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How CRM systems bring your customer data together
Customer information tends to end up scattered across inboxes, spreadsheets, call notes and different team members’ heads.
A customer relationship management (CRM) system gathers it all in one central place, so every salesperson can record, track and manage customer information from a single, shared view. That’s why CRM software has become one of the most important tools in every company’s sales stack.
With every contact, conversation and deal in one place, you can quickly find the data you need to spot potential customers, nurture leads, close deals and improve the customer experience.
Pipedrive’s CRM system brings your customer data together so you can streamline operations and boost your sales from day one.
What is a CRM system?
So, what are CRM systems, exactly? CRM systems are designed to manage a company’s interactions with partners, prospects and customers.
A CRM system helps you acquire, organize and share customer information. It can provide pipeline management and reporting features and enables you to manage and track communication across all customer touchpoints.
CRM solutions give salespeople the visibility they need to manage multiple deals and contacts effectively.
Cloud-based CRM platforms come with additional benefits, making remote selling and collaboration between teams easy so you can close deals from anywhere at any time.
Pipedrive CRM features
To see what a CRM system does in practice, Pipedrive is one of the most complete CRM systems examples – here’s an overview of six core features:
Visualize deals in your pipeline: Visualize your sales momentum and process with a clear picture of your sales pipeline. Use Pipedrive’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface to add deals and then track their progress in the pipeline.
Automate workflows: Choose your triggers and resulting workflows using templates or starting from scratch. Automate almost any step of your sales process for your entire team and free up time for high-touch sales activities.
Customize your pipeline: Create, edit, delete and reorder pipeline stages to reflect your unique sales process. Add custom fields, include multiple currencies and use Pipedrive’s open API to connect with any other apps you need.
Track email and communication: Manage contacts and get a visual history of all your activities and communication. Set up meetings, make phone calls directly from within Pipedrive and get real-time notifications when emails are opened and clicked.
Secure data protection: Keep your customer data safe, review security settings and get real-time notifications of any suspicious activity. Pipedrive is designed to comply with international security standards, including GDPR.
Uncover actionable insights: Analyze your team’s sales performance, set goals and use visual reports to track progress against your key metrics. Discover what actions get the best results and eliminate any bottlenecks in your process.
What to look for in a CRM system
With the meaning of CRM systems now clear, the next question is how to choose one. When assessing potential CRM tools, ask these four key questions:
Is it easy to use? A good CRM system must help you understand your customers. Spend less time training reps with a simple, user-friendly CRM solution.
How much does it cost? Some providers offer low-cost or free CRM plans but keep critical features behind expensive plans. Look for transparent pricing and only pay for the users and features you need.
Does it support mobile users? With more sales teams operating outside of the office, a reliable mobile app is essential. Ensure your sales reps can access your CRM data whenever and wherever they need it.
Does it work with the rest of your tech stack? Today’s salespeople rely on a variety of different tools. Ensure your online CRM system can connect to and share data with your other sales management tools.
Capture all the customer details you need
Spreadsheets and manual data entry can leave your salespeople without accurate and up-to-date customer information.
Give your team access to key details by automatically capturing customer information and combining it with the buyer research already in your CRM system.
With just one click, Pipedrive’s Smart Contact Data enriches your customer details with data from Google, LinkedIn and other public online sources.
Follow up with the right message at the right time
Without the right targeting, you could be missing out on sales. Use the data in your sales CRM to segment your leads, prospects, new customers and existing customers into groups.
Pipedrive offers segmentation and other features like open and click tracking, sales templates and email automations for targeted communication.
Create a single source of truth for sales and marketing
Silos prevent collaboration between your marketing and sales teams. Use your CRM to share data across the customer journey.
Marketing teams can use customer insights to improve marketing campaigns while sales teams can use marketing collateral to meet customer needs.
With Pipedrive’s team collaboration features, you can automatically route all types of customer support to the right people, so no tasks fall through the cracks.
Monitor your key metrics and optimize your business processes
Without the right data, there’s no way to track customer engagement. A CRM helps you collect feedback and use it to optimize future customer interactions, convert more sales opportunities, increase revenue and improve customer retention.
Pipedrive’s sales reporting features let you track sales activities and measure your team’s performance against key metrics at a glance, with custom dashboards and visual reports.
Pipedrive in action: Redlist’s sales team was spending hours manually creating proposals, leading to quality and accuracy issues.
With Pipedrive’s Smart Docs feature, they were able to set up proposal templates that automatically pull details directly from their CRM system. With more time to work on sales activities (e.g. lead generation, marketing automation), Redlist grew rapidly, increasing annual recurring revenue (ARR) by over 200% in 2021.
“We use Pipedrive to manage everything from outbound prospecting to managing our main sales pipeline to managing our customer renewal pipeline”, said Robert Williams, Head of Sales at Redlist.
Read the full case study to learn more.
Web Visitors add-on
Get a consistent flow of high-intent sales leads added to your CRM system with the Web Visitors add-on. Find out which organizations are browsing your website, learn how they found you and see which pages they visit.
Discover new leads interested in your solution
Uncover relevant contact details
See what content visitors engage with
Final thoughts
A CRM system gives your team one central place for all your customer data. Every contact, conversation and deal is stored where anyone on the team can find it.
That shared view helps salespeople focus on the right leads, lets sales and marketing work from the same information and helps managers see what’s working and fix bottlenecks.
When choosing a CRM, go back to the basics: ease of use, transparent pricing, mobile access and integrations with the tools you already use.
Pipedrive covers all four. It also brings together pipeline management, workflow automation, contact enrichment and reporting, so your team can build stronger customer relationships and close more deals.
Start building better customer relationships with an easy-to-use CRM system today.
Try Pipedrive for free. Full access. No credit card required.
