Getting your CRM system set up is only a small part of your overall CRM experience, but the way your system is configured and saturated with data will have a domino effect on your eventual ROI (return on investment).

Ensuring that you opt for a system that offers expert support with configurations and has a simple interface will certainly set you on the right path, but here are some of the best practices for CRM setup that businesses often forget. 

1. Outline your goals

Making sure that the CRM users in your team know exactly how they’re expected to utilise the system is crucial if you want a high adoption rate. According to LinkedIn State of Sales Report, the top-performing salespeople possess a higher confidence level in CRM data than their counterparts; of the top group, 53% are very confident, and of the non-top only 32% are very confident.

Having confidence in the system begins with knowing what needs to be achieved, and having a plan in place. So, before you begin CRM implementation, you’ll benefit from identifying and quantifying your growth goals, and developing a clearly defined CRM strategy that will guide the CRM users in the right direction.

Some questions to ask yourself before CRM adoption include:
• What reports do my Sales team need to succeed?
• When setting up our sales pipelines, what action needs to be taken before a customer/prospect can progress to the next stage?
• At what point does a prospect become a lead?
• How long should we wait before engaging with a churning customer?

2. Engage with Onboarding

Even if your CRM is designed for ease of use and setup, these systems will always offer some form of complex features that aim to deliver significant results. To ensure your configurations are fine-tuned to your expectations, the CRM Onboarding team should be on hand at all times to support your CRM setup.

CRM Onboarding teams not only make CRM setup a stress-free transition to the cloud, but also speed up the time to first value. Using the goals you outlined in stage one, you can explain your needs and expectations to the Onboarding team who will then help you set up your system accordingly. 

Onboarding will point you in the right direction of: 
• How to build the reports you need: Using the goals you outlined, the CRM Onboarding team will be able to help you build reports that will automatically refresh at regular intervals so you can constantly monitor the insights you need.
• Which custom fields to configure: CRM Onboarding teams can help you structure your existing data and organise it in a digestible format, making it easy for your team to find what they need.
• How to keep track of your customer activity: Whether your new CRM system uses customer segmentation, product insights from your back-office systems, or a combination of both to track customer activity, the CRM Onboarding team will give you step-by-step instructions on how to leverage these functions.

3. Take advantage of automation

A study by Zapier found that 66% of SMB employees say using automation at work lets them focus on more creative tasks and projects, and 1 in 5 say that automation increases the accuracy and efficiency of their work.

CRM systems usually have the capacity to automate many of the processes that you may be fulfilling manually right now, such as reporting and quoting. So, if you don’t adopt the automation that’s available with CRM software, you won’t be optimising productivity.

Some processes that CRM systems can automate include:
• Email campaigns: CRM systems can sync data into your campaigns so you can send out personalised emails to a targeted audience.
• Data entry: Many CRM systems are able to connect with your eCommerce or B2B trade portal site, so any orders placed or forms filled will be automatically fed into your CRM.
• Customer segmentation: Manually tracking which customers are active and which are slipping through the net is difficult, so your CRM system may be able to trace this for you.

4. Integrate with your back-office systems

Seamless integration with your Inventory and Accounting systems is one sign of a quality CRM system, so taking advantage of this is essential. Ensuring you integrate from the outset will allow you to build out a data-rich system that stores everything that your Sales and Operations teams might need to close a sale and fulfil an order.

With inventory/accounts integration in place, a CRM system can give product sellers access to crucial data that’s typically buried in back-office systems, making customer-facing teams stock aware. This allows them to make data-driven decisions during the sales process, improving close rates and customer satisfaction.
To find out whether a CRM system integrates with your existing software, you can check their Integration Marketplace.

5. Consider your customer experience

CRM software should not only simplify your employees’ workflow, it should also improve your customers’ buying experience. CRM systems are designed to be customer-centric; it’s in the name! 

How you set up your system depends on how you attract prospects, engage with leads, and close a deal. So, mapping out your customer journey will help you during the CRM implementation process. 

Setting up your CRM system with the buying process in mind will help you streamline operations, increase customer satisfaction, and ensure that your workflow corresponds with the journey your customers take when they make a purchase. This will allow you to track customer activity end-to-end and approach leads at the right time for maximum conversion success.

6. Customise to your needs

CRM systems come furnished with default pipelines, drop-down fields, and standard templates - waiting to be configured to suit your business’ processes. Once customised, these generic settings suddenly become meaningful and familiar, helping you keep customer data organised in a way that makes sense for your business.

Key processes to customise during CRM setup include:
• Reporting
• Sales pipelines
• Cross-sell and upsell
• Customer churn management

7. Cleanse your data

Having a data-rich system is only useful to you if your data integrity is of high quality and your information is as up to date as possible. A 2022 study by Validity found that 44% of respondents say they lose over 10% in annual revenue due to low-quality CRM data, so making sure the data you import is accurate might be the make or break of your success with CRM.

Before you begin the syncing process with your new CRM software, you’ll need to review the data stored in spreadsheets, on paper, or in your current system, and make sure that customer information is as error-free as you can get it. This might sound taxing, but the long-term benefits of spending some time sifting through incorrect data far outweigh the laborious nature of the task. 

8. Choose a system that makes setup easy

Setting up a CRM system isn’t always straightforward, so choosing a CRM vendor that offers support and a stress-free setup experience will prove beneficial in the long run. 

To find out which systems offer the best features for your type of business and a range of onboarding packages, be sure to take a look at trusted review sites (such as Capterra and G2) and make use of CRM comparison guides that are available online.

Rated 9/10 for ease of setup on G2, Prospect CRM offers end-to-end support from our CRM experts who will help you configure reports, customise your sales pipelines, and segment your customers – even in the free trial. Start increasing your sales growth with our 14-day free trial.