one platform. You get a complete view of each individual, and there is no need for your team to hop between platforms to manage patient information.

Additionally, in the healthcare industry, it is vital that you protect all patient data and meet the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. When engaging with patients through digital channels, you also need to collect and store data in a way that is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) standards. The right CRM software is both HIPAA and GDPR compliant, allowing it to serve as a central repository for storing and managing your sensitive data.

How you can use a healthcare CRM to improve customer relationships

Let’s examine some specific ways a CRM system can help your healthcare practice.

Better understand your patients’ needs

Providing great customer service requires you to deeply understand your patients’ needs. Healthcare CRM software collects data from every interaction across a variety of touch points and ensures this information is always available and up to date. Housing all this data in a single platform gives you a clear picture of each patient’s journey. You can use this information to know your patients’ greatest needs to provide better service.

More accurate record-keeping

Keeping complete and accurate records is challenging when your practice serves many patients. A study from Surescripts found that over 50% of medical patients have had experiences where their medical history is incomplete or missing when visiting a healthcare provider. This includes not having insurance information on file, not knowing existing medical conditions, and missing personal information among others.

Understandably, poor record-keeping can have a detrimental impact on your customer experiences. It also bogs down your business as you then need to spend your time fixing any issues. CRM systems fix this issue by giving you a centralized repository where you can store customer information. When you use a single tool, everyone knows where to add the information, so it is never misplaced or updated in the wrong system.

Reduce the time it takes to serve patients

Because a healthcare CRM system puts your patients’ details into a single system, it takes far less time for everyone to access vital information like patient medical histories and digital intake forms. With less time spent digging for information, your team can focus on getting to know your patients and establishing strong relationships with them.

Key healthcare CRM functionality

As you can see, there are many ways to utilize a CRM to enhance your healthcare business. Because healthcare is such a unique industry, a CRM system must be made with certain qualities if it is to prove effective. Here are some of the key features to look for in a CRM for healthcare companies:

Data management compliance

Protecting your patients’ private data is of utmost importance. Any CRM platform you consider using for your healthcare company must adhere to the latest security standards. Many companies choose to keep sensitive customer information inside their electronic medical records (EMR) system while using the CRM for non-medical data like contact information. However, if you want your CRM to serve as an all-in-one solution, it must be HIPAA compliant.

Workflow automation

Automation features help to save you both time and resources. For your patients, it provides a more consistent and reliable service as the removal of manual processes leads to a reduction in errors. Look for a CRM that lets you use automation to set up tracking and personalized interactions for each customer. For example, you can tag and segment your patients based on medical conditions and then set up an automated communication sequence that matches their particular needs.

Reports and analytics

A CRM should give you detailed insights into every aspect of your healthcare business. You want the ability to create customized dashboards and reports full of rich data and statistics. With this information, you can make real-time, data-driven decisions to create better outcomes for your business. For example, you can know which department drives the most revenue to make it a focal point of your resources. Or you may notice that patients are less responsive to a certain type of communication and decide to adjust your outreach strategy.

Why Insightly is the best healthcare CRM software

There is no shortage of healthcare CRM software options on the market. Insightly stands out among various platforms as a feature-rich, easy-to-use tool designed to serve as an all-in-one solution for managing the relationships in your healthcare business. Let’s look at some of the key qualities that make Insightly the best healthcare CRM.

Unified patient profiles

Insightly unifies every record from your patients’ medical history into comprehensive profiles housed in one central hub. Scheduled appointments, patient notes, and interaction histories are all there for your teams to quickly access so that they can serve patients quicker. These faster, more attentive interactions result in improved patient management and care and, ultimately, a better reputation and more sales for your practice. 

Data compliance

Insightly offers GDPR and HIPAA compliant transfer and storage of patient records. Your CRM account is protected through a variety of security features, including data encryption and multi-factor authentication. With this industry-standard security, you can use the platform as a central database that can be integrated across all your touch points.

Patient management and segmentation

The best way to connect with patients is to offer personalized care and attention. Insightly comes with powerful segmentation features for you to differentiate your patient engagement based on their unique medical histories and other personal factors. You can use this to deliver personalized messaging before, during, and after visits to boost patient satisfaction and retain more customers.

Integrations

A CRM is a powerful tool, but it is not the only solution you’ll use to manage your business. If you want it to serve as an all-in-one platform, it is important for a CRM to work effectively with your others tools. Insightly excels in this regard as it is built to seamlessly integrate with hundreds of the most popular solutions. With AppConnect, you can easily build automated workflows to reduce the need to hop between tools and ensure everything is in sync between platforms.

Grow your healthcare practice with Insightly

A CRM system can prove an invaluable tool for healthcare professionals looking to create better patient experiences. With a platform like Insightly, you can improve your internal business processes while differentiating yourself from the competition by building stronger relationships.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today or request a personalized demo to see how it can help your healthcare business.

The post Best Healthcare CRM: Enhance Patient Experiences with Insightly appeared first on Insightly.

Navigating this complexity in the digital age requires a strong set of tools. A manufacturing customer relationship management (CRM) system is an essential tool for managing your business and understanding your customers’ needs to be able to provide them with a positive experience. In this post, we’ll break down how a manufacturing CRM benefits your business and why Insightly is the best CRM for manufacturing.

Why your manufacturing business needs a CRM

In the manufacturing industry, the success of your business depends on your ability to consistently produce high-quality products and to do so efficiently. Low-quality or defective goods will lead to unhappy customers and will negatively impact your company’s image. The end result is less revenue and more difficulty winning new business.

But, in today’s market, simply producing good products isn’t enough. The most successful manufacturing companies also create great client relationships that match the quality of their products. To provide great client experiences, you need to know the ins and outs of your customers’ needs so that you can provide a service that matches their expectations.

Now, there are plenty of tools and data sources to gather this information. However, challenges arise when your data is spread across multiple platforms. Teams often use different tools, leading to data silos and slow communication to get necessary information. With these limitations, you lack the clarity required to create connected customer experiences.

