The CRM system should be the main tool for your sales and marketing departments. It needs to be kept up to date, just not with the data it holds, but also how it is set up. Then you can make the maximum use of the data it holds.

Effective user adoption

Getting your users on board is more than half the battle. Despite the blandishments of CRM vendors, many users will say they don’t like the system because it is slow, unreliable or not easy to use. Their real reason maybe because they don’t want management knowing what they are (or aren’t!) doing, or owning “their” prospects. So you need to make sure that users have as few objections to using the CRM as possible, and making sure that it is easy to use is step one. Make sure that senior management uses and is seen to use the CRM. If the message gets out that management are too important to use the CRM, front line users will follow.

Integrate the CRM system into your other systems

Integrating your CRM system with other in-house systems such as accounting will save people time, reduce the risk of data error and help CRM adoption. Many modern CRM systems now offer integration to leading accounting systems as standard, have standard connectors to your web site for lead capture and can be connected to other in-house systems through built-in APIs (Application Program Interfaces).

Use the data for marketing campaigns

The data you have in your CRM system is a gold mine for marketing. So why aren’t you making the most of it? You should be using the data that is stored in your CRM and filtering this into your marketing campaigns. Some CRM systems will even give you the ability and automation to create marketing campaigns and email shots without using third party software.

Start simple & stay simple

Don’t try and make things too complicated – you’ll risk losing users. Your employees will work best when they have a simple system that does exactly what they need. Sometimes a system with shiny buttons and an endless amount of functions doesn’t always get the job done.

Conclusion

A well implemented and more importantly, well used CRM system can make a real difference to your sales. Keep it simple, make the most of your data and watch the new customers come in.

There’s a video of the webinar from which this article came here.

However, many industry commentators are picking up on the theme of “Why aren’t Amazon Web Services and Google in GCloud?“, on the basis that GCloud won’t be taken seriously unless the major players are there. Various theories are advanced for their non-appearance, ranging from issues with the US’s draconian Patriot Act to maybe there aren’t enough big deals to make their participation worthwhile for them.

But it really doesn’t matter. Google and Amazon are platform and infrastructure vendors, suitable for developing custom systems. If a government department wanted a custom application built, it would ask their system developer to chose a platform. As end users, what government departments want are solutions, not toolkits.

GCloud is more suitable for applications (software as a service, or SaaS) than platforms (PaaS) or infrastructure (IaaS). Like CRM, for instance!

With the integration, when you look at an Account in your CRM system you can see real-time information from Sage One including account balances, sales-to-date and overdue invoices, as well as the ability to view customers’ detailed account transactions. You can also create new customer accounts and invoices in the accounting system.

The integration is included in all three Free, Premium and Enterprise Editions of Really Simple Systems Cloud CRM.

The integration works in the same way as our integration to KashFlow Accounting: you can see a customers’ account balance, sales to date and overdue invoices in the CRM; and you can create customers and sales invoices in the accounting system directly from the CRM.

If you are an existing Really Simple Systems users and also use Sage One, we’d love to hear from you.

The 30 minute presentation will take you through tips and tricks to get the most out of your CRM system:

• User Adoption
• Linking the Sales and Marketing processes
• Integration to your web site
• Integration to other applications: accounting, fulfillment
• Synchronising with 3rd party Mailers

The webinar will be at 17:00 Sydney/Melbourne time (08:00 GMT) on Thu 11-Apr-2013. Register using this link:
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/249213463

We hope to see you at the webinar.

The 30 minute presentation will take you through tips and tricks to get the most out of your CRM system:

• User Adoption
• Linking the Sales and Marketing processes
• Integration to your web site
• Integration to other applications: accounting, fulfillment
• Synchronizing with 3rd party Mailers

For the webinar at 12:30 EST/09:30 PST (16:30 GMT) Thu 4-Apr-2013, please register using
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/342616367

For the webinar at 12:30 EST/09:30 PST (16:30 GMT) Tue 7-May-2013, please register using
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/453870063

We hope to see you at the webinar.

You can now send a series of timed emails to individual contacts in the CRM system. Contacts can be automatically added to the drip marketing campaign by an activity on a web site using Web Transactions, such as completing an enquiry form or downloading software, or by the Contact sending in an email.

The full Press Release is here.

If you are using our CRM Marketing module, the new functionality is now live. If you’d like to trial the Marketing module in either Premium or Enterprise Edition, contact us and we’ll enable it for you.

The 30 minute presentation will take you through tips and tricks to get the most out of your CRM system:

• User Adoption
• Linking the Sales and Marketing processes
• Integration to your web site
• Integration to other applications: accounting, fulfilment
• Synchronising with 3rd party Mailers

For the webinar at 10:00 GMT Fri 22-Feb-2013, please register using
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/342616367

For the webinar at 10:00 GMT Thu 7-Mar-2013, please register using
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/135750039

We hope to see you at the webinar.

The Marketing module includes

• Campaign management
• Mass emailing
• Lead capture from your web site

To enable Marketing in your CRM system, just tick the option in Set Up/Manage My Account. You won’t be billed until your next subscription, so can trial it for free until then.

For pricing, please check our CRM Pricing and Options page.

We’ll be covering:

• Cross Selling
• Referral Tracking
• Opportunity Tracking
• Campaign Management
• Topic Mailings Management
• The Business Development Process
• Metrics – Tracking Revenue by Source
• Fee Earner Adoption
• Integration with Practice Management system

If you’re involved with marketing or practice development, you should register for the accounting CRM webinar now.