Do I need a CRM ?

Let me answer second part first, i.e “Do I need a CRM ?”.

The answer is, It depends.

If you are single person, who receives about 1 lead a week, and already has a structure to follow of from conversion to execution, you don’t need one.

If you really want to be sure answer the following questions.

However if you sales team OR you receive an influx of leads which need to be tracked for activities, conversion, quote/invoice and payment follow-up, you will be better off with a CRM.

It is very easy to answer this question on your own by referring to our 10 questions listed here, re written below for reference.

1. Do you have a way to communicate with your users for new announcement, products, information sharing ?
2. Before starting your follow up, is there an automatic way to get a list for today’s follow for each person in your company?
3. If yes, does it tell you what your last communication with that would-be client/lead was ?
4. Does your mail follow-up system (if it exists), integrate with your calendar ?
5. Is there a single window track to track ALL documents related to particular client ?
6. Are the documents & their modification history available for ready reference in single screen ?
7. Can you send quotations from your system to client ?
8. Can you track if quotations were sent to client through that system ?
9. Can you see consolidated to-do list in the system ?
10. Can you categorize leads as qualified / opportunities ?
11. Can you see reports of leads/conversion/opportunities ?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to most of the questions, you don’t need a CRM .

However if you need more hard data, this article in Forbes states refers to studies conducted which claim a fully utilized CRM, increases sales by 29% !

Now to the first part of the question,

What is a CRM?

CRM stands for customer relationship management.

In simple words, it is a system which allows to

1. Get more leads by marketing
2. Helps convert more leads to customers
3. Helps follow-up of payment of invoices to get paid faster
4. Helps deliver better after sales customer service using issue follow-up modules.

Details regarding various modules can be found here.