How to Set up a Customer Relationship Management Software

Sales CRM software can take some time to put in place. In order for this software to be the most efficient possible, you will need to be careful during the whole process of the installation to ensure that you don’t forget anything. You can set up a CRM software in 6 steps.  

A. Create your customer journey map 

A customer journey map is an efficient tool that will allow you understand what motivates your customer. The goal of this map is to create a potential customer and imagine his/her concerns, hesitations and needs regarding the products or services that you want to sell. Most of the time, the customer journey map will use visuals and storytelling to illustrate the relationship between the customer and your company. 

B. Define your sales and business processes 

You will need to define your sales and business processes in order to know how you want to manage your CRM software. To do so, you need to determine how potential customers will find out about you and how you are capable of getting this information. Based on that, you will need to decide what customer actions need to happen before they decide to buy your products or services. Generally speaking, you will need to gather all information needed in order for your sales teams to have clear expectations. 

C. Create stages, custom field and pipelines 

The pipelines of your company refer to groups of stages for one sale process. The steps of your sales process are named stages. Custom fields, on the other hand, are a way to show and store data that will be unique for each contact and help you organize all the information of your contacts. You will used the information of the custom field as a lead to love through your stages. Once each stage’s goal is completed, you will be able to create your pipeline. 

D. Migrate your customer information 

To migrate your customer information from your normal software to a CRM software, you can try to imports contacts with a .cvs file. With this type of file, you will be able to import segmented groups of your company’s contact list at the same time which will make the whole process faster. Before migrating any customer information, you should map out your pipelines as well as your custom fields.  

E. Automate manual processes and Integrate other tools 

To integrate other tools inside you CRM software, you have three methods possible: middleware integrations, Application Programming Interface integrations and direct integrations. The first method uses connections made using a middleman. This process will act as a bridge which connects two tools in order for them to communicate. The 2nd method uses connection from the code of the platform. With this process, connections between two applications will be created for them to communicate. The 3rd method uses connections that have been built by the creators of the software and they can be used directly from the platform. 

F. Add users and set permissions 

Now, it’s time to add the people from your support, sales and marketing team in order for them to have access to the totality of the information regarding each customer of your company. You will also need to set up permissions for each of them so that they can access everything on your sales CRM. 

This article is a sponsored by from Onpipeline.com. The company creates their own CRM software for small and medium sized businesses that can be applied for both customer relation management and sales management.