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CR M, are you using one? How are you tracking your sales development team, or sales progress.
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Learn some of the major benefits of using a CRM program, either for yourself or for your business. CRM can and will take your business to the next level,
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when used properly, or quite frankly, used it all.
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Tune in to this week's episode of stand out and grow so you can learn how a CRM can help your business stand out and grow.
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I'm Kat Ramirez, your host of stand out and grow. I want to help your business stand out, survive, succeed and grow. building your business is really really hard and knowing what marketing and advertising to You need to help you become successful is extremely confusing. After 30 years of working with thousands of businesses, I am here to help you make good business decisions. I want to help you understand the programs that are available to you so that you can stand out, survive, succeed and grow. So let's get started. This is Episode 12. of stand out
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and grow and boom.
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Do you know what a CRM is? A CRM is a customer relationship management program. If you have a CRM in place. Did you know you could increase your revenue just by adding this tool to your sales process?
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A CRM when used correctly is one of the most powerful tools available to any business who is trying to grow their revenue.
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Tune into this episode so you can learn about how a CRM can help your business stand out and grow. Hey, is cat I am back. And so the topic today that I want to talk to you about today is CMR, CRM, CRM. So I think this is a really, really good topic to talk about because I was exposed to a situation at a client meeting where this organization was not utilizing a CRM. And so I think people don't understand the value and the importance of a CRM. And as a Sales Manager. I love them. They're great. And they just bring so much to table on. I don't think businesses, whether you are an individual Oh, wait, let me stop, in case you're new to this broadcast are new to my live event. I'm Kat Ramirez, CEO and founder of appetize. We help businesses standout, survive, succeed and grow with affordable advertising options. And so today, I am talking to you guys about CRM. And the reason being is because of the fact that
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I
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had a meeting with the client and they were not utilizing a CRM. And so it really baffled me and so I just want to make sure that we talked about it today and understand the dynamics of a CRM, and how it can really, really take a business to the next level in regards to revenue. growth opportunities, anything like that. And so I just want to walk you through some of my notes. I came up with a list of notes on, you know, some highlights of what I want to talk to you guys about in regards to the CRM. Okay, so what is a CRM? What does it stand for? That is a customer relationship management. That's what CRM stands for. So this is a tool. So most of the times it's a software program that integrates with your email or, you know, something like that, that you have in place currently. So the technology was built to keep a relationship going with your current customers, and potential prospects. And so the value proposition here is all there's actually two. So if you're not currently talking to your current customers on a regular, consistent basis, the CRM is going to help you do that, if you are, personally are prospecting and looking for new business, the CRM is going to help you manage those prospects and prioritize them based on how you define their value. And so if you're not the one that's out soliciting the business and you have a team, then this is even way better, you know, for you to get your team on board to utilize a CRM, so that you know the activity that's going on with the business and the prospecting and the business development. And so that's what a CRM does is it gives you a wealth of information on one platform. And typically they have like a dashboard where you can program it so that you have specific things that you want to look at. So whether that is the number of calls that were made, or number emails that were sent out reminders on touch points, projections and things like that. So this is a really, really great powerful tool that I think gets, does not get enough exposure and businesses or individuals aren't utilizing it using. So back in the day when I worked in television, we had a CRM called matrix. And so I am a huge fan of CRM, and I've gone through a bunch of them. And so the at the end of the day, the cool thing about CRM is it has to be easy to use, the more complicated it is, the less likely you are your team members will use the CRM, and that's the downfall of a CRM because originally when the CRM were created, they were very, you know, convoluted and complicated and hard to use, and it just prevented people from using them. But now there's so many to choose from, you have so many options and I'm going to go through them. But let me finish talking about CRM and and why you should use it. And the benefits that it brings to you your business or you as an individual if you're an independent contractor. So let's see talked about that. So who is a cerium good for? So care items are great for business owners, sales people, anybody in customer service so that you know that you are getting back to your clients and you're servicing them. It's great for anybody in business development. It's also great for anybody in recruiting and marketing. And we could go on and on on just anybody who has a relative relationship with someone outside of their organization that they need to stay in tabs with, or keep track of the dialogue and the communication. That's who a CRM is appropriate for. And quite frankly, if you're a small business owner, you should have a CRM period. If you're a midsize business owner, you should have a CRM period. There, I know that there are companies that use an Excel grid.
