The key to a successful business is to have a good relationship with your customers.

Happy clients equals more profits and a thriving business. Although as your business grows, it becomes more taxing to try and maintain that good relationship with all your customers.

This is why most firms make use of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to do the job for you or at the very least make it easier.

However, just because you are using a CRM software does not necessarily mean it will work out for your business.

CRM Strategies That Failed Small Businesses

Most often, companies use a CRM software for inspection and to get progress reports which is not necessarily bad, but it might not be the most useful use of it. The most common reasons CRM strategies fail are:

• Lengthy integration process: most CRM solutions take a long time to be fully integrated with your business. Many engineers and IT staff have to work together to set it up and even after that it takes longer to actually find results.
• Inaccurate data: if the CRM is not setup properly it might not be collecting the right information on customers and giving erroneous forecasts
• High costs: most CRM solutions have very high licensing costs and require you to refer to experienced CRM consultants, adding consultancy costs. 
• Undefined objectives: poorly established CRM metrics is bound to fail your business from the start. You need to have a clear idea of what you wish to achieve from using the CRM solution as you cannot possibly fulfil goals you have not even set.
• Poor response and cooperation from employees: most employees give up on using the solution after a few tries as they think it is an optional tool. What needs to be conveyed is that unless the whole team cooperates, the CRM does not have enough data to work optimally. There also needs to be enough upper management support to actually get results from employees.
• Complicated interface: the employees who use the CRM solution are most likely to be from the sales team who need to concentrate on selling. If the CRM solution is very hard to use, it would take up too much time and reduce productivity instead of boosting it. 
• Insufficient training: training is an added cost most firms end up forgoing thinking employees will learn from trial and error however it is not possible for them to adapt to a new system without any support. This is the reason it often becomes a burden to them instead of a solution.

One of the most trusted CRM software that provides a solution to most if not all these problems is the Odoo CRM software. 

Odoo is one of the world’s topmost business applications, where they provide over 30 applications to be used by many business organizations ranging from small scale businesses to large companies.

They have over 1500 members. These members have contributed in expanding Odoo’s range to provide up to 1600+ apps, to get in touch with Odoo contact Syncoria.

Syncoria is a digital transformation solution provider based in Canada, and an official Odoo Ready partner.

The Odoo CRM has many unique features that helps you avoid the problems you might have otherwise faced using traditional CRM software. Some of these are―

1 User Friendly Interface

The Odoo CRM is easy to view and use providing the solution to most CRM based problems. This requires little to no training for employees, cutting down on time loss and costs.

Most importantly, it does not require you to deviate from your normal work processes and easily fits into any generalised requirements. You can manage your pipeline using drag and drop options and the interface can even be controlled on a mobile phone.

2 Easily Integrated

You do not need to hire other staff or many IT technicians to set it up with your system.

Once it has been set up, you can effortlessly integrate it with other modules to make use of other applications like sales, eSignature, Invoicing, Mass Mailing, etc.

You can link Google Docs and add any document to your opportunities such as qualification forms, advanced pricing tables, etc. You can also acquire better leads by linking Odoo’s marketing apps such as Email Marketing, Events, landing pages, etc. 

3 Automated Tasks

Employees do not see it as a hassle to use the Odoo CRM as most data can be set to automatically get recorded.

For example routine tasks can be set to be done automatically, saving precious time.

Lost opportunities can be set to be automatically archived and you can also create a dial up queue for customers such as record the calls, open customer form, etc.

4 Better leads

You can set specific criteria based on which you find leads and set a specific score for when a lead is turned into an opportunity.

You can see the files on a potential lead by easily importing all the relevant information using the column matching tool, boost your leads by optimising your search engine, and merge leads when turning it into an opportunity.

Using the GeoIP and URL trackers in marketing campaigns, you can pinpoint the location and source of leads as well. Depending on the lead, you can assign it to a particular sales person based on quotes. 

5 Opportunities 

You can schedule activities like meetings and phone calls and even set a routine of activities for each opportunity while syncing it with your mobile phone and Google calendar.

The opportunity pipeline allows you to set stages and sub stages for the sales team to stay organised, adding descriptions. You can also analyse reasons for lost opportunities to avoid future cases.

6 Reporting and analysis

You can build your own dashboard or use templates with custom filters to keep all your information organised.

Making use of specialised organising tools you can analyse your key performance indicators and find out trends. You can also keep statistics of leads and appraise campaign success and ROI.