A manufacturing CRM gives you a single tool for storing and managing your customer data. Everyone on your team can work from the same system, so there are no data silos or need for inefficient methods of collaboration. By bringing all your information into a centralized platform, your business is better equipped for managing leads, converting them into deals, and providing great experiences as customers.

Essential features of a manufacturing CRM

Before you adopt a CRM for your manufacturing, it‘s essential to know what makes a good CRM system. The right tool can have a profound impact on your business success, while a poor selection will lead to suboptimal results. Here are some key functions to look for in a manufacturing CRM.

Pipeline visibility

As a manufacturer, you face the challenge of accurately forecasting your upcoming sales, whether it’s for the upcoming month, quarter, or fiscal year. With long and complex sales cycles, built with many distributors, dealers, and retailers, your marketing and sales teams must create accurate, in-depth projections if the business is to plan effectively.

A manufacturing CRM should give you a single tool to visualize and manage your entire pipeline. You want to see every detail of your current deals as well the value of every open opportunity in your pipeline. With this data, your team can accurately forecast future demand to know exactly where the business stands.

Customizations

No two businesses are the same. Everything from your sales cycles to the nature of your customers will vary based on your unique needs. Because of this, it is important to adopt a CRM platform that is customizable. You want the ability to create custom fields and objects and adjust the steps in your sales process to match your business operations.

Real-time reporting

A good CRM for manufacturing will enhance your data analytics. You want direct, real-time insights into each of your contacts to see how they are evolving through the customer journey. By understanding each customer’s complete picture, you can understand past performance, including which products sell the best and which distributors drive the most revenue. Having this information at your fingertips will help you know where to focus your efforts.

Insightly is the best manufacturing CRM

A CRM for manufacturers should streamline important tasks while giving your team powerful features to help them perform at their best. Insightly comes packed with all the features your manufacturing company needs to create stand-out experiences for your customers.

Here are some of the reasons why Insightly is the best CRM system for your manufacturing business:

Personalized communication 

Insightly comes packed with powerful segmentation features to help you organize your contact lists based on interests, demographics, industry, and more. By creating highly refined audience segments you get clear insight into what past buyers value the most and where new opportunities are in the buying process.

With this information, you can personalize each interaction based on individual interests and needs. By doing so, you create a more relevant and meaningful experience, increasing your ability to build a long-standing relationship with the customer.

Project management built in

Insightly CRM includes project management functionality to help you deliver on projects. You can convert won opportunities to projects and work them inside Insightly, rather than moving them into a separate PM tool. This is not only convenient, it also avoids data loss. From there, you can track project milestones, manage processes, and integrate with external systems to ensure on-time delivery and happy customers.

Reporting and dashboards

With Insightly, you can create customizable dashboards to quickly show the information that is vital to your business. For example, you could set up views to see the value of the current opportunities in your pipeline to create more accurate demand forecasts. Or you can create a visualization for your project pipeline to see how many projects you have going and their current statuses. 

Powerful Integrations

To make the most of a CRM system it needs to be compatible with the other tools your business uses. After all, the end goal of the platform is to boost your overall efficiency and your ability to provide great experiences to customers. 

With AppConnect by Insightly, you get ready-made integrations for hundreds of the most popular business software. This includes accounting software like Quickbooks, HR platforms like BambooHR, and communication apps like Slack. By setting up integrations for your favorite tools, you can automate processes to remove the need to switch between solutions, helping to save valuable time that can be spent on your customers.

Expand your manufacturing business with Insightly

CRM software gives manufacturers the tools to handle the complexity of their business. With Insightly, you can see every detail of your sales pipeline to know exactly where your business stands and the amount of demand to expect in the future. Robust automation streamlines essential processes, freeing you to focus all your attention on what matters most, satisfying your customers.

Start with Insightly CRM, then expand to Insightly Marketing for lead generation and management. Add on Insightly Service to manage customer support ticketing and more. Then, use Insightly AppConnect to integrate the tools you use across your business. Insightly grows with you every step of the way.

Start a free trial of Insightly CRM or request a personalized demo to begin empowering your manufacturing business.

The post Best Manufacturing CRM: Unify Your Business with Insightly appeared first on Insightly.

It’s building a strategy around the tools your company invests in that takes time and effort. Beyond “what are we buying?” you must challenge yourself with “why are we buying this?” and then build a plan to achieve the why. This is called your strategy.

What is a CRM strategy?

A customer relationship management (CRM) strategy is the specific, documented way in which your employees work together within your chosen CRM platform to serve customers and potential customers and elevate the overall customer experience.

Why do you need a CRM strategy?

Sure, you can jump into a platform and pushing data through it, but without a strategy, you’ll be missing out on the true value of your purchase. Here are a few benefits of putting together your CRM strategy:

ROI from your CRM – A CRM is a big investment, so you’ll want to make sure you’re getting a return. Having a strategy in place up front helps you look for the right data points to show the investment is paying off. 

Better sales pipeline – Your pipeline will be under the scrutiny of leadership, so you have to get it right. Part of having your CRM strategy will be defining key terms. Having common definitions that are supported by your CRM will make it easier to forecast your revenue. For instance, does everyone know what constitutes an opportunity? If one rep opens up an opp after a first call and another waits until there is a timeline and a quote, your forecasting will forever be flawed. 

Data you can trust – Some companies subscribe to the “if it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen” philosophy. If you make this part of your strategy, you’ll be sure that the data you are reporting is accurate and up to date. Nothing is more troubling than running all sorts of reports only to find that one rep is behind on data entry. Your CRM strategy includes policies that ensure everyone is in the CRM regularly and that data entry is everyone’s process all the time. 

How to build a CRM strategy

Your CRM strategy will be unique to your business and your goals. You can review guides and research options, but ultimately it will be up to your team to build. Here are some ways you can move along that journey:

Define your CRM goals

If this is your first CRM, perhaps your goal is simply to have all of your data in one place and create a single source of truth. If you’ve had more experience with CRMs, you can look to increasing sales rep productivity, or relieve them of manual processes to make them more efficient by using automated workflows. With even more experience,  you can look beyond internal metrics and seek to increase customer satisfaction (NPS, CSAT or the like) or decrease churn rates. 

