It’s actually understandable how a lot of businesses maybe a little confused as to the importance of CRM software, and the difference between CRM software and sales CRM software. After all, it’s easy think the CRM is just one general aspect of business, and that there isn’t enough to it for there to be that distinctive a set of subsets to it, but the truth can be further from this.
In general, there are basically two sites to CRM, those being sales and support, though there are issues there were they overlap, and there are other dimensions to it as well, but those other dimensions can be rolled into these two generally-speaking.
There are two basic philosophies when it comes to CRM, that of a general, broad-platform solution, or dedicated, task-specific solutions with, preferably, the ability to share data and focus on interoperability.
Both of these approaches have their merit, but I would definitely say that dedicated software is probably for the best, unless you are an exceptionally large business. Big corporations can afford extremely expensive, work-heavy platforms which need a lot of modification and intuitive configuration in order to fully operate on all of the aspects involved in CRM.
What makes sales CRM special?
To fully appreciate the complexities of sales CRM software, and its advantages over a general solution, we need to understand what sales CRM is, compared to support or anything else. Sales CRM is all about tracking sales, preventing churn and maintaining customer engagement, or support is not handling issues, billing and customer feedback.
It’s pretty obvious where the two overlap in a lot of key areas, but it’s also pretty obvious that they are separate things, and separate concerns. The statistics and logistics felt with when it comes to sales CRM software are obviously distinct from those dealing with support and feedback, though interoperability between the two, as I said before, goes a long way towards a big picture and allows you to make better forecasts and conduct better problem-solving measures moving forward.
How is dedicated software more helpful?
Generalized software is actually more advantageous than dedicated software when it comes to solutions for large enterprises. It doesn’t really matter why, this is something that, if you are a business that size, you already understand. However, it takes a lot of programming, customization and configuration to get these generalized CRM software systems truly operating on everything that they need to handle. Things like old-school sugar CRM or the like are powerful, but they aren’t suited for medium or smaller businesses.
Conversely, sales CRM software of a dedicated nature simply works out of the box, with only the most minor configuration to your business’s specific details being necessary. You can get to work right away, and it is in the long run much cheaper.
I recommend that you aim for a platform that can easily evolve with your needs, so that you don’t have to worry about outgrowing it and needing to migrate to bigger platforms on a regular basis.
