Now before you dive into picking a system, and building your own, there are a few things you need to think about to make sure you don’t waste time and money!
1) Make sure you are clear on your strategy and how many potential clients you will be working with at a time. If your numbers are less than 10, a CRM that is built for you may not be the most cost effective solution, and instead a Trello board may be useful! If you have a LOT of contacts, or want to really dive deep into the information you use, then a built for you solution may be better!
2) Do your clients have multiple contact points within the business? If for instance, you deal with one person before the contract, there are stakeholders involved in decision making and then even more people once the work starts… a CRM is a great way of grouping everyone together and making sure you can keep track of who is who etc.
3) Prioritise what you want to use the CRM for and create it ONE STEP AT A TIME! The easiest way to not only become overwhelmed, but for a CRM to become a complete waste of time, and be an endless sea of bugs, is to try and do too much at once. From your plan, prioritise each part of the system you want to use. Create it and then use it for a while before you start adding new features! Trust me on this one…
4) Future-proof your system. It’s easy to make decisions based on your current requirements, but with a CRM you want to think about the long term and where this will take you. It may be worth creating a bigger system than you need right now, in order to make sure you have features in the future that will be really beneficial for you!
