What is CRM?
Most business owners have heard the term CRM (Customer Relationship Management). CRM is more than a technology, though. It’s also a key component of your sales, marketing, and promotional strategy. It helps you learn and better understand your customers’ wants, needs, desires, and behaviors and allows you to develop stronger relationships with them.
From a technological perspective, CRM is a software platform (usually cloud-based) that allows you to manage every interaction you have with your customers and prospective customers. A CRM allows you to capture key data on your customers. For example, a few data points you can capture include their name and contact information, their birthdate (great for sending out thank you messages and personalized birthday promotions), how often they visit your business, and what their favorite products are.
A good CRM incorporates marketing and promotion tools either natively or through third-party applications, such as email marketing and SMS/text-message capabilities. Reputable CRM systems also usually integrate with your eCommerce and online ordering, inventory management, order entry systems, point of sale (POS), processing, quality assurance (QA), and warehousing systems, many of which have been designed specifically for cannabis dispensaries.
CRM will also provide visibility into your sales and marketing programs, such as what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to iterate and continually refine and improve your sales and marketing efforts while providing an easy way to measure ROI (return-on-investment).
From a strategic perspective, CRM is much more than just another technology. Ultimately, your CRM solution reflects your business philosophy and sales and marketing strategy. It is the heart of your business.