5 Signs You Need a CRM | Salesforce Explained

What's up, everybody? I'm Brian Tong, your guide to all things Salesforce. And this is Salesforce Explained. It's a series where we talk Salesforce and technology without the jargon or buzzwords. And today's episode is for those of you who've ever asked yourself, is my business ready to use CRM software? Well, you know, I've got five simple questions to help you decide if you're ready to explore what a CRM like Salesforce can do. So, hey, let's get into it. I. Alright, there's so much you can know about your customers these days. Sure, you know, there's the basic stuff like contact info and purchase history, but what about the sophisticated stuff like predicting what they'll want to buy next? Imagine if you knew what they wanted to buy before they even bought it. Amazing. And knowing your customers on this level is called customer relationship management. You might remember this from our what is Salesforce Episode of Salesforce Explained, featuring someone who looks a lot like me and is very smart like me. Now, CRM software like Salesforce helps you know your customers better, offer those customers better experiences and build stronger relationships with them. Now if only it were that easy, right? I get a CRM and whoop. Those customer relationships magically deepen. But the reality is CRM can seem like a souped up sports car loaded with tons of bells and whistles like this one. You know, it comes with turbo and superchargers and a manual transmission that feels so nice. While that one over here has active cornering headlights and a deluxe Alcantara headliner. Now, unless you're a car person, maybe you tuned out a little bit as I was saying all that, you're like, hey, can you just show me a modest daily driver with good mpg? That's all I need. Well, you know what? Today my goal is to help you see how CRM gives you the best of both worlds. Right? It could be your practical compact for commuting, or it could be a winning franchise worthy race car that looks sexy. Now, how you use it really depends on your business. So let's get things rolling because cars. All right, simple question number one. Do you and your team use your email inboxes to track interactions with your customers? You ever see a silo on a farm? You know those big tower shaped structures, they're usually metal, they're cylindrical. They're used to store different kinds of grain. Well, now imagine that each person you work with has an inbox that's like a silo and it's a Huge storage bin full of information that nobody else can see into or access. Keeping key business information in individual inboxes. This is an example of what we call siloed information. When information is kept in silos, it's incredibly difficult to share with other people in your organization. And. And that means nobody in your organization really has a full 360 degree view of any of your customers. What's worse is when an employee leaves the company and too often their accounts are deleted and all their information in their inbox disappears like poof. And all that customer knowledge is gone. But you know, when you use a CRM, that information gets out of silos and into this centralized database so anyone who needs it can see it. Business leaders, stakeholders, sales and marketing and operations. A good CRM system gives everyone on your team all the visibility and resources that they need. It creates a single source of truth for your organization. Jargon alert. Okay, okay. What we mean by that is one place where everyone can look to see up to date information about everything that's vital to your business. A single source truth. And it's accessible from anywhere at any time because it's hosted in the secure cloud. It's essentially the opposite of a silo. But I get it. Some of you are like, really though? Like, doesn't CRM just add complexity and extra steps? If all I need to do is track communications. Well, here's the deal. Salesforce meets your team where they are. So if they live in the inbox, you can set up a seamless integration that allows your team to work and communicate with wherever they want, AKA in their inbox. Because, you know, old habits die hard. But all the data still shows up in your CRM. And the CRM can live in their inbox as well. So they have CRM data at their fingertips. It's like, oh, hey Carlos, I see you've evaluated our services a few times before. And with your history right here, I think I know what I need to close a deal this time. See, it's a win, win. Now, if you've been relying solely on your email inboxes to track customer interactions, Salesforce lets you work how you want and still get the benefit of shared visibility into customer data. So say it with me. Single source of truth. And I'm going to keep on saying that until you name your first unborn child that. Okay, let's move on. Simple question number two. Is your business becoming more complex as. As it grows? I know what you're thinking. Mo money, mo problems. But it's more than Just the bottom line. As teams grow, it gets harder to keep track of all kinds of things. Sales forecasts, customer interactions, finding time to follow up with leads before it's too late. Oftentimes, growing businesses start offering more products and services. Pricing becomes more complex. And after sales, service gets more complicated too. Ah, but look. Look up. Look up there in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's CRM for the res. Don't worry. Growing pains are good because they mean you're growing. And you know what? I'm still growing too. And a good CRM gives you the tools you need to handle that growth. See how we tie it all together? For example, if you're sending more service technicians out into the field to work with customers, you can optimize routes so they can get there faster and help more customers. If you're trying to scale up your inventory so you're never telling customers you're out of stock, you can quickly look at purchase patterns and insights to make informed decisions about what to buy. Or maybe you're establishing new teams with more specialized responsibilities. Like a dedicated customer support group to onboard new customers. CRM makes the handoff between sales and support just seamless because both teams have that full view of customer history. See, I have like cool choreography as well. Now as you can see, how you use your CRM depends on how you're growing. With Salesforce, you can choose which tools you need and forget the rest. Now, a little complexity is inevitable when you're growing. Like, don't let it bog you down because a good CRM helps keep things organized as your business scales. Alright, simple question number three. Are you trying to deliver a better customer experience? Okay, stop me if any of this sounds familiar. Your customers want more for the same price. You know, you want to provide