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That's not efficient. Let me just tell you that and I came from an organization once that did use an Excel grid and it's not efficient and it doesn't work. So a CRM is typically a cloud based program that can just update as it grows. So you, your there's not like like a lot of hard work in order to get it going. Okay, so now I'm down to what are some of the benefits of a CRM. Okay, so it streamlines a process. That's a really, really good benefit. It has all your contacts in one place. That's it just one place. How cool is that? And not to like, have a premise of negativity, but, you know, if you have sales people that you know, turn, then this is really, really good to have all your contacts in one place. So that you know, you're not losing, like work that was done prior to that person or the person before them or whatever. So once again, why CRM is really really good. If you're doing any type of business development or if you're working in talking to current customers and clients. It is great for sales reporting, because you can put in projections and pulling numbers and hold your people accountable. This is is a great, great tool to hold people accountable, which is awesome. Awesome, awesome. And then customer segmentation. So this again, we're always talking about where you can prioritize prospects, you can prioritize current customers, and you can segment them and label them. And then that way, when anyone is art, any of your team is talking to any of your current customers, customers or prospects, that you have improperly tagged and labeled so that nobody is letting an opportunity go by the wayside. So this is another very cool thing. If you have remote employees, this CRM is great to have. So everybody knows the touch points that are going on with the individuals within the organization. Okay, so those are some of the benefits. Okay, so what are a couple of things that you have to keep in mind when investigating or looking at a CRM, that's going to be a good fit for your business? This model. So first off, you got to make sure that it is going to fit within your budget, there's all kinds of CRM, there's a lot of free ones, and then there's a lot of paid ones. And then there's a lot of really, really expensive one. So you have to keep the budget in mind. So put a budget there. And if your budget is zero, that's okay. Because again, there are a lot of free ones. The problem with the free ones is you're gonna probably grow out of it, meaning number of accounts, a number of prospects and what have you. And then you're going to have to go to a paid version. So if you do use a free one, just understand what is your paid option is once you grow out of the free version, okay? Secondly, you want to make sure it's easy to use period. I can't say this enough, it has to be easy to use. The more complicated it is, the less likely you're going to use it, the less likely Your team will use it. So you want a CRM that's very, very easy to use. Oh, excuse me as I take a sip. Wait a
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sec. Packer.
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Yep. Packers, they're on tonight.
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Okay, so you want low budget, easy to use. You want your CRM to be customizable. You want to be able to put in the things that are important to you and your organization. So I spoke earlier how when I was in the TV industry, we had a CRM that was very much customizable for the TV industry was called matrix and I loved it. It was easy. It was nice, it was clean. I love the dashboards. I love the reports that I could pull. It was so so easy. And I love love debt, and I wish I had it now. Although I don't know if it would apply to me now the same as it did, as I was with the TV station, because I'm in a different business model now. So customizable, and then you want to make sure it integrates with the other tools and programs that you have, that you're working with. So, you know, if you have an email marketing tool, you want it to integrate with that, if you have, you know, if you want it to integrate with your social media, then you want it to integrate with that. So whatever tools that you currently use, you want to make sure that it does integrate with those tools, and it's seamless and easy, and it's not gonna be difficult.
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And then finally,
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you want to make sure that the CRM program that you're going to select has some customer support. You want to be able to talk to someone or have the ability to reach out to someone in order to get some help if you need help integrating your CRM, because if you don't, then you're going to be reliant on YouTube videos. You yourself learning it and then teaching your team. So you certainly want some customer support at some point so that this is seamless. And it's easy. And I can't say it enough that it has to be seamless and it has to be easy. The the more easier it is to use, the better for you and your team to utilize it because if it's difficult or hard, nobody's going to use it. I'm just I'm just going to let you know, nobody will use it if it's hard or difficult or complicated. Okay, so I did pull a list of some CRM that you could consider. So I'm just going to go through them and, and plug some of the pros and cons of these. Insightly is one that is used with small businesses. It has some good features as a has a task management and tracking tool. And it some of the pitfalls is it doesn't provide a custom report or dashboard. So