Map your customers journey

As part of your CRM strategy, you’ll want to step into the shoes of your customer and see what the process is and what improvements can be made. That’s called customer journey mapping. It’s the process of creating a visual step-by-step view of your customers’ interactions with your brand. It seems simple, but it can awaken team members at all levels of flaws and pain points in the system and areas for improvement. With these insights, businesses can optimize their resources to deliver an improved customer experience via the CRM.

Analyze your sales process

It’s always a good time to take a look at your sales process, but when building your CRM strategy, it’s crucial. How are leads routed? What’s the time to first touch? Do you have a self-serve model, or are salespeople required for all deals? How many calls does it take to close? Are reps discounting? What’s the length of the sales cycle and is it getting longer or shorter? Where are deals getting ‘stuck?’ Keep in mind that your sales process should mirror the buyer’s journey. 

Knowing all of this will help you better position your CRM for success. You’ll set up better pipelines, employ custom fields, and create the right reports to get visibility into the business. 

Identify customer touch-points

As part of your journey map, you can identify each customer touch-point. A touch-point is each interaction your business has with your customers. You’ll want to map the touch-points and individually consider each one. Is there a way we can improve this touch-point? Perhaps it’s a form with seven fields. Can we cut that to five? It’s also important to check each touch-point on different devices. It may be a perfectly good touch-point on a desktop, but mobile users may struggle with it.

It’s tempting to complete this exercise and then forget about it, but the best experiences are reviewed regularly for updates and improvements. You should set a schedule for reviewing your touch-points – preferably quarterly.

Assess the data you need to collect

In order to determine  the success of your CRM strategy,  you’ll need data points. This is a good time to determine which data points to collect and measure. 

Caution: there are infinite ways to view, slice and dice data. What means the most to your company? What will the leadership team need to know to make decisions? These are the types of data points on which you should focus when deifining your KPIs in step 7.

To get your ideas flowing, review this list and see what makes sense to track for your organization:

Pre-sale metrics 

• Lead count by source
• Opportunity count by pipeline
• Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate
• Average projected deal revenue 

Post-sale metrics 

• Win percentage
• Revenue per sale
• New revenue per day, week, month, etc. 
• Order volume per sales representative
• Estimated profitability per won deal 

Delivery metrics

• Opportunity-to-project conversion ratio
• Project aging (average number of days or weeks)
• Percentage of past-due projects to total
• Actual cost vs. budget Productivity metrics
• Task completion count
• Tasks completed per team member
• Task duration
• Top-producing team members 

You can roll these metrics up into dashboards for your leadership team and/or for in-house monitors around your company offices.

List the tools your teams are using

Each department in your organization has the applications that are essential to how they operate within your business. Plus, there are some communications tools that are used throughout (looking at you, Slack and Gmail.) You’ll want a comprehensive list of those as you create your CRM strategy. Your CRM is the heart of your business, so it must interact with all of the applications in use. CRM integration creates an accurate, comprehensive picture of your customers and prospects. It improves how you communicate with customers, delivering more value from every interaction. Some CRMs require coding to get integrations to work. This can be costly and time consuming to both set up and maintain, likely by an expert resource or an outside firm. Modern CRMs have no-code, drag and drop functionality for integrations that make building and maintaining them much easier. 

Define your KPIs

Your team should set lofty, yet attainable key performance indicators (KPIs). As noted in section 5, there are many types of data your CRM can report. You’ll choose to roll up those data points into KPIs to share a few vital data points among stakeholders. What specific data points will you look at to determine CRM performance and thus the performance of the business? How will you report on the KPIs and how frequently? These are the questions to answer as part of your CRM strategy.

6 CRM goals examples

Coming up with your goals can be difficult, so below are some examples to help get you started. Your business is unique, however, so you should consider this a starting point and turn these ideas into your own. Consider the metrics that matter most to your business, and determine how the effective use of a CRM can impact them. 

For each goal, be sure to have a metric that you can measure. Below is a list of improvements with a sample goal under each one.

This is not an exhaustive list. You can look at any of the benefits of using a CRM and assign a quantifiable value to it. For example, how can you quantify the benefits of a 360-degree customer view? More accurate customer data? Reduced sales cycle? These can all be part of your goals and strategy.

1. Improve user experience – Achieving 83% customer satisfaction by 12/31.
2. Create personalized campaigns – Improving email click through rates by 8% in Q3.
3. Increase customer loyalty – Increase open rates on customer emails by 4%.
4. Improve your sales process – Use automated workflows to decrease time spent on repeatable tasks by 20%.
5. Track and report sales performance – Improve first response time to leads by 5 minutes.
6. Save your sales reps a lot of time – Automate 5 workflows this quarter.
7.  Bonus goal: Align your teams – Reduce expenses by eliminating apps from your tech stack by 30%.

How can a CRM do that last one? Well, Insightly CRM is part of a powerful platform that puts your CRM tool in the same suite of products as your marketing automation app and your customer service app. This aligns sales, marketing and customer service teams on a single, powerful platform. You have one platform for three teams, saving time on logins and data sharing, while empowering your teams to get the full picture of each customer. 

Choose Insightly CRM to achieve your strategy

Your CRM strategy will ensure that you get the most out of this critical tool and elevate the customer experience. The steps above will ensure that you are on the path to ROI from your CRM investment.

If you are selecting your CRM, put Insightly on your list and set up a free demo and discover how you can grow your business today.

The post How to Build your CRM Strategy (+6 Example CRM Goals) appeared first on Insightly.

One of the most important tools you’ll need to implement is a customer relationship management (CRM) system. A CRM gives you a centralized platform to store customer information and manage every interaction regardless of the touch point. While you may not have many customers right now, you are growing. A CRM is essential to satisfying customers, and it is easiest to implement earlier rather than later.

In this post, you’ll learn what you should look for in a CRM for a startup and why Insightly is the best solution for getting your business off the ground.

