What is B2B CRM?
A customer relationship management (CRM) solution is critical to the growth of any B2B company. It allows businesses to continuously communicate with customers, engage with them, build customer trust and manage customer relationships.
Therefore, a B2B company with a large customer base must have a comprehensive and efficient CRM solution to manage and track customers’ profiles.
In other words, choosing the right B2B CRM is vital for your growth and reputation. Research shows that 65% of businesses adopt a CRM within the first five years of their inception.
Additionally, 53% of companies adopt a CRM to enhance sales productivity. The global CRM market is expected to grow 245% by 2028. Nevertheless, before investing in a suitable CRM solution, you must recognize its benefits for your B2B company.
Why You Need B2B CRM
B2B CRM is important for any company looking to grow and gain an edge over its competitors. With the right B2B CRM, you can keep track of cold, warm, and hot leads and build long-lasting customer relationships. After building trust with your customers, you can use their feedback to assess and evaluate the success of your customer experience and satisfaction efforts and improve customer retention.
74% of businesses claim that CRM solutions improved customer data access, and 99% of top performers in B2B use CRM for customer retention.
A good B2B CRM also helps you understand customer behavior and track overall sales. For example, research says that adopting CRM can increase sales by up to 29% and conversion rates by up to 300%. Moreover, 87% is how much sales can improve by using mobile CRM software. In addition, it can help boost your brand awareness by analyzing the pattern of your sales and marketing, customer service, and research and development teams.
B2B CRM can also aid you in managing customer-based communications across multiple marketing channels. In addition, it can help you facilitate customer loyalty and retention by ensuring fast and effective customer service.
How to Choose a Suitable CRM for Your B2B Company
There are many B2B CRM options, and choosing the right one depends on your needs and priorities. Here are some useful tips to help you choose a suitable CRM for your B2B company’s growth:
Identify Your Goals
A B2B company must first draw up a list of its expectations and goals for a CRM. With hundreds of CRM solutions available, you need to narrow your choices following your priorities. Your B2B CRM goals may include:
- Creating in-depth customer profiles
- Tracking leads
- Tracking sales and marketing team performance
- Tracking the efficiency of customer service reps
- Connecting teams across multiple channels
- Creating and managing personalized or automated email campaigns
- Generating customized reports
- Tracking business processes
Determine the Features You Really Need
Next, based on your B2B company’s requirements and objectives, identify and assess the crucial CRM features you need and how they can help you meet your business goals. The CRM’s ease of deployment and implementation, reliability, and budget are some of the major factors you must look out for while deciding on a good CRM. Additional factors include:
- Product adaptability to changing times: With the dawning technological revolution and changing customer needs, you must consider if the platform provides the ability to upgrade and adapt.
- User interface and ease of use: Usability is necessary so that you don’t spend more time than needed to learn how to use the CRM tool.
- Customizations: Personalization for specific niches or categories like cold, warm or hot leads, service, or industry bundles like healthcare, sales retail management, field service, or customer support.
Take Into Account Your Company’s Size
Many small-scale businesses don’t use CRM solutions and instead, rely on Google spreadsheets or Microsoft Excel to store and manage customer data. It’s not entirely a wrong choice if they plan on operating on the same scale throughout the lifetime of the business. Similarly, consider your company size while choosing a CRM tool.
Choose a Suitable Vendor From Your Industry
When you choose a vendor from your industry, they will funnel the right CRM choices for you and be better equipped to advise which CRM tool would be the best for you. Your industry may be a particular niche that might need a specialized CRM. So, look for your industry-specific vendor and find out what tool your competitors are using or what would suit you the best. Also, don’t forget to check the vendor’s reviews and ratings before making a purchase.
Take Advantage of a Free Trial or Demo
Testing a CRM thoroughly before buying it can help you make an informed choice. You don’t want to go all the way with a CRM tool that makes lofty claims. A free trial or demo can provide first-hand experience using the CRM and help determine problems or limitations you may encounter while using the product. You can also use the demo or free trial to address your queries with the platform provider.
Check Whether Onboarding and Training Are Available
Every CRM solution comes with its share of tutorials and customer support. Therefore, ensure the CRM you’re planning to get includes the training material you need. Ideally, your CRM vendor should provide you with a detailed user manual, other necessary training material, customer support team access, and so on.
3 Top B2B CRM Solutions
If you’re convinced that your B2B company needs a CRM solution, here are 3 top-rated CRM solutions you can explore:
Salesforce CRM
Founded in 1999, Salesforce helps businesses boost sales, automate tasks and customize reports faster. You can view comprehensive customer reports, create campaigns, and track leads and team performance. Known as the world’s #1 B2B CRM, Salesforce has a vast customer base of 150,000 customers.
HubSpot CRM
Founded in 2006, HubSpot now has over 165,000 customers around the world. It enables you to create multiple sales pipelines and view them, add deals, send personalized emails, and track company communications. It also equips users to get notified of leads’ responses to your sales emails, provides a shared inbox, tracks sales activity, and connects teams with live chats with HubSpot CRM.
Pipedrive CRM
Founded in 2010, Pipedrive is used by 90,000 companies globally. Glorified with awards like ‘Best employer in private sector 2016-2019’ and ranked in the top 20% of ‘FT 1000 Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies,’ this tool allows viewing communications, deals, probability of wins, lead conversions, and pipeline stages. It automates tasks and personalizes email templates, and does much more.
We are a HubSpot Gold Partner and have years of HubSpot CRM expertise. If you have questions about using HubSpot's CRM, please reach out!
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