CRM best practices: Tips to get the most value from your CRM system

It’s no secret that customer relationship management (CRM) systems are one of the top tools that businesses need to thrive. CRMs are for startups and enterprises alike, helping you build a loyal customer base and manage daily client interactions. Your CRM is the place where you can keep your data organized, streamline communication, and provide customer experiences.

But simply having a CRM isn’t enough to achieve success; you need to follow some crucial best practices, which will help you make sure your data is accurate, your team can successfully adopt the technology, and your customers will want to keep coming back.

This article will explore the ins and outs of CRM implementation best practices and how they can support your customer retention efforts.

Let’s get into it!

Why CRM best practices matter

A CRM is all about helping you manage relationships with customers and prospects. That means they can help your sales, marketing, and customer service teams track interactions, manage leads, forecast sales, automate tasks, etc.

What you get out of a CRM will depend on how you use it, though. To avoid it becoming an underutilized and expensive database, you need clear goals, clean data, and effective processes that help you support your team.

Here’s why CRM best practices matter:

• They make sure your customer data is high quality and actionable

• Collaboration between departments becomes easier

• CRMs smooth out operations and workflows

• They increase team adoption and engagement

• They drive better customer experiences and retention

Bonus: Explore 7 benefits of CRM systems here.

CRM best practices to follow

Now that you understand the why behind CRM best practices, let’s dive into nine that will help you get the most out of your CRM system:

1. Keep your data accurate and up to date

Your CRM strategy should always put data accuracy up front and center. If you’re dealing with outdated or incorrect information, it will likely lead to missed opportunities, poor customer experiences, and unreliable reporting.

Here are some ways you can up your data hygiene game:

• Regularly review and clean your database

• Standardize data entry formats like phone numbers, job titles, etc.

• Use validation rules or required fields to prevent incomplete entries

• Get rid of duplicate contacts and accounts

2. Define your goals before implementation

Before committing to a CRM for your business, whether that’s reconfiguring an existing one or starting from scratch, make sure you understand your goals. Are you wanting to improve sales forecasting? Or are you working to smooth out your lead handoff process, or improve customer support?

Clearly defined goals will tell you:

• What data you track

• Which features you prioritize

• How you customize your CRM

• How you measure success

3. Integrate your CRM with other tools

Integration should be a key part of your CRM strategy if you want to work efficiently. This means connecting with tools that your teams use everyday, like email platforms, customer support software, marketing automation systems, eSignature tools, and CPQ solutions.

Here’s how CRM integration can work for you:

• Eliminate data silos

• Reduce manual entry and errors

• Give your teams a full view of the customer journey

• Speed up workflows like sending proposals and contracts

PandaDoc, for example, offers native integrations with top CRMs like Salesforce, Pipedrive, and HubSpot for CPQ, contract management, and eSignature solutions.

Take a look at our full list of integrations here!

4. Establish clear processes and workflows

Your CRM needs to support how your team works, which means you need to take the time to define and document your sales, marketing, and customer service workflows. Then, you can map those processes into your CRM.

Clear workflows will allow your team to:

• Know exactly what to do at each stage of the customer journey

• Avoid duplicate outreach or dropped leads

• Consistently follow-up and deliver excellent service

5. Customize your CRM to fit your needs

The right sales CRM platform has the ability to customize your options, from having custom fields to custom user roles and dashboard layouts. These features can help you tailor the system to meet your business goals in a way that makes sense for your industry.

Here’s how customization helps:

• It can increase user adoption by making the CRM intuitive and relevant

• It highlights the most important data for each role

• It allows you to support unique workflows or reporting needs

6. Train your team and encourage adoption

A powerful CRM has everything to do with the people using it. That means you should be providing comprehensive onboarding and continued training so that your team knows how to effectively use the system. It’s important that everyone understands why it matters.

You can encourage adoptions by:

• Providing role-based training and support materials

• Making CRM usage part of your performance metrics

• Collecting feedback from your teams and improving the system over time

7. Use automation to save time and reduce errors

Want to save time on repetitive tasks while improving accuracy? Make sure you’re taking advantage of automation with your CRM system. It can free up valuable time for higher value activities by doing things like automating lead routing, follow-up reminders, and proposal creation.

Your CRM automations should include things like:

• Sending follow-up emails based on triggers

• Automatically updating deal stages

• Creating and sending proposals (with PandaDoc) directly from the CRM

Want to dive deeper? Learn why CRM and marketing automation are a match made in heaven.

8. Track performance and demonstrate ROI

Say you need to get leaders on board and secure your budget—showing how your CRM is helping the business is a crucial step to doing that. That means setting KPIs based on your goals and tracking them consistently.

For CRM performance metrics, common examples include:

• Sales cycle length

• Conversion rates by stage

• Lead response times

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores

Top CRMs typically have dashboards and reports that you can use to share insights with key stakeholders and highlight your wins.

9. Review regularly and make continuous improvements

While it may seem like common sense, it’s worth noting: as your business evolves, so should your CRM. That means you should schedule regular audits to assess how everything is working, and what needs to be changed in your strategy.

You want to look for:

• Fields or workflows that are no longer relevant

• Data gaps or quality issues

• User feedback on usability or features

At the end of the day, you want your CRM to remain valuable and adaptable as your needs grow. That’s why driving continuous improvement is key, as nothing is a “one and done” sort of deal.

How PandaDoc integrates with top CRM systems

It’s important to keep in mind that, yes, CRM best practices are about managing data, but they are also about moving deals forward.

How do you do that?

Connecting with tools like PandaDoc can help you speed up the sales cycle and close deals faster by improving contract and proposal processes, from creation to the final signature.

Plus, PandaDoc integrates with major CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and more. These integrations allow users to:

• Create, send, and eSign proposals, quotes, and contracts without leaving the CRM

• Automatically populate documents with CRM data

• Track document status in real time within your deal records

Integrating PandaDoc with your CRM will help you close deals faster while minimizing manual work and keeping all deal-related activity in one place.

Still need convincing?

Just ask our client Avantio. After switching to PandaDoc for document management, they decreased the time it took sending proposals from 30 minutes to just 10 seconds. Plus, they achieved a 200% increase in digital marketing sales in one month!

Build a CRM strategy that works for your team

It’s smart to invest in a solid CRM system, but following best practices listed in this guide are key. Doing so will help align your tools and processes, which will help lead to both your team’s and your business’s success in the long run.

Ready to see how PandaDoc can work for you? Request a free demo today.