Why your startup needs a CRM

Your new startup doesn’t come with customers. As such, it may seem like a waste of capital to invest in a platform for managing customers when you don’t have many. It is natural to believe that you can wait until your business is established with a solid number of customers before you can see tangible rewards from a CRM. 

However, every startup can benefit from a CRM. The reason is that the success of every business, regardless of industry, is based on providing the best possible customer experience. By taking on a customer-first approach early in your business, you establish a strong precedent and ensure that every customer you add has the experience that will allow you to move forward in the market.

Here are some of the things you can achieve by adopting a CRM for your startup:

Prioritize and organize your work

In a startup, there is no shortage of responsibilities to juggle. How do you know what is important enough to merit your utmost attention? And, how do you keep track of everything so that your business can operate efficiently?

A CRM tool gives you a centralized place to store all your important tasks and the information about leads and customers. When you have all your customer data in a single place, you get a clear picture of where to spend your time and energy. Founders, managers, marketers, and sales teams will all be on the same page, regardless of location or time zone, and your team can act quickly to foster your business’s growth.

Generate new leads and customers 

A strong sales pipeline is key to gaining your first customers. A CRM system helps you capture leads and move them through your sales process while automatically routing leads to the best sales rep. You get a detailed understanding of how effective your sales pipeline is. You can see where you are losing potential customers in your sales process and which activities are yielding the best results.

Manage contacts and partnerships

In the digital world, organizations rely on a variety of communication methods to engage their customers and business partners. A CRM connects all interactions across touch points for you so that you can manage your contacts from a single platform. Sales, marketing, customer support, and any other team working to build strong relationships will have this information at their fingertips.

You don’t have to worry about losing track of a conversation. CRM software can store details from every conversation in one place instead of spreading them out in spreadsheets and notebooks. You can also use a CRM to set up automatic reminders to ensure you regularly check in with your valuable contacts.

What to look for in the best CRM for startups

Now that you know why your startup needs a CRM, let’s look at some of the key features to look for in CRM software for startups:

Affordability

First, you should evaluate CRM platforms on affordability. Every dollar counts in the early stage of your business, and you don’t want to overspend on any of the tools. A CRM price should reflect the level of functionality the platform offers. 

Many CRM providers scale their pricing based on the number of users you enroll. As a new business, your initial costs should be on the lower end as you won’t need spots for many users.

Be sure to keep an eye out for hidden charges. Some platforms don’t make their key features available unless you purchase additional add-ons. Others will charge for integrations if you want to connect the CRM to your other tools.

It‘s also beneficial to look for a tool with a free trial (or even a free plan for 1-2 users). This will allow you to try out the platform before committing to paying for the software.

Flexibility

No other business is quite like yours. The intricacies of your operation are what makes it special. The right CRM will be flexible and customizable to add fields, pipelines, processes and the like to fit to your organization – not the other way around. 

Task and email automation

In the fast-paced startup environment, making the most of your time is critical. Everyone on your team can benefit from reducing the amount of tasks needed throughout their daily activities.

A good CRM for startups lets you set up automated workflows to handle routine tasks. Generating reports, sending email follow-ups, and scheduling tasks are some of the common functions you can automate with a CRM.

This automation helps everyone on your team increase their productivity so that the startup can move with greater agility.

Reporting

Visual reporting gives you a real-time overview of the current state and success of your business. This helps you understand the number of deals you have open, the value of opportunities in your sales pipeline, how well you convert deals to sales, where your best leads come from, and more.

Integrations

A CRM gives you a powerful tool for managing many parts of your business, but it is not the only tool you will need to use. To extend the efficiencies afforded by a CRM to every area of your business, you want a platform with ready-made integrations for other popular tools. For example, integrating your CRM with accounting software like Quickbooks can streamline record keeping and invoicing. Or integrating your CRM with Slack can improve communication throughout your organization, allow you to act on new leads fast or share wins in real time.

Scalability

Your business may be small now, but it won’t be forever. As your startup grows, you will have bigger teams, more leads, and more contacts. You need a CRM solution that can grow with you as your business expands. You’ll want to map out the features you’ll need down the road and see if you can get them now while staying within your budget. Even if you need to pay a little more upfront, it could end up being less of a hassle than needing to migrate platforms in the middle of more extensive operations.

Ease of use is a key part of scalability. When you need to onboard a lot of sales reps, you want to get them up and running quickly so that they can spend time engaging customers. Plus, you don’t want to add more work for your experienced team to take the time to train new team members.

CRM first 

There is a distinct difference between a platform designed for managing customer relationships versus one that is designed for marketing as a whole. There are many marketing platforms that were built as a marketing tool that retroactively added CRM functionality.

Two good examples are Hubspot and ActiveCampaign. One was designed as a more generic marketing platform, while the other originated as an email autoresponder that eventually added more traditional CRM features.

A ‘CRM first’ platform that was built around the needs of sales leaders and is much more effective in building quality relationships with your customers. It prioritizes pipeline management and visualization, so you always know exactly where you stand when it comes to winning new deals. Plus, it will provide you with unified profiles for each contact so that you can engage them in a more meaningful manner, all from a single platform.

Insightly is the best startup CRM

Insightly is a powerful CRM for startups of all sizes. The platform is easy to get started with, customizable, and it provides you with a single, comprehensive tool for managing every aspect of your customer experience. Here are some of the key reasons Insightly is the best CRM for startups.

Highly customizable

Your business is unique. You should have the flexibility to create and name fields that work just for your business without writing lines of code or hiring an integrator. Insightly lets you tailor the CRM to your business (read: geeks love us). You can add unlimited custom fields to your records, and you can customize each stage of your pipeline to match your sales process.

The interface is highly customizable, allowing you to apply various views and filters to make the platform easy to navigate. You can create stunning data visualizations with simple drag and drop builders so that the information you need is always at your fingertips.

Start for free

You cannot overstate the importance of affordability for a startup CRM. Insightly removes any worry from a potential purchase by letting you use the platform for free for up to two users. Your free account includes all the CRM’s key features for you to get a real understanding of the platform’s capabilities before you buy. No commitment or payment method is required.

