Evaluating CRM tools – What is your need?

Posted on 19. Oct, 2011 by Duncan Macdonald in CRM, Lead Management, Lead Management Blog, Sales Force Automation

If you are evaluating CRM tools, there are a few things you want to keep in mind. The biggest thing is to have an idea of your long term goals. There are many CRM tools out there and not all do the same things in the same ways.

You want to make sure you select to meet your situation, not where you are right now, but where you want to be in  6 or 12 – 36 months.

Moving from one CRM that you’ve been using and have a lot of time invested in, to a new system with more bells and whistles can be a major undertaking. It’s generally easier to start a with a tool that lets you scale when needed to.

Next you need to figure out exactly what you want to do with the CRM tool. The purpose of this technology, as with any business technology, is to solve a problem.

Some questions you should consider - These seem like basic questions but you would be surprised how many people get a CRM solution without a clear analysis of what it is designed to solve.

What problem are you trying to solve?

What does your ideal solution look like?

At the most basic level, do you need a contact manager and little more? If so, are there a multitude of products to manage your lists.

Do you have a lot of contacts numbering in the hundreds or even thousands?

Do you have a defined sales process set up and you need to track normal sales-cycle milestones?

Do you generate leads for a sales team to follow-up?

Are you looking to generate reports and analytics that will provide actionable business intelligence?

Are you looking to tie your marketing data into your sales data?

The above are questions you need to ponder and gauge where your needs lay. At the simplest end, you may need nothing more than the address book in Outlook, or a basic CRM tool.  If you need to need to track leads and prospects, then these basic CRM tools become limited and it certainly not the job of an excel spreadsheet.

In the same vein, if you have a business model that is reliant on generating leads, and distributing them to sales operation then you should consider a specialist CRM tool with a focus on lead management and Sales process.  If you establish your real needs then the selection process becomes all that much easier

B12Leads is an online lead management tool to capture, distribute and convert leads. Everything you would expect from a CRM tool but with a focus on keeping track of leads and your sales teams. An affordable solution that has everything you need to take control of your sales pipeline.

Tags: Customer relationship management, Lead generation, Lead management, Sales and Marketing Alignment