7 Steps to a CRM Strategy Framework

If you already understand the value of customer relationship management, then creating a strategy and plan for how your company will use a CRM system is the logical next step. Define your CRM strategy framework. 

The excitement of using new technology and the idea of automating processes is very appealing, but remember that the planning work needs to be handled before implementation. If you start customizing, importing contacts, and setting up automations / workflows without a guide map, then you will likely end up doing double work. 

This article discusses the importance of your marketing strategy first, then goes through the 7 steps you can take to create your CRM Strategy Framework. 

Quality Sales and Marketing Are About Offering Value

How do your CRM and marketing strategy connect? 

Begin with the overall sales and marketing funnel. Your marketing efforts are expected to feed leads into the top of the funnel. How do those leads get into your CRM? And how are they managed once added there? 

What Is Your Marketing Strategy? 

Clients often ask us how to write content, such as social media posts that will connect with their customers or emails that will get high click rates. The first thing we say is to be sure you have a strong offer based on providing the prospect value. 

Provide value through your marketing content and you'll see better results – people filling out opt-in forms, making a purchase, inbound email inquiries, etc. This all begins with a documented content marketing strategy.

Within your marketing strategy should be your knowledge about the business' ideal customers.  This may be a Customer Persona or at least a simple profile. To connect with customers, you must begin by listening to what they say, watching what they are doing, and asking smart questions about their pain points and ideal solution. 

If you are developing a marketing funnel or still in a place of understanding your customers, then you'll check out Lead Generation and Funnel Basics. 

Once you know how to drive traffic to your opt-in forms and purchase pages, then it is time to work on what happens afterwards. This is the framework for a CRM strategy that encompasses both sales and marketing.

These seven steps guide you through the process of properly defining your CRM Strategy and creating a plan. 

1. Audit

Our team usually starts the process by evaluating your current CRM setup (or the equivalent). Whether you're already using a basic CRM platform such as Hubspot or Monday, or maybe you're an existing Zoho CRM user, regular CRM audits are useful. This should go beyond a basic data audit, though that is important.

1. What do you like about your current system and flows?

2. What are your barriers to success?

3. What do you imagine would make it better?

The audit outcome includes reports about your CRM data, issues, and improvements. In addition, we make recommendations to help you keep the good things and expand upon them for a better system. 

Also consider if there are any third-party applications that your business depends on that should be connected with your CRM. If your current system is siloed because it is not possible to integrate different systems or you are relying on middleware such as Zapier, then you may want to move to a more integrated platform such as Zoho One. 

Despite the general high-tech education many expect of the world, databases are more complex than a spreadsheet. There is a misconception that everyone understands how a CRM database works. 

One of the leading issues in creating a strong CRM Strategy Framework is the administrator's understanding of how CRM databases work. Taking a little time to learn about databases, will make decisions so much easier and yield better long-term results. 

Watch Our Database Basics Series:

In the audit, we looked at the R of CRM: Relationships. What is your relationship like with customers right now?

Nurturing relationships takes work and strategic planning. Creating the right plan can reduce the mundane parts while still keeping in touch in a useful way. This is the stage when you begin to ask questions such as, 

• What information do we need to know to win the business? 
• What are the key touchdowns throughout the customer lifecycle?
• What do we know about customers to help us segment our communications?

4. CRM Customization 

The next step is to decide how you want everything laid out within your CRM software. What are the fields, where do they go, and how are they used? 

Most likely, you have a set of fields you used in a previous CRM or your spreadsheets that provide a solid starting place. However, this is also an opportunity to re-think those fields and whether you need them. 

Tied into all of this, of course, are questions about your current data and how you will prepare it for importing once the CRM customization is complete. You may also take into account the layout - thinking about the order fields are in on the record page and event the design, if that is important to your business. 

5. Automation 

What are your top 5 automations? Start with the tasks that are tedious and repeated exactly the same way every time. 

Document all of the automated workflows that will make your business run smoother immediately. Here are some ideas for emails you may want to automate. Be sure to include the details: what triggers the automation to start, what are the filtering criteria (i.e. only include Leads from Texas), and what actions happen and when (i.e. send an email). 

What are the big audacious ideas you would like to pursue?  After documenting all of the automations, we recommend prioritizing your list and potentially setting up automations in phases. You could have the priority 1 automations be part of your launch, then priority 2 happen 30 days later, priority 3 automations happen 60 days later, and so on for continually building improvements. 

6. Integrations

Are there any third-party applications that your business depends on that should be connected with your CRM? 

The common ones we look at are you email provider (i.e. Microsoft Outlook or Google), bookkeeping (i.e. Quickbooks), and Project Management (i.e. Jira or Asana). At this stage, consider which integrations your business requires, what information needs to be available in the CRM, and how often you want that information updated. 

Zoho's marketplace has many free and paid extensions that allow users to connect with third party applications. Carefully review your options before deciding which one(s) are right for your business. 

7. Launch Plan

What is the order of operations for implementation in your organization? 

Perhaps you'll do the complete CRM customization first and import your historical data. Then you will train key sales team members. Once they are using the CRM for a couple of weeks, then you add the top 5 automations to improve their workflow. 

However you choose to go about this step in your CRM strategy framework, be sure to consider the onboarding plan of the key sales and marketing team members (training). We recommend training the leadership team or managers first, then adding the rest of the team. Often, people learn as they go and will have questions that, ideally, a supervisor or team leader can answer. 

Over the 15 or so years, our team has used many different CRM platforms - Hubspot, Salesforce, Insightly, SugarCRM, Pipedrive, and many others. Through the process of experiencing different features and user experiences, we have learned to begin any software conversation with definitions - especially if you have never used one before.  

If you are seeking a partner to support you through this process, then we invite you to meet with us and see if we are a fit for your business.