As you add teams, don’t add more vendors

You shouldn’t have to complicate your startup with too many vendors as it will inevitably slow down your growth. When you add a marketing team and a customer service team, Insightly has you covered with Insightly Marketing, a full-featured marketing automation solution, and Insightly Service, a help desk ticketing solution to service your accounts.

Insightly unites these functions so all of your teams can work from the same tool. Data is centralized to provide a complete 360-degree view of each lead, contact, and customer to keep everyone on the same page.

The AppConnect integration suite lets you seamlessly connect the CRM to the tools that you already use (e.g. HR, accounting, and communication apps). With the no-code integration engine, you can create automated workflows between apps without the need for technical expertise.

Grow faster with Insightly

The right CRM can help your startup find early success and set the stage for future growth. Insightly understands the unique needs of startups and has created a fully customizable platform that can be tailored to your business.

Don’t wait until you’re no longer a small business to make the most of a CRM. Get started with a free trial today to start your business on the right foot.

The post Best Startup CRM: Launch Your Business with Insightly appeared first on Insightly.

With the CRM being the heart of most businesses, integrations between it and the key tools used throughout the organization is vital. Making CRM integrations simpler and still effective is the new expected user experience.

What does integration look like?

Users don’t want to copy and paste data between apps, upload CSVs, or write complex code. They expect data to move between apps so they can do their jobs with ease. Tasks like sending emails, booking meetings, creating invoices, and transferring orders are expected to be automated.

When selecting a CRM, this is one of the biggest points your team will need to cover. How will your CRM integrate, how will you maintain those integrations, and who will be responsible for them? 

The latter is a kicker, since SaaS applications push out new releases constantly, and your integrations can occasionally break during upgrades. You want easy integrations and the ability to keep them up and running without a developer or IT assistance.

Legacy CRMs and integrations

Legacy CRMs, like Salesforce, have a complex relationship with integrations. If you decide to build a custom Salesforce integration, you’ll need to consider factors like data mapping, what to do with duplicate records, how to handle the Salesforce ID, and batch vs. real time data exchange. These integrations will require a developer or an integration engineer who specializes in Salesforce integrations. 

Using an integration on the Salesforce AppExchange can ameliorate this process. But even that isn’t smooth sailing and will still require an integration specialist. Apps available on the Salesforce AppExchange can be either managed or unmanaged packages. You can make changes to the unmanaged packages, but not to managed packages, so your ability to get the integration to work in your unique environment may be limited.

CRMs like Salesforce are built for the Fortune 500, not for mid-sized businesses with realistic budgets. While an enterprise can absorb six-figure consultant fees and extra hires to facilitate integrations, the average mid-sized business doesn’t have that luxury. 

Making CRM integrations easy

Hiring integrators for CRM integrations contributes to a higher total cost of ownership, which again is fine for Fortune 500 companies, but can be a deterrent for mid-sized business. So when Insightly CRM started looking at ways to facilitate integrations, the goal was ‘no-code’ meaning that virtually anyone in your organization could create one. Using step-by-step guides, or recipes, it would be easy to connect Insightly to apps used in HR, IT, accounting and more.

Insightly partnered with Workato, a leader in enterprise automation with an eye on governance and security. Workato helps automate business workflows across cloud apps, so Insightly built its AppConnect product with Workato ‘under the hood’ to leverage the strength and reliability of an existing platform but deliver it in a convenient way to Insightly users.

Connect to the apps  that you already use

With AppConnect, you can easily build automations from Insightly to every other app you use to run your business. At launch, Insightly AppConnect included integrations to 500+ applications. 

That’s a nice number, but the most important integrations are the ones that you use in your business. Some of the most popular integrations are:

Finance/Accounting:

• Quickbooks
• Xero
• Sage

HR:

• Workday
• ADP
• BambooHR

Sales:

• Zoominfo
• Gong
• Docusign

Marketing:

• WordPress
• Asana
• PowerBI

Support:

• Calendly
• Jira
• Drift

IT/DevOps

• Slack
• Okta
• ServiceNow

eCommerce

• Shopify
• WooCommerce
• Magento

Success with AppConnect comes quickly

Based in London, the UK Screen Alliance is the trade association that represents companies working in production. They are users of Insightly CRM and AppConnect. 

CEO Neil Hatton says his team can quantify the benefit of having the apps across their business integrated with Insightly CRM using AppConnect. 

For instance, he says monthly invoicing went from a full day of work to 10 minutes of spot checking.

“We’re treating AppConnect as if we’ve gained an extra member of our team,” he said. “We’re a small team. It’s like AppConnect is a silent system. It just gets on with things in the background. That’s given us all more time to focus on working on behalf of our members and delivering the valuable activities they expect from us.” 

See AppConnect in action

To see how easy it is to integrate Insightly CRM using AppConnect, request a free demo today.

The post No-code CRM integrations? Explore Insightly AppConnect appeared first on Insightly.

You need to understand why you need a CRM and how it corresponds to your business’s primary goals. In this post, you’ll learn why a CRM strategy is important, and we’ll give you five CRM objectives you can set to achieve when using the software for your business.

Why do you need a CRM strategy?

Creating a CRM strategy ensures that you get the most out of your software. It clarifies why you’re using the software and how its impact aligns with your overall business strategy and goals. Plus, a defined strategy gets your entire organization on the same page and focused on achieving the same goals.

CRM tools do a lot. They give companies a centralized platform for organizing data and communicating with customers. And they allow you to manage relationships throughout the entire customer lifecycle, spanning interactions across several multichannel touchpoints.

With this robust functionality, countless benefits are available to those who implement a CRM. Creating a CRM strategy helps you find the gap in your current systems and processes so that you use the software in the manner that will have the greatest impact on the overall health of the business.

5 CRM objectives you can set for your business

Now that you know the importance of developing a strategy for your CRM, let’s examine some of the most impactful objectives you can set when adopting a CRM for your business:

1. Improve the buyer’s journey

The fundamental purpose of a CRM system is to improve the customer experience. Executing on this objective is the most sure-fire way to see positive results across your business. When you make improved customer satisfaction the main goal for your CRM, all other objectives work to support this goal.

