Customer Relationship Software is one of the most valuable tools that sales professionals as well as customer care professionals could have on the job. The right type of CRM software for small business use can manage a lot of information and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. If you’re thinking of upgrading the software that your team uses, make sure the following four features are included.
Designating a Contact’s Status
It’s great to have a central database that allows you to track activity with all sorts of contacts. In fact, you want to be able to assign each contact a designation. While the typical trifecta of lead, prospect, or customer may be enough, it’s nice when the software will allow you to add more categories to the menu.
You may find that with your situation, adding something like “qualified lead”, “pending customer” or even “do not contact” as a status would be helpful. Ideally, the software would be flexible enough to allow this type of customization.
Reminders of Upcoming Tasks
CRM software should make it easy to schedule tasks related to specific contacts and provide reminders before it’s time to begin those tasks. This is helpful in a number of situations whether you’re dealing with a new contact, a recently signed customer, or a customer who’s been around for a long time.
For example, this feature would alert you when it’s time to make follow-up contacts with new leads. The contact may be an email, a text, or a phone call. Whatever the case, setting a task along with a date and time can make sure those tasks aren’t forgotten.
Keeping Track of Important Dates
Customer relationships are about building rapport and keeping in touch. One of the ways that you can do that is to add data that tracks important dates. It could be birthdays, or it could be something like anniversaries or upcoming graduations for the kids. The right CRM software for small business would even allow you to track when a contact is due to return from a vacation so you can schedule an appropriate date and time to check in with them.
The goal here is to ensure that you provide answers to questions by promised dates, recognize events that may be important to the contact, and in general demonstrate that you are interested in what matters to them. With this feature, it’s much easier to ensure you don’t overlook a date that means a lot to that prospect or customer.
The Ability to Prepare Mass Mailings
Ideally, the CRM software that you choose will work seamlessly with other programs so that creating some type of mass mail campaign is simple. Drawing on data housed in the program, you can create emails or letters for the post with relatively little effort.
Being able to determine what group of contacts is include matters. You may want to do a product release specifically to existing customers. Maybe the plan is to release some sort of announcement to your prospects only. If the plan is to do some sort of mass mailing to everyone associated with a specific company in your database, that should be something you can do with a couple of clicks.
Whatever software has caught your eye, make use of any trial period that’s offered. Enter some data and then try every feature to see how it works. If it will do everything you want without any issues, then the search for new software is over.