So does not have that if you're looking at Insightly Zoho CRM, that's one that I use for my organization. In comparison to sightly offers a bit more in terms of sales marketing features in it. It also offers its users website visitor tracking, lead scoring all of these Just so you know, or addition. So there they are paid additions, if you want all this other stuff that it has. The cons is a most of the advanced features are included in so you'd have to pay for the advanced feature. So I have the free version, the free versions great, it's it does what it does. The advanced version, of course, is better. And so what I would also say to you is if you are a one man person, if you're a one man team, don't be afraid to spend money on a really really good CRM, you know, one that that you can work with that is easy and friendly. So don't be afraid to, you know, spend a little bit of money if it's just you, if it's just you, it's when you have a team and you have to pay for each person. That's where it gets a little pricey. And then that's where you got to think about your budget. Okay, so HubSpot is another popular one, it is free. Just keep in mind though, with a lot of these free ones that you can max out of your limitation of how many people that you have in your CRM and that's how it works. There they cap out a certain number and then they start charging you. So the cons with HubSpot is once you exceed the free version, it gets quite expensive. So just be prepared because if that's the one that you pick, then know what the price point is once you max out of the free version, okay. And then of course, the the big monster is Salesforce Salesforce is probably the one that's most known. It's also the most common Located in hard to use, because I've used it and it's really, really like it for the what it is it's very high end product, and it needs someone to really get in it and really customize it for you. And it's a little complicated. So I put it on here. The cons are, it's a little hard to learn and customize it and it's expensive. It's I don't feel like it's made for a small business or in solo printer or, you know, an individual person. It's not, it really is an enterprise model. It did start off for small businesses, but it has grown because of its popularity and now you know, it's a gorilla and so if you have a huge Salesforce then sales force way to go and it's a play on words. And then I have noted some other ones that and maybe I'll check them out later. Because I really learned a lot and doing some of the research here and go CRM, I ag I LA. It has a free version for up to 10 users. I was surprised by that. I was like, wow, okay. And then after that it's $14 a month for each person. Team gate is another one
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capsule CRM, I wrote down one of the pitfalls is it's it offers less functionality in terms of campaigns and reporting. So it's not as robust as a lot of the other ones. one page CRM is a software. It's more catered to users looking for a task based CRM, a solution based CRM base is a software that's ideal for companies looking to customize their sales pipelines. It's $45 per person. So just to give you a price point frame of reference, which I think is great for you guys to Have streak streak is a great CRM software for Gmail enthusiasts. That one comes at $49 per user. Then there's converge hub. It was. It is built as a Salesforce automation kind of program, I guess partnership. That one starts at $9 for the starter package, and then it goes up to $59. For the premium app TV to vo is probably one of the best options. If you're looking for a CRM soft, soft software that provides customizable solutions. So that one is free. They have a free one and then it's $20 a month for a paid version. And then I wrote down a V Tiger CRM. It's an all in one CRM software made for small businesses. This tool offers a great deal in terms of Sales Automation, email marketing and projecting it Inventory Management. So that one, let's see, it says depends on what you want is how they price it. So if you just want like the CRM, if you want the help desk or the all in one price, that's how they price it. So it depends on how robust you want it, that you're going to pay for it. And then nimble is another one, where users can set up reminders to stay in touch with certain users. I love that I think that's a great plus to have in your CRM. Because at the end of the day, again, you want the CRM to help your business grow, to help move your business. It's there to hold somebody accountable, whether that's you if you're the only person doing business development, or whether that's your team. And the other cool thing about CRM for you to keep in mind is it's also a way for the sea level players to see you know, who's touched Talking to who who's you know, without micromanaging your team, your login to your CRM and you see, you know, what kind of activities going on and, you know, who are we calling on? What are we doing with them? You know, and what is some of the things that are going on? What are some of the emails going out? And what are we saying to some of the people, you know, or what are they saying to us, because it really houses all this information. So it's a real a really, really powerful vehicle. So please know that CRM, like I said, can really take your business to the next level. You just have to incorporate one into your company or business or whatever. And again, you can be an individual person and have a CRM, it still can move your business, they can still hold you accountable. You don't have to have a huge sales force. Just keep that in mind.
