What, where and how ?
What data and where ?
Its a fact of life that no one 'actually' likes collecting the data. There are ways to integrate systems and social platforms and email with your CRM so its well worth taking the time to properly review and assess the main forms of communication and best value interactions with your audience and customer base. Match that profile with the right platform & CRM so you automate and reduce the amount of time spent - time = money - inputting and managing the flow of information.
Our business at Eighty6 is a (very) smart CRM type of data analysis product. Our target market is for B2B wholesaler distributors. Little plug...we offer a free sales health check if you ask !!
How ?
We also need to manage our sales funnel and marketing so our package of choice is HubSpot . This was a decision based on a number of reason. Firstly, it was offering a serious discount for a start up like ourselves. Obviously this was a factor, but not something that ultimately swayed it too much. Secondly, they made it very easy to integrate with our existing data and services such as Gmail and LinkedIn. The rest of the reasons are far to vague and boring to list, but in the end they meant that its easy to see the advantages of different packages such as Insightly? or Zoho but when you need to decide on one, you pick the best fit overall, We did and we are very happy with HubSpot. (For a review of different CRM's , click here as it is worth a read).
Now that we have established it as our foundation for all flows of communications, we have benefited from the real depth and transparency of our interactions a communications with existing and prospective customers. Without using HubSpot, it would be almost impossible to track and manage the engagement process and stay on top of things effectively.
So, for now, its putting in the effort to get it right, and set up the systems to make sure we keep it up to date. Lots more work to do. No easy way, just get on with it.
Many thanks to Sharon for putting in some serious effort to populate the initial data set on excel from all sorts of sources and files. Not a job that I, or anyone else was racing to volunteer for. Great service (I'll happily pass on her details as she is a fabulous remote PA that makes life very much easier).