CRM – get started on your business future today! 

If you’ve worked with us at Pinnacle&Co., you’ll know we’re big fans of CRM (Customer Relationship Tool). We’ve had one since around 2014 and couldn’t live without it. It is a low cost to your company, but it is likely to add the most value.

The purpose of a CRM in office management is to allow you to communicate with your clients while keeping a record of all correspondence. If we are personally speaking with a client, we are aware that others in the office can see this, so we are not conversing with the same client twice. We can also set tasks so you don’t have to remember when you were supposed to follow up; it sends you an email the day you set the task for, so how would you remember to talk to a client in 4 months? It essentially allows us to be very organised. We obviously do not store personal information on our CRM, but it is great to have communications recorded for future needs.

Concerning the sales side of things, it’s also fantastic here.

It keeps track of the sales conversion, so we are aware of our performance. It connects to our Xero system, allowing us to see client spending, which is useful when saying thank you. We include files, terms of trade, and anything else. We can record information about our clients, such as how we met, so that other staff members know who the client is. And “tagging” is also fantastic. We can tag the date we obtained the client (for future reference as to when we met and the length of time we’ve known the client), and where did we meet our clients? – It could have been a networking group, an old friend, a referral, a Google Search, or anywhere else, so we know what advertising works. It is equally important to us as it is to you, which is why we practice what we preach!

According to accountants, your business can sell for 0.5 to 1% more for your business sale! That could be huge to your sale. Imagine logging out of your CRM and having all of your correspondence and sales on the CRM rather than saying “it’s in my email box” – what a nightmare that would be.

Measuring.

We believe that using a CRM is a good way to measure because we believe that everyone should be able to track almost all of their advertising spend. Knowing where your work comes from allows you to spend more in that area, while spending less in others. “You only get out what you put in”, as the saying goes… So while it may seem overwhelming at first, it only takes a month or two to become second nature. And then you’ll be like us, and we know you can’t live without it.

We are what we would call CRM experts; there isn’t an hour during the work week that we don’t use it.

If you’d like to learn more, we’re always happy to talk about it. You are welcome to come and see us if you live in/near Christchurch. If you’re not local, we would be delighted to Zoom with you and demonstrate how we use it.