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So I also noted something that had talked about
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you know, at the end of the day, if you buy into CRM, just know it's as good as the time and energy you put into it. If you do nothing with it, it will not help your business. Don't think buying a CRM is what's going to make your business explode. No, you have to put the time and energy into it, your team has to put the time and energy into it. People have to utilize it in order for it to work effectively. And that's how a CRM works is it's not going to do it itself. You know, it's not going to load in the people that you're talking to by itself. You You have to really, really use and work the CRM
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if your business is going to last, so this is what one of the trades wrote. And I quoted him It says if your business is going to last, you know that you will need a strategy for the future you have to target for sales, business objectives and profitability. A CRM is going to take you to that level. That's how powerful this tool is and can help you and get you there. So so clear. Okay, so if I summarize this at the end, I said, you know, at the end of the day, what is the CRM doing? It's giving you a big picture overview of the customers that you currently have, and how are we engaging with them? And it also gives you a big picture of the future customers, you know, any of your prospects, and what are we saying to them? How are we engaging with them? And how many touch points are we giving them? So that's pretty much it. So I put my last line I put, running a business without a CRM can actually really, really cost you money. It can. Because if you think about, you know, if if you think about the people or the organizations and you know who you are, if you're using an Excel grid, and then you forget to update it or whatever, and it doesn't have the little ticklers to remind you to call such and such. And, if it does, it's your manually putting those into your Outlook or your email or whatever, okay, I CRM, a really, really good one is going to, you're going to be able to input reminders of, hey, you need to follow up with this person in a week or two weeks. That's what a good CRM does. A CRM also pulls all your prospects or your let's say, your pending business into a chart so that you can see where is the pending business at have we, you know, at 30 days is just going to close in 60 days. So it gives you better projections on what your forecasts are going to be. And so how cool is that? How, what a wonderful thing to be empowered and know this kind of information. So it's a really, really, really great vehicle and it's a great tool, and I don't think enough businesses use them. I think that we put posted notes on walls and say called tarly on Thursday. I think that we do Excel grids. We don't update them and keep them up to date. I think that we rely on old, you know, POS systems, your point of sale systems that don't capture emails, you know, I have a client who has 300 people in their POS system. And they have no emails, just phone numbers. So I said, You know what, then your guys going to have to call each one of them and start gathering that information because, you know, what happens if, let's say, you know, LinkedIn goes away, you know, do you have everybody's email? Probably not. What happens if Facebook goes well, away? Do you have everybody's email? Probably not. This is why CRM is important tab and it's valuable and you should invest in it. It is so worth every penny that you put into it. But it is not going to be any use to you or have any value to it. You don't put into it what you need to put into it. And so if it's you again, putting in the information, holding yourself accountable, doing your projections and highlighting the people that you're talking to, if it's your team making sure that they enter that information and they put it into there because you want this information for if you know you know, you don't want your people to go away but it happens it's going to be reality. If Tom goes away and and Jenny replaces them, then she now can just slide right in and sees all this information and those and just up to you know, just step up to it because it's going to remind her when someone was last called someone was last talked to so I don't know if you can tell but a CRM a lot to me and I think it should mean a lot to you and I really hold it high on the totem pole. And I really hope that you guys really think about investigating and investing in a CRM is so worth it. And if you have any questions in regards to to it, let me know, if you have a CRM that you love. Let us know I want to hear. I mean, I would love to know the other CRM that people are using, that are very friendly, customizable and adaptive to you any other programs that we might have, you know, and again, just because someone tells you Oh, I use such and such, and it's great. It may not be a good fit for you just know that it may not. Because you personally have to like the CRM, because you're going to use it, you're going to dive into it, you're going to put the time and energy into it. So not every CRM is made for everyone. It's not I can tell you that for a fact. But you have to get buy in you have to get buy in from your team. You have to get buy in from yourself. But I do know that the CRM has to be easy to use, it has to be otherwise nobody's going to use it. Okay, that's my two cents. It was a little long winded today. I know But I think this was a really, really good topic to talk about and for you to just think about, because CRM, again, like I said, if you're not using one it will and can take your business to the next level, you just have to invest in one and totally use one properly. Okay, I'm done. I hope you guys have a great Monday night and watch the game.
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And so I will talk to you guys next time and have till we see each other again, advertise helps businesses stand out and grow with affordable advertising options. We will help you make good business decisions so you can save money and not just throw it against the wall to see if it sticks. Get Your FREE strategic advertising analysis today. So you can see the opportunities to stand out and grow your business. Visit www standout in grow.com offers page to learn more.
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automate your sales, marketing and service on agile CRM. Easy automated appointment scheduling. One click calling, call scripts and voicemail automation on one platform now, please leave your message. grow your business by tracking your sales progress to stay on track. Try agile CRM for free. Is it stand out and grow calm offers page to learn more.
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Thank you so much for listening to this episode of stand out and grow. Check out all the notes and links at WWW dot stand out in grow.com. I am so thankful to you for helping this show continue to grow. I want to keep producing content that you want to hear. So please leave me some feedback. I look forward to bringing you more resources and information to help your business stand out and grow. Please follow us on social media. And make sure you follow this podcast so you can learn more about helping your business stand out, survive, succeed and grow. Until next time, you got this
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