No Credit Card Required for Sign Up! Try it now for FREE.

What is a CRM?

Free Template Badge

Understanding CRM: A Customer Relationship Management System

A customer Relationship Management system is often called a CRM. It is a software platform to manage customer data, analyze it, and use that information to improve the customer experience and generate new sales. It is a digital version of the old day-planners used many years ago, but this is better because it is shared with the entire staff.

Key Points:

  • CRM implementation is nearly universal in large businesses. But small businesses are catching up.

  • A CRM is essential for meeting sales goals & customer service expectations.

  • The benefits of a CRM include enhanced team collaboration, engaged clients, and sales growth.

  • Pairing your CRM with Sales Enablement Platform can get your company to new heights.

Get the Sales & Business Process Audit Template

You will receive the template after filling out the form below:

TigerLRM Member? Sign In to access.

Sign Up for immediate access.

Or

Get it emailed to you by filling out the form

*We respect your privacy and will not sell or abuse your email or name. Only TigerLRM will contact you. Clicking submit means you agree to our privacy policy. Your free attachment will be sent to the email address you have submitted.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

How a Customer Relationship Management platform works

A CRM platform keeps the information about your potential clients (leads) and your existing clients organized and accessible to all team members in your organization. It stores data that helps to overcome sales objections and with sales development, marketing, and more.

When choosing a CRM, you should find one which includes multiple features, such as:

Tracking Touches – Leads and clients need to be communicated with. If your sales and customer service teams aren’t reaching your leads on time – making the required amount of touches – you could lose that sale or customer. A good CRM will let you know if that requirement is being met.

Lead Elevation – Your CRM should automatically move a potentially interested customer into a qualified sales lead. This can be accomplished with targeted marketing and the right amount of engagement. The result will be a closed sale.

Automated email and SMS texts – Automate your email and text messages based on the buying stage of a potential customer. This automation can keep messaging leads and nurturing them until they are ready to talk to your sales team.

Robust Reporting – Track sales and customer service teams from lead to close. Get reports on sales lead progression and how well your team adheres to your sales process.

Sales Enablement – Sales enablement follows the journey of potential clients from research to purchase and implementation. This is a must-have feature for your CRM.

Now keep in mind, the system itself is based on the data put in it and maintained. If your staff does not keep the information up to date, it can quickly become useless. Training your staff to use the CRM all day long is critical.

How a Customer Relationship Management platform works

The Benefits of Implementing a CRM: Enhancing Sales Growth and Team Collaboration

If you don’t already have a CRM, you may already have a “system” consisting of spreadsheets, emails, meetings, notes, etc. This isn’t functional or efficient. A CRM replaces all that data, automates it, and puts all your data in one place. Your communications, tasks, goals, and notes are now combined and available to anyone on your team. Even if you only have a team of one, efficiency is significantly increased.

Using a CRM will lead to better time management, organizational efficiency, team collaboration, happier clients, and increased sales.

Key Features of a CRM Platform to Manage Customer Data and Improve Sales

Customer Relationship Management software usually includes features such as a contact manager, customer support, lead tracking, analytics, email and SMS text messaging, marketing campaigns, and more.

Level up your data with a CRM

If you’re a single entrepreneur, maybe a spreadsheet and a glance at emails and texts work – if you have just a few clients. But as a business person, you want to grow your business. Good luck if you ever get a second person on your team. Manual systems can’t match the capabilities of a CRM. A Customer Relationship Management platform will automatically update as new information about your leads and clients is entered. It will analyze that data and show you when to engage that contact (or contacts) for new or updated products or services. Your CRM will come with a Sales Playbook where you can store content, sales techniques, closing questions and more. Customer service will improve, and sales will grow.

Even more automation

Good CRMs will allow you to set reminders about when to reach out to clients to re-sell or up-sell them, remind customers about service dates or appointments, and enable you to rate them. You will know how receptive they are to your outreach and marketing efforts.

Have you tried our FREE CRM with Sales Enablement built right in?

Try it Now!

