7 Best Practices for Getting the Highest ROI From Your CRM

Back when you chose your customer relationship management (CRM) system, what did you expect to get out of it? Maybe it was less time spent on admin, a more productive team, a streamlined business processes — overall, you were expecting a positive impact on your company's bottom line.

Expectations and reality don't always fully align when it comes to software purchases. Sometimes you get different results than you expected.

But here's the truth about CRMs: they really should help your business perform better, serve your customers in the best way possible, and bring in more profit.

A CRM should keep track of your customers' personal information, purchase history, preferences, and other information associated with your contact base. It should also provide one convenient, central location for anyone on your team to access that information immediately.

The effectiveness of a CRM doesn't solely rely on its software or its features. Rather, you need to have tip-top business processes in place, too. In this post, we'll walk you through how to know when your CRM is set up for success and how to increase your chances of getting the highest ROI from it.

How to Know If Your CRM Is Set Up for Success

If you're following CRM best practices, you'll nod your head while reading these:

• Your contacts are the same in every tool.
• You get more done in less time.
• Your teams use it every day.
• You've streamlined your work.
• It's replaced other tools (and strengthened those you've kept).
• You have more data on how your business is performing.
• You can't imagine not using a CRM.
• It's easier for your business to turn a profit.

If they sound familiar, congrats! But if you still have some room for improvement, fear not.

We've compiled some of the CRM best practices that successful businesses have in common. Keep reading to learn how you can adopt them and adjust your CRM processes to get the best results possible.

7 CRM Best Practices for High ROI

1. Choose the right CRM for you.

It all starts with finding the best CRM system for your business. Small businesses and large enterprises have different needs and requirements, as do law firms, startups, and non-profits.

Before selecting any piece of software, it's important to identify what you really need to get out of it — and keep that in mind during the entirety of the selection process.

2. Train your team to use the CRM.

The businesses that get the best results from their CRM tend to have effective and simple processes in place for using it. They should be effective enough to boost your ROI and make a real difference in your business, but simple enough for anyone on your team to understand and learn at any time.

Create crystal-clear processes and make sure your team receives useful training and documentation to answer their questions.

3. Collaborate across departments.

One misconception is that CRM is just for customer-facing roles. To get the highest ROI from your CRM, make sure your marketers, management, analytics, and operations roles are active users, too.

Ensure they can locate a customer's record, find out more about them, and use the tool to make their job easier without needing rescuing.

4. Set up effective handovers.

One of the best advantages of a CRM is the seamless handovers you can set up between departments. From marketing to sales and onboarding, your contacts can flow effortlessly through your business processes.

Make sure you've analyzed these handovers up close to ensure there are no bottlenecks to trip you up or create extra work — or worse, give your customers a bad experience.

5. Let automation work for you.

CRMs work best when you let them do the heavy lifting. That's easy-peasy when you have automation in place. Take advantage of the automation features that your CRM offers wherever possible, from confirmation emails and nurturing workflows to creating new tasks and notifications, to chatbots and help desks.

Look closely at how automation can save you time, reduce the risk of human error, and ensure a seamless and prompt customer experience.

6. Avoid data silos.

Data silos are the enemy of productivity, efficiency, and ROI for any business. A data silo is a collection of information in an organization that is isolated from and not accessible by other parts of the organization.

An example of a data silo could be your marketers lacking oversight of your sales leads, or your salespeople not knowing why their closed deals are churning.

To avoid data silos, make sure your tools are in sync. With a CRM, you can connect your customer data two-ways across hundreds of tools and ensure that when one tool is updated, others catch up straight away.

7. Make use of the data at your fingertips.

The top CRM systems on the market all offer valuable analytics and reporting features. To get the highest ROI from your CRM, make sure to pay attention to the data it gives you — and act on it.

Dashboards are one way to make trends easier to identify. Set them up to show the data you care about, such as conversion rates or efficiency across stages of key business processes.

Getting the Best Results From Your CRM

The best practices we've shared above require:

• Setting up your CRM thoughtfully and focusing on the most important features for your business
• Creating simple and efficient processes
• Training and collaborating with your entire team
• Making use of automation and two-way data syncs to save time and get better results

But your CRM isn't something you can set and forget, either— every quarter or so, take a quick look at any stumbling blocks that are affecting your team's productivity and performance.

With thoughtful implementation and occasional small adjustments, you can get the highest ROI from your CRM and the rest of your tech stack.