One of the best ways to boost customer satisfaction is to offer a personalized experience. A CRM gives you unified customer profiles to understand all of your customers’ needs. You can use these insights to tailor every interaction and how you approach your products and services. 

With a CRM, all your customer data is easily accessible by the entire team so everyone can pick up on customers’ histories and preferences faster. This helps you increase the speed at which you respond to customer inquiries to provide a more positive experience.

2. Improve operational efficiency

CRM software makes your sales process much more efficient as you can save a considerable amount of time by automating repetitive administrative tasks. Audience segmentation, email follow-ups, post-sale workflows, and invoicing are just some of the tasks and processes that a CRM lets you automate.

Modern CRMs can further consolidate customer information gathered across the organization, including sales, marketing, and customer service, into a single dashboard, everyone in your business can enjoy streamlined communication and smoother collaboration. 

3. Increase customer retention

Your best customers are always your current customers. No matter your industry, it is always easier to encourage repeat purchases and/or expand contracts than it is to win over new prospects. By adopting a CRM, you can boost retention to maximize the average lifetime value of your customers.

The software makes it easy to track each customer’s interests and every interaction to gain a clear understanding of how to serve them best. As a result, campaigns can be aligned to each customer to encourage further loyalty.

For example, you can cross-sell and offer discounts based on previous purchases. Or, you could keep track of how long someone has been a customer and send them rewards when they reach key milestones to improve stickiness.

4. Lower your customer acquisition cost

Gaining new customers comes at a cost. With a CRM, you can get more return from every dollar spent on marketing to new customers to lower your average customer acquisition cost (CAC). There are several ways a CRM helps you achieve this.

To start, it can lower the cost needed to executive effective campaigns by automating repetitive tasks to free up time for your sales and marketing teams. The centralization of data afforded by a CRM also allows you to target potential customers with greater efficiency.

With a CRM, you will know exactly what stage of the purchasing process each prospect is in. You can use this to send marketing messages targeting their specific needs at that moment instead of sending generalized messages less likely to capture their attention.

5. Generate more sales

At the end of the day, your business needs sales to survive. A great way to increase sales is to ensure you direct your efforts toward selling to the right people. Not every lead will be a good fit for your business, and some will have a higher value than others. With a CRM, your sales team can ensure their pipeline is full of highly qualified leads and prospects. 

The data in a CRM system can be used to learn what your best customers have in common so that you can then prioritize the leads that share the same traits. This keeps the sales team focused on the best leads for the largest contract sizes. By doing so, you can close more deals with higher-value customers.

How to measure your CRM objectives

Goals that you can’t track and measure aren’t real goals. Therefore, every CRM objective should be tied to a specific performance metric that can be used to determine whether the objective is achieved.

If your CRM objectives align with your business goals, the appropriate metrics for evaluating your efforts should be easy to define. For example, if you want to improve customer retention, you should focus on your churn rate and look for it to decrease. Or, if you hope to increase sales, you can track new and total revenue generated.

If you find that you’re not reaching your CRM objectives, you can then adjust your tactics to yield better results. Perhaps, you’re not converting enough leads, so you decide to change your automated email campaigns. Or maybe, you’re not retaining enough customers, so you choose to make a greater effort to understand where and when customer satisfaction is dropping.

Achieve your goals with Insightly

Your CRM strategy should be an ever-evolving process, with your objectives adapting over time as your business grows. No matter your size or the results you achieve, your success will always depend on giving your customers the best possible experience.

Insightly CRM was designed to give businesses large and small the ability to create world-class experiences without unnecessary complexity.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, or request a personalized demo to see how it can help you achieve your goals.

The post CRM Objectives: 5 Goals You Can Achieve with a CRM appeared first on Insightly.

If your current CRM isn’t working as well as it should, making a move isn’t easy.

Despite the compelling reasons to switch, organizations continually find themselves settling for what’s familiar. The simple truth is that switching CRMs can feel risky and costly at first glance – which means staying put feels like a safer choice than taking this leap into uncertainty. But flip that script and think about what you’re missing out on by staying.

Why switching CRM can be a good thing

If you’re looking into a new CRM, chances are you are experiencing some or all of the following issues:

Frustrated end users – It’s hard to gain value from your CRM when end users aren’t happy. Spend time to understand the concerns of your end users. Whether you stay with the status quo or try something new, end users must feel comfortable with your CRM. If they don’t, you’re fighting an uphill battle that you can’t win.

Constant data roadblocks – Getting data flowing into your CRM seemed like a monumental achievement. Keeping it up to date has proved to be even more complex. Integrations aren’t cheap to build, What’s worse is that they always seem to break at exactly the wrong moment. 

Unavailable or restricted features – It’s not a new story. Your plan level doesn’t include that particular feature. And, since the vendor doesn’t publish its pricing, you’ll get to sit through several more pitch presentations, only to learn that you can’t afford the features you need most. 

Disillusioned administrators – You demand a lot from your CRM administrators. With so many custom integration projects, data synchronization issues, and other fires to put out, delays are commonplace. Requests for updates/dashboards/reports are always backed up. All of this puts unnecessary strain on your administrators.

Stagnant product development – When was the last time your CRM vendor released an innovative feature? Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a CRM partner that actually cares about your success? One that understands your business and designs (and thoroughly tests) solutions, aimed at making your company more profitable?

Negative (or questionable) ROI – Measuring ROI from your CRM (whether negative or positive) can be a multi-faceted endeavor. Developing a cost-benefit analysis can seem daunting, which is why many in your situation take the path of less resistance and stick with the status quo. Do some digging to see if your CRM has a negative value proposition. Your finance team can help. CRMs are priced per user and it can vary; pricing can be anywhere from $12 to $300/month. You’ll need to consider the size of your business. If it’s one of your biggest bills, chances are you may be overpaying. 

