All business decisions that entrepreneurs and managers make should be backed up by data. Strategic thinking should be based on facts and numbers. Your company's CRM can serve as a valuable source of actionable insights. In this article, we'll try to explain which kind of CRM data you might want to rely on and how to make the most of it.
There are at least three reasons why you should keep data in your CRM well-organized.
The information from your CRM will help you better target your sales and marketing efforts. You'll be able to automate and accelerate your workflows. Your team members will focus their attention on those leads who are the most likely to convert.
If you don't know how to use your CRM properly, it might bring you losses. The basic functionality of selected software of this type can be available for free — but to be able to access its full functionality, you'll need to upgrade to a paid plan. If the data inside your CRM is outdated or poorly organized, the money you pay for using this product will go down the drain.
To boost your profit, you should pick an efficient sales strategy and stick to it. You should avoid switching from one strategy to another too often. Consistency is the key to success — and it needs to be backed up by solid data.
If the contents of your CRM are messed up, you might end up sending emails to the wrong addresses or offering personalized deals to customers who will be unlikely to use them. You'll risk wasting too much effort on business decisions that won't bring you ROI.
If the data inside your CRM is well structured, your team members won't need to waste too much time looking for names and numbers. They will be working quickly and making fewer mistakes. It will become much easier for them to onboard new staffers and replace those who are on vacation or sick leave.
By characterizing CRM data as "bad" we usually mean that it is:
Missing
Inaccurate
Entered into a wrong field
Non-conforming
Duplicated
To realize the importance of properly organizing the information, you might want to remember the following facts:
Each year, contact lists tend to decay from 22% to 30%
Every 30 minutes, 120 business addresses and 75 phone numbers change
Bad data costs U.S. companies $3 trillion per year
The cost of fixing a data error grows exponentially over time. Every time you launch a marketing campaign, you need to put effort and money into it. To make sure this investment pays off, you should build your campaign on relevant and up-to-date information.
Below, we'll list the most common types of data that businesses have in their CRMs.
The term "identity data" denotes the following types of information:
Name — Your client's first and last name
Date of birth — You might want to use this data to offer personalized gifts or discounts to the client
Mailing information — Physical address where you'll ship your products once the client finalizes the purchase
Email address and phone number — It would be wise to note which communication channel each client prefers
Social Media — Links to the client's social media profiles
Additional info — Personal preferences
Identity data enables you to make the most of your targeted outreach. Consumers tend to respond to personalized offers much more actively than to their generic counterparts.
This type of CRM data enlarges your understanding of the client's persona. Here are just a few descriptive examples:
Educational level — How intellectually demanding the client is and in which fields of knowledge they have the best competencies
Career details — Company name and position
Level of income — How much this person can afford to spend on your products
Family details — Is your client married and how many kids do they have
Lifestyle information — Does the client have a house and a car (if yes, what are their characteristics)
The information that you might want to know about your clients might vary depending on your industry and the specifics of your products. This data allows you to better understand what your customers want and need and what you can offer to them to inspire them for the purchase.
This type of CRM data includes measurable indicators, such as:
Number of service tickets filed during a specific period
Number of purchases that the client has made from your website
Average order value
Frequency of visiting your website
Frequency of engaging with your business on social media
These statistics should enable you to interpret the history of the consumer's interactions with your business.
Some information can't be represented with numbers. Here are examples of questions that your clients can answer only with words:
Why did you pick this product?
Did you buy it for yourself or to use it as a gift?
Are you satisfied with this item?
What would you like to improve in our company's customer service?
To gather this type of data, you can conduct surveys and ask people directly to provide their honest feedback. Your clients' answers should let you better understand their behaviors, motivations and attitudes.
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The way you structure the information inside your CRM will depend on which software you use, how large your business is and which industry it belongs to. Below, we'll give an example of how you can structure the data. You can use this scheme as a foundation for your own approach.
Your sales reps should know at which stage of the sales cycle each client is currently at to better target their efforts. Here are the main phases of a customer's life cycle:
Subscriber — the person has agreed to receive content updates from your business
Lead — the client has spent some time exploring your products and seems to be interested in purchasing them
Marketing qualified lead — your marketing department characterizes this person as a qualified lead, judging by their previous activities
Sales qualified lead — your sales department characterizes this person as a qualified lead
Opportunity — a person who is involved in an open deal with your business
Customer — an individual who has already bought your goods or services
Evangelist — a client who not only buys your products but also recommends them to other people
Other — you might want to classify a person as "other" if they don't fit into any of the above-listed categories but you need to add them to your CRM nevertheless
As you make progress with the client, their status in your CRM will be updated automatically. When needed, you'll be able to edit it manually. Your sales department will identify individuals who are the most likely to finalize the purchase and focus their efforts on them.
This classification partly overlaps with the customer lifecycle but is not identical to it. Here is the list of possible client statuses:
New
Open
In Progress
Open Deal
Unqualified
Attempted to Contact
Connected
Bad Timing
This way of organizing data comes in particularly handy for teams where several reps can be working with the same customer. For instance, one professional tried to reach out to the client but failed. The next day, their colleague will get in touch with the same person — and they will get access to the same data about this individual. Client data in the CRM that is organized along with this method can be updated either manually or automatically.
Depending on the specifics of your business, you might fail to find a way of organizing CRM data that will 100% suit you. In this case, you should find software that will allow you to flexibly customize CRM cells. You'll be able to log in and categorize information that can't fit into predefined options. Your team members will appreciate the opportunity to organize their workflows in the most convenient way.
There are dozens of worthy CRMs on the market — but we recommend you should try Bitrix24. Its basic functionality is available at no cost and its paid plans are affordable. You can use this software as an on-premise or cloud solution as well as a mobile app for iOS and Android. Its CRM can store unlimited amounts of data and you'll be able to flexibly customize its cells.
Hopefully, you found this article informative and now you have a better understanding of which types of data you should have in your CRM. You should have identity, descriptive, quantitative and qualitative data. The better the information is organized, the more productive your teams will be. Among all the CRMs that are available on the market, you might want to opt for Bitrix24.