Without a CRM, your business will find it tough to manage customer information and offer support when they need it. The success of your business lies in winning repeat customers, and CRM systems play a huge role in achieving that. By helping your brand become more customer-centric, a CRM has a direct impact on your organization's growth and revenue, while drastically cutting down time spent on repetitive data entry and management.

CRM systems are generally used by sales, marketing, customer support, and service teams in an organization. A good CRM tool usually integrates well with external systems that the other teams in your organization may use. For example, the visibility of important data such as revenue, orders, and purchase information should ideally be shared by both the sales and finance teams in your organization. This avoids manual data entry across different platforms, and allows you to have contextual customer information available whenever they interact with you.

Spreadsheets are not designed to do CRM work. When more and more businesses are going digital, you don't want your sales and support teams to be moving backwards in their tech. While spreadsheets can certainly help you with basic information organization, the expectations of customers and the complexity of a growing business make spreadsheets less productive for everyday work. By exclusively using spreadsheets, your organization will miss out on all the important tools that a sales rep or customer service agent needs for success. Features like sales automation or integrations for email and phone have become the norm in business, and for good reason. Spreadsheets simply cannot compare.

In order to make an investment toward a CRM, it is crucial for businesses to have a CRM evaluation method (or CRM metrics) in place. The prime concern of a CRM system is to improve relationships with customers and generate higher revenue. Therefore, it is necessary to identify if a prospective CRM is intended to track the efficiency of your sales and marketing teams, or to build a stronger relationship with your customers. Getting answers to questions like this will help determine your approach when acquiring a new CRM.

Here are some key points that you should consider when choosing a CRM system:

Now that your organization is on the lookout for a new CRM, it would be good to start with a deep understanding of your current requirements and what exactly you need from a CRM software. If you are unsure about evaluating the product yourself, talk to a product expert, tell them your needs, and let them suggest the best possible solution for your business.

The true hallmark of any good business software is that it shouldn't force you to pay extra with hidden charges and costly add-ons. Make sure that the vendor's complete pricing information is published online and that you are fully aware of what you are going to be paying upfront.

A CRM software is only as good as the people using it. This is where many CRM investments can go wrong. If your CRM isn't easy to understand out of the box, your team members may examine alternate ways to store data.

No two businesses are the same, and neither are their requirements. Make sure the CRM that you choose is fully customizable and integrates with the other applications that you use every day.

This is a great resource for learning the current experience of a product's users. Product reviews can help you in understanding everything about a CRM solution, from the best to the worst. You should also check if the vendor is active on social media and if they are responsive to customer questions.

This should go without saying—choose a vendor that puts security and privacy at the heart of their business. Your CRM should be fully compliant with all the latest security standards and regulations, such as GDPR.

Here are some of the key features that should be a necessity for any CRM system you choose:

A CRM software should help you streamline your critical sales functions, such as managing your leads, deals, activities, and forecasts. Perform tasks much faster and more accurately with easy-to-create workflows.

Your CRM should capture every step of your business process—from identifying a prospective buyer to closing a deal. Convert your offline process, map it into your CRM system, and execute complex business functions with ease.

Every sale counts. Give your reps the necessary tools that will help them outperform themselves every single time. Get a better understanding of your territory-wise sales performance, future revenue projections, and lead predictions–all within your CRM.

The ability to generate insights from sales data, spot trends, and track key metrics allows you to make data-driven decisions. These capabilities are key for any good CRM software.

Your customers and prospects should be able to contact you using any channel that they prefer. A good CRM enables your business to receive, manage, and respond to messages from phone, email, social media, and online chat, all in one centralized place.

Every member of your team should be able to have a unified communication platform to help them stay connected and work together, wherever they are.

AI is no longer just a buzzword, but an essential component of any CRM that you buy. Having an AI assistant in your CRM can help sales reps by providing contextual information, identifying anomalies, and providing proactive suggestions that can positively impact their closing rates.

Every business is unique. Make sure that the CRM you end up choosing is fully and easily customizable, integrates with other applications that you use every day, and reflects your business processes.

We might be a little biased here, but the fact remains that Zoho CRM is used to great success by more than 150,000 businesses of all sizes and types around the world. With more than two decades of delivering world-class software technology to the global business community, Zoho has been the winner of major awards in the CRM tech space and is consistently rated highly by both critics and users. We think Zoho CRM can be the perfect solution for your business, regardless of size and industry. Sign up for a free trial and start your CRM journey today with the world's favorite CRM solution.