Preparation and planning are key

Whether you’ve already decided to leave your CRM or are just exploring options, one thing is clear—the status quo is not working. Having invested time, money, and effort, your leadership might be wary of change, dreading the entire data migration to a new CRM and worried that it won’t be as scalable or powerful as your current CRM. These are all valid concerns, and you’ll need help to navigate the decision-making and buying process with knowledge and confidence. You’ll need to approach this like any project – getting a plan together, selecting a new CRM, running an implementation program, and staying on track. 

16 steps to switching your CRM

Unlike most software investments that are department-specific, a CRM touches nearly every aspect of your business, so there is a higher level of complexity and accountability to consider. Every company and situation is different, but the steps below are universally applicable to organizations in this situation. 

Before Switching

This is the phase where you lay the groundwork for a successful transition. 

1. Assess your current situation

Put together a plan for soliciting feedback from across the organization. You’ll probably get a mix of detailed and brief responses. For a more data-driven approach, design a brief survey that addresses the common pain points, such as disorganized information, poor client and supplier management, inefficient collaboration with team members, and difficulty managing projects. As you collect feedback and begin to analyze the data, you might notice a few common threads. Consider using the following categories to group ideas, issues, and feature requests:

• Important features
• Cost and licensing
• Scalability
• Integrations
• Support. 

2. Prepare for CRM switching costs

Monthly subscription fees – If you’re already using a cloud-based CRM, there’s a good chance that you already budget for this. On the other hand, if you’re using self-hosted software, it’s important to note that most CRMs these days are priced on a monthly or annual subscription model.

Infrastructure & device upgrades – Do you have enough bandwidth, or is your WiFi connection somewhat spotty? Is it time to upgrade your sales reps’ outdated smartphones and tablets? The best CRMs offer a variety of desktop and mobile interfaces, so you’ll want to give your team the best connectivity and mobility possible. 

Data accessibility costs – Some CRMs make it difficult to export your data. Others offer export functionality, only to output a file that requires significant modification and formatting. Check to see if your current vendor permits (or charges extra for) on-demand data exporting. 

Data import & de-dupe costs –  Some CRMs provide in-depth data migration guides and concierge onboarding services. Other software vendors provide minimal documentation or community-only support. Quality of support will definitely impact your team’s ability to make a smooth transition.

Early cancellation penalties – Does your current vendor agreement demand an early cancellation penalty? If you prepaid for a full year, can you request a partial refund? 

Training & onboarding expenses – Who should have access to what? Should you train everyone at once? Or, does it make sense to do a series of several role-based sessions? How much in-house documentation will need to be updated as a result of the switch? There are costs associated with training that you should anticipate.

Downtime risks – How confident are you that your team could guarantee minimal downtime? Do you need to bring on additional resources to ensure a seamless changeover? Each day spent between CRMs could translate into untold lost opportunities.

3. Get internal buy-in

It’s not possible to overstate the importance of getting buy-in from as many people as possible. Without buy-in the CRM switch will fail. 

Decide on who is going to be involved in the switchover process. Consider forming a cross-functional team that includes senior leaders along with mid-level and frontline users, so you have both big picture and daily user perspectives across different business lines. Make sure to include current/future CRM administrators and an IT person in your CRM needs assessment task force. It’s also helpful to have at least a couple of outside-the-box thinkers on the team. 

While you need a cross-functional team to collect feedback and execute the plan, you also need someone who will rally the troops, hold everyone accountable, and ensure successful delivery, i.e. someone who will own the project. This might be someone from your PM team, your lead IT resource, a sales leader, or a data and operations manager. When selecting a project owner, look for someone who is detail-oriented but also understands the bigger picture and is a good communicator.

The person or team who recommended the current CRM (or the current software being used as a de facto CRM) may be the toughest nut to crack. Ensure these people feel included in the discussion and that the research and effort they put into the initial decision is validated and harnessed for this new project. Perhaps some of the same issues still exist, or the issues have merely shifted. 

4. Define your needs

It’s likely that people have special requirements and needs that they couldn’t fulfill with their previous CRM. Based on steps 1 and 2 above, your team should have a clear list of these needs. It’s important to know what the new CRM will bring and it will help with internal buy-in.

This guide contains a CRM needs assessment checklist that can assist.

Having acquired an in-depth understanding of your needs, you’re in an excellent position to begin comparing vendors. Vendor selection typically starts by identifying those solutions that fit within your cohort group. If you’re a growth-oriented company with 50 or so employees, you wouldn’t want to waste your time on systems that only support a handful of users. Likewise, you probably shouldn’t consider systems designed (and priced for) Fortune 500 companies or systems that are actually ERPs (enterprise resource planning systems). 

So, how can you quickly identify CRMs that truly fit your business? Word-of-mouth referrals and online research are a good start, but SaaS (Software as a Service) vendor trust maps can be even more beneficial (see TrustRadius, G2 and similar vendors.) As you narrow your vendor list, drill down and seek comparative reports that aggregate candid feedback from actual users. What are users saying about your “must-have” features? Which vendor seems to check the most boxes?

Set up demos with the most qualified vendors, consider the budget and then have your selection team rank their choices. The top vendor will likely rise to the top for the whole group.

5. Set your success metrics

Increasing sales is an admirable goal, but is it specific enough? Probably not. Just because you have a new CRM, there’s no guarantee that it will magically impact revenue – especially if goals remain vague or unknown. Do some team brainstorming with the expressed intention of defining (or refining) top-level CRM goals. For example, is a 20% increase in cross-sell revenue feasible this year? Could your implementation team cut project-related expenses by 5% over the same time frame? Challenge your departments to consider lofty, yet attainable KPIs. A KPI should be more than just a buzzword. Establishing best practice KPIs will help your company monitor progress toward the achievement of its goals. But remember, defining a bunch of KPIs offers minimal value without transparent reporting. Your CRM should be able to help with that. Check to see if your CRM offers a library of pre-built reports and dashboards. Get to know your CRM’s reporting interface. You might be surprised by the many ways you can slice and dice the data. 

Bring these success metrics to each demo and have your sales rep talk you through how exactly this solution fits your needs.

Then, sign your contract.

