Don’t lose sight of your customers.
When you’re a small business owner running your own financial services company, you have to wear all of the hats. That includes marketing and customer relations. It’s not just about leads alone — it’s about converting, and about maintaining those connections you make. Do you have the right customer relationship management (CRM) platform in place to make that happen? It takes a robust system, and if you don’t have that system you’re already behind.
Here are a few things you can consider when you’re building that infrastructure for your company.
1. Avoid the “Banking Fallacy.”
A decent customer relationship management system — we’re just going to call it a CRM from here on out — won’t just be a fact-bank. It’s not a vault to store things in, in other words. You need something that goes beyond telling you your customers’ telephone numbers. First off, you need everything: website, telephone, email, social media accounts, anything they will tell you. That’s too much information to store and update in a spreadsheet (although we have seen people do it). Even if it wasn’t, a good CRM will have many more features that you can use.
A great CRM should have more functionality, like email and call scheduling, portability (you can use it across multiple devices), and an interface that’s fast, clean, and up-to-date, so advisors logging in know where to look for their latest numbers, or customer-service specialists know exactly where a client is in the sales pipeline, just by looking at the dashboard.
2. Reminders and emails.
Any good CRM will include appointment reminders, and will help you email or call your clients right from the platform. You could send a pre-meeting video email, or you could send a post-meeting review. You’ll save time and money if you can contact your client directly instead of having to look up their contact information and then switch to another program or platform. So rest easy knowing you can send appointment reminders, follow-up instructions, and surveys, or special events and updates right from your platform! If you can’t, that’s a problem, and you might consider finding another CRM.
3. Advanced Tracking
A very good CRM will offer options for tracking commissions. It will also allow you to label where certain clients are in the pipeline — are they warm, cold, converting, or existing clients? Your sales team needs to know. A CRM can help you route the flow of leads to the correct producers, as well. A lot of the systems have workflow automation, and that will also save you time and money. When a new lead comes in, it’s routed to the correct agent or advisor in your practice. Or maybe inquiries like client appreciation event R.S.V.P.s are sent to the events coordinator, but sales leads are sent directly to your desk.
In life, it pays to be organized, and a good CRM will keep your practice humming along like a well-oiled machine.
Have any more questions about a good CRM? CreativeOne has plenty of experience setting advisors up with industry-leading CRMs. For example, our preferred vendor for a CRM is Redtail, but we also like Wealthvest. Call us today to find out why.