No CRM vs. CRM

With a manual data system, your options are very limited. But, with a CRM, you can:

  • Have contact information updated for all departments and teams.
  • Use data to enhance sales and marketing efforts.
  • Use lead scoring to find when clients need to be advanced in their sales cycles.
  • Automate your task reminders, so you don’t miss critical updates or buying stages.
  • Segment your clients and leads for marketing campaigns.
  • Save your data points with contact info, notes, history, and actions all in one place.
  • Get universal access for all team members (with permission levels).

What a CRM can not do

CRM systems aren’t magic and do require work on the part of all of your team members. If your team isn’t in the system at all times, if salespeople keep separate records, the system and the rest of your organization won’t have access, and you will have CRM failure. Be sure to keep your entire team in your CRM at all times.

How a CRM will work for your Sales and Customer Service teams

Customer Relationship Management systems allow your sales and customer service teams to use data in the system to understand which clients to target and when. The system can help focus sales efforts on your most likely leads and when to reach out to them. This reduces the sales cycle as well.

Automation

Your CRM should allow you to automate many data entry functions, giving your sales team more time to sell and your managers more time to coach.

Communication

Your CRM software will enable your sales and customer service teams to reach out to new and existing clients through different specialized channels such as texting, email, phone calls, social media, etc.

Insights

With your Customer Relationship Management software, you can begin to understand client behavior, buying patterns, wants, and needs. This helps identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.

How a CRM will work for your marketing teams.

The data provided by your CRM is a “goldmine” for your marketing teams. Now you can analyze behaviors, patterns, and trends from your customers.

How a CRM will work for your Sales and Customer Service teams

Insights

With the data in your CRM, your marketing team can find behaviors, trends, and insights which can set you apart from your competition and allow you to isolate the most profitable silos for your business.

Segmentation

Narrow your marketing by segmentation or silos. Now you can find likely candidates for product A or B and create marketing campaigns directly for them.

A/B testing

Using the insights and segmentation, you can a/b test your marketing campaigns to get better results continuously.

Outreach

Contact your contacts with SMS text and email from your CRM to get combined outreach campaigns.

"Our CRM includes a Sales Enablement Platform too!"

What is Sales Enablement

Sales Enablement is a collection of digital tools that provide your sales staff with everything they need to be successful. These tools provide a systematic approach to the sales process using strategy and technology to equip sales and customer service teams with resources, information, and the tools to follow the customer journey. It helps sales, customer service, and marketing teams function as one cohesive unit.

The goal is to empower team members and buyers to have more engagement and conversations to find the right solutions for customers and increase sales. It helps your sales team understand what is expected from them and follow the procedures for working with a lead.

Sales Enablement uses technology and an organized set of tools, including a “Playbook” where your company can keep sales techniques, buyer personas, answers to objections, and every process needed to close sales. Additionally, SE has a digital asset management system to store documentation and collateral for team members and potential clients. SE should also have a Learning Management System where you can put your own online courses to bring new hires and experienced employees trained and up to date.

Sales Enablement tools include:

Sales Playbook

A sales playbook is a centralized database that has content – accessible by all team members – that outlines best practices, sales techniques for your products, industry, and target market, and how to close sales and overcome objections. It’s dynamic and grows with your team and organization.

Digital Asset Management

A Digital Asset Management system is part of the sales enablement software platform. It is a centralized storage area for digital assets such as photos, videos, printable collateral, content, contracts, etc. It also grows with your organization and is a valuable resource for sales, customer service, and marketing teams.

Learning Management System

The LMS allows organizations to train new hires or upskill existing employees in-house. Companies create The capacity Companies can quickly create unique training and courses or make them with third-party vendors. Training can take place in the place of business or remotely with a web-based system.

At TigerLRM, we offer a full suite of Sales Enablement tools, including

Sales Enablement tools include
  • Customized Playbooks
  • Digital Asset Management
  • On-Demand Sales Enablement Manager
  • Learning Management System
  • Full Email and SMS Texting
  • Recorded Calls
  • And Much More

How to use a CRM system with sales enablement

Combining sales enablement methods with the data from your CRM can lead to significant revenue and sales increases. Here’s what you need to plan for:

Content

Your Contact Management System is also a great way to store your content. In other words, the same software can also be (or include) a Content Management System. Marketing, sales, and customer service teams can access the most up-to-date content with a common access point. This saves valuable time with sales and client services.