personalized customer service, but you. You've also got to keep your margins manageable. Your sales and service teams are just not on the same page when it comes to what the customer needs. Like, I could go on, but you get the gist of this all. We're all consumers and we all have expectations around the customer experience. Expectations that honestly grow higher and higher each day, whether we're dealing with giant megacorps or the mom and pop store on the corner. But here's the thing though. Some of the smallest businesses are offer the best customer experiences. And how well, by automating simple tasks, which frees up time for people on staff to get creative. So instead of wasting time on grunt work like they're dreaming up awesome personalized Customer experiences. A good CRM helps you anticipate your customer's needs and gives them the best experience at any given time. CRM also leverages automation to let you do more with a small team. Things like offering self service help so your customer can find what they need when they need it. You can be setting email alerts and auto signing tasks for your sales team so customer needs never fall through the cracks. Creating marketing email journeys that run on autopilot so customers can stay up to speed on the latest and greatest news from your team. And even automating approvals for business requests so nothing delays your deal and customers don't have to wait. And this is just a way that it shows how it helps your customers and your team that are going to be able to reap the benefits too. Now, the more you can automate with CRM, the less time your talented employees need to spend doing repetitive tasks. And that frees them up to focus on things that require a human touch, like dreaming up new amazing customer experiences. And hey, that leads me perfectly into simple question number four. Don't you want your employees to have a better experience too? Well, we've been talking a lot about customers, which obviously makes sense, right? But customers, you know, we know they're at the heart of any business and CRM is literally about customer relationships. But let's talk about employees for a minute though. Employees, yes, super important. Let's just show them some love. Gotta give me love. Gotta give them a heart. But you want your employees to have a better experience because they're awesome and businesses need employees and you love your employees you better. But keeping employees happy requires more than good intentions. Well, guess what? CRM can help. So let's break this down. Are you in a position where you need to do more for your business but can't hire more people? It's a tough one. Like how can you retain the employees you have and also get more done? Remote work, hybrid work, flexible hours. Employees want more flexibility in how they work. They want to be able to collaborate and access the information that they need from wherever they are. And Salesforce can make it happen. CRMs help when your team is spread across time zones and work arrangements. If someone on your team has a question, they can look the answer up in your CRM instead of waiting until the right employee who might be in a different time zone or working late hours is at their desk. I mean, what if Meeko is out sick? Miko, I hope you're feeling better. But if Miko's info were in that farm silo that I mentioned earlier, that would be a problem. But with CRM, you won't need to call and text Meco until she wakes up from her much needed nap and all that info is right at your fingertips. Get well soon, Miko. But talent cares about the resources they have when trying to achieve their goals. And a CRM is an essential resource for any sales, service and marketing team. And you don't have to be running a giant enterprise scale business to reap the benefits of CRM. Salesforce brings big time power to any business of any size. All right, simple question number five. It's time for our last question, right? This is the fifth sign that you might be in the market for a CRM. Here we go. Do you need to tell the world how awesome you are? Seriously? Yeah, seriously. Sometimes businesses need to show off a little. You know, make it clear to whoever's watching just how much you've accomplished or what your team is capable of in the near future. Maybe you're looking to raise a round of funding, secure a loan or make a big time hire. Maybe it's time to build the best board ever or even take steps towards going public. There are all kinds of legit strategic reasons that businesses need to, you know, toot their own horns every so often. And guess what? Yep, you know CRM can help. First off, remember the whole single source of truth thing. Whether you're showing your books to a potential investor or buyer, or need to run some solid forecasts and projections to show a star recruit exactly what kind of rocket ship that are boarding when they join your company, having all your business data in one place is invaluable. CRM gives you that. And CRM like Salesforce that has great built in reporting tools makes it super easy to find the data you want and display in an easy to read format. Great leaders, they always have their finger on the pulse of their businesses. You know they know what's working and they know what's not working. CRM helps them get that data in one place to show other people, whether it's board members, investors, auditors, or whoever else needs to understand. Using a CRM means you can do things like get always up to date reporting on your sales goals and pipeline progression without updating any manual spreadsheets. Get notifications for your most important business metrics so you can quickly act on any hotspots like a sudden increase in customer service tickets or discover important patterns in your business data so you prioritize the right things that to propel your company forward boom. It's all right at your fingertips right here. Accurately modeling business performance is vital to growing companies, especially those coordinating advisors, investors and executive hires. So what do we think here? Right? Let's pull up those questions again. Maybe even take a screenshot to reference back to now. How many questions did you answer yes to? I'll bet more than one. I like. Let's be honest, I hope it's more than one. I know it is. But listen, running a business is a lot of work and having a CRM helps make you and your employees lives easier and your customers experiences better. Between automation, collaboration, reporting and just having a single source of truth that you can rely on, Salesforce can keep your business humming and make it easy to get ready for whatever comes next. So you know, go on now, keep on growing. And while you do, make sure to subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications so you never miss an episode of Salesforce Explained. We'll see you next time.