6. Tell your Sales Reps to clean their data

Think of this transition as a ‘spring cleaning’ of sorts. You’ll do a global data examination in Step 8 below, but before that can occur, you’ll want to ask your reps to clean up their individual records. You may ask a sales leader to set time with each rep to do this process with them. Encourage them to get rid of dead opps, be realistic about timelines, and clear out duplicates. It will make the first few weeks of the new CRM much more efficient. 

7. Communicate on the migration date

When choosing a migration date, consider end of month/quarter/year timeframes that may make for an easier transition, but don’t draw out the process any longer than it has to go. Consider a brief period when systems may run in parallel. Also, plan a final cut off date when your old CRM will no longer be accessible. (Don’t panic about this. You can store the data in a file in perpetuity.)

Data migration

8. Clean and prepare your data

After your reps have made a pass at data clean-up for their own records (step 6 above), it’s time to act globally. A new CRM is your opportunity to start fresh and leave the junk behind. Bad data creeps in over time. Common examples of bad data include duplicate records, unused custom fields, overlapping tags, confusing dropdown menus, and various hacks/workarounds. Before switching CRMs, challenge your team to identify only those records, fields, and objects that are truly needed. You can always save the “extras” in a CSV file, in case someone needs that data later. You can easily clean your data in your new CRM, but it’s best to start with a clean slate. Taking a somewhat minimalist and deliberate approach could offer additional clarity, reduce confusion, and expedite CRM success. 

9. Export your existing CRM data

When it comes to migrating data, you’ll start with an export of your old CRM data. Your new CRM should offer a migration tool that transfers all data for all fields from all standard objects, such as calendars, tasks and events, emails and notes, leads, accounts, users and roles, contacts and opportunities. 

10. Import your data in the new CRM

Most modern CRMs will have a migration tool that imports exported CRM data into your new instance. You should not have to import the data manually or do any mapping. The migration tool does all the hard work for you so you can have a smooth transition. Great measures must be taken to preserve all existing data relationships you have in your old CRM and migrate your data over with high fidelity. If the set up is done properly, this step should be a breeze. Log in to your new instance and start to look around!

11. Set-up your integrations

Your data is in…great. You know that integrations are just as important as data. They ensure everything keeps working together without disrupting people’s current habits and tools. In your plan, you identified your integrations, so now it’s time to link your new CRM with other apps in your business. Depending on the CRM you choose, this can be a long, technical process, or it can be a ‘drag and drop’ no-code or low-code experience. However you accomplish it, you must test these integrations as part of your migration process. Common integrations to HR apps (e.g. BambooHR), communication tools (e.g. Slack), and sales tools (e.g. Docusign) will need to be up and running immediately.

12. Verify everything and test

You cannot send people on the new CRM if you are not 100% sure everything works as intended and everything promised is there. Your project team’s individual areas of expertise should come in handy here. Each team member should be responsible for testing the CRM and integrations for their team. Then, each team member should walk through the test with another team member as a back up. This adds a layer of accountability.

13. Make the switch

If all of the above steps are followed, the actual cutover should be fairly smooth. People will start work one day and be in the new system. You may run the two systems in parallel for a while, just to ensure that the data is all migrated. 

Just After Switching CRMs

14. Onboarding and training

Every CRM is different. Although there may be some similarities between systems, your end users are bound to encounter countless differences. These differences inevitably create questions – and, if not answered, can cause confusion. Be proactive and put together a rock-solid training and onboarding plan. If you’ve picked a good vendor, you may be delighted by their robust support documentation and user community, which definitely helps.

You’ll want to subscribe to a “just in time” training philosophy where users are trained as close to the cutover date as possible. Experts say they need to get hands-on with the system just after the training to increase the rate of adoption. Plan multiple sessions and record them for those who can’t attend.

If there are specific areas or terminology where the new CRM and the old differ, it may be a good idea to have a ‘cheat sheet’ of sorts to highlight those trouble spots. 

Effective training will be a big factor in the success of your CRM implementation. Don’t skimp in this area. Those who attend training sessions are more likely to report positive experiences with the new system.

15. Pay attention to user feedback

How will you collect feedback in the first days of the implementation? This will be the most crucial time. What do they like about your CRM? Are users creating unnecessary workarounds? Collecting this type of qualitative data will supplement the quantitative data found in your CRM reports. Although there’s no one-size-fits all formula for quantifying return on investment, you can reflect on your goals and KPIs to see how you are measuring up. Circle back to your CRM goals (which you set during the needs assessment stage of the switchover) to track progress. Get specific. Consider open door office hours (in-person or virtual) to be available during the first crucial days.

16. Iterate and improve your CRM migration

No CRM is perfect. Your new CRM will evolve over time as the needs of your business and your people change. Keep your feedback loops open and make use of people’s feedback and recommendations to improve their experience. Remember that their use of the CRM will ultimately help them be more efficient in their work. Your CRM implementation team should continue to meet regularly for the first few months post-implementation to assess needs and follow-up on requests. Meeting frequency can slowly reduce over time, but quarterly check-ins should remain in place for a year at a minimum.

Measure your CRM migration success

Now the migration is done, it’s time to track and measure the KPIs and goals set before the migration. Your plan comes in handy here because you have pre-determined your success metrics. Meet as a team and look at how your implementation measured up. This will give you a quantifiable answer. In terms of qualitative answers, that may be more difficult. In reality, there is no off-the-shelf formula to determine if switching CRMs is a good idea. Rather, you must do the work, ask questions, gather data points, and synthesize the data through a lens of your organization and its needs. 

Your finance team should be able to provide a report of costs associated with the change and any forecasted expenses/savings.

Join the thousands of companies that successfully switched to Insightly

Switching CRMs is a big project – but one that’s well worth the effort. With today’s limitless options for CRM technology, “settling” on your current platform just isn’t a viable path forward. 

With the right team, migration doesn’t have to be difficult. Insightly has migrated thousands of companies from other CRMs (including Salesforce) and can help you too. The Insightly Professional Services Team is ready to assist you and wants to be part of your success. 

Ready to switch CRMs? Get in touch for a free needs assessment and personalized product demo to see if Insightly CRM is the right match for you.

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