Training

CRM software should also include a training portal as part of Sales Enablement that allows organizations to create training and courses. New hires can get onboarded quickly and remotely if needed. Experienced team members can receive specialized training for new products or sales techniques. A training portal helps your team members improve their knowledge and skillsets.

Analytics

Customer Relationship Management software can follow sales performance and return valuable data about your campaigns. It can also be used to discover areas that need improvement.

Here’s how to get started with a CRM

There are many CRM software vendors out there. Of course, here at TigerLRM, we feel ours is the best for most small to medium-sized businesses, and we are free for up to 10 users, so there’s no risk.

However, every business is different, and you should do your due diligence to find a suitable CRM software suite. You’ll want to ensure that your platform is hosted on the cloud for data safety and that you have the options for sales enablement, email, SMS texting, and analytics.

Steps to take to get started with your new CRM:
  1. Before you commit to any CRM, ensure that all your team leaders, management, and ownership are 100% behind the system and the changeover from what you’re doing now.

  2. Assign a person in your company who can take charge of this project. They should be pretty technically savvy but also understand your company’s operations.

  3. Get your data from various sources and prepare it for implementation day. If applicable, your platform vendor will inform you of any technical specifications you need to transfer data.

  4. Use custom fields to your advantage. Most CRMs offer you the option to create custom data fields (TigerLRM does), so you can tailor the CRM to fit your business and your company’s operations.

  5. Ensure the customer data that you input into your new system has extra tags to describe what types of customers they are and other important factors. Please pay attention to any notes and attach them to the correct customers.

  6. If your CRM offers you an API, get with your web developer to create landing pages and forms that capture customer visits to your website and automatically import the data into your CRM, creating new leads.

Steps to take to get started with your new CRM

Have you tried our FREE CRM with Sales Enablement built right in

Why some companies are still hesitant to use a CRM

Despite CRM’s many advantages, some smaller companies have not yet adopted a Customer Relationship Management software platform. There are many reasons why:

Cost

Naturally, small and medium-sized businesses are concerned about return on investment (ROI) and worry that they will not realize cost savings from using a CRM. But, even with small businesses, the time and efficiency saved from using a CRM far outweigh any investment.

Complexity

Almost all CRM software systems have a learning curve like every other software. But some CRMs are more complex than others. If a system feels too complicated to use, choose a different vendor.

Change

Many people don’t like changing their working patterns, especially if what they do works for them. That might be great for that one salesperson, but it’s not great for the organization. Change can benefit an organization, especially if it increases customer satisfaction and grows revenue.

Security

Both small and larger businesses want to ensure the integrity of their data. CRMs ensure data security by hosting on the cloud, so it is backed up in several locations. It is more likely that a business will lose data self-hosting than on a backup-secured cloud.

History of CRMs

Software-based CRM systems have existed since the 1970s when mainframe computers were used. Now most CRM software is securely based on the cloud.

In closing

CRM usage is nearly universal for large businesses and has rapidly increased for small to medium-sized companies. Centralized data can automate sales and customer service tasks, giving insights into client behavior and patterns. CRMs almost always provide enhanced customer service and increased sales opportunities. With the many CRM options available, SMBs should consider the advantages a CRM can offer their business.

TigerLRM is the only CRM with Sales Enablement Built-In designed for small to medium-sized businesses, featuring custom Playbooks, Content Management, and a Learning Management System

Leonard Goffe

Leonard Goffe is our resident sales enablement nerd. You can find him writing or behind his camera when he’s not reading about Sales Enablement, AI, and technology.

Follow on

How to assign a user to become a sales enablement professional in your TigerLRM Dashboard.

To assign a sales enablement user, simply go to Administrator > User Management > Edit User.

Once you are on the user's information, you can select if you want them to be "Non-Admin," "Admin," or part of the "Enablement Team." Save this information, and your desired user will have the right access.

You can access your Dashboard here.