May 24, 2022
Subscribe to our newsletter to get alerts about new posts, local news, and industry insights.
The best CRM tool for your cannabis or cannabis-related business is one that includes features to manage all aspects of your brand’s relationships with prospective, current, and prior customers. CRM is so important to your business, but any old CRM software won’t do. The tool you choose must deliver the specific CRM benefits that cannabis and ancillary businesses need.
With that in mind, review the 10 ways CRM can boost your business in the cannabis industry, and make sure you fully understand the importance of CRM. You can’t choose the right CRM software until you understand why managing customer relationships matters so much to your business and you develop a CRM strategy.
Once you have the knowledge you need to make an educated choice, look for a CRM software that offers the following 10 must-have features at a minimum.
You can’t manage customer relationships using a CRM tool if the software doesn’t make it easy to manage contacts within the tool! The CRM software you choose for your cannabis or ancillary business should store all relevant contact information, including each person’s name, business name, email address, phone number, mailing address, job title, social media profile links, job level, company size, type of license and license status for people working at licensed cannabis facilities, and more.
A key purpose for CRM software is to make it easier for your sales team to manage sales leads and deals. Therefore, your CRM tool should include features to build and manage your entire sales pipeline. This includes assigning deals to specific salespeople, assigning tasks, tracking communications, and tracking progress to ensure you hit your sales goals.
One of the best parts of a robust CRM software is the inclusion of tools to automate processes so you can create systemic workflows. For example, the CRM you choose should allow each user to configure and schedule email and/or text message alerts and notifications so they don’t miss tasks or outreach opportunities. Your team will save time and make fewer mistakes when parts of their workflows are automated.
Not only should one-to-one email communications be quick and easy in your CRM software, but email marketing tools should also be built into your CRM tool. You can’t manage customers effectively and efficiently if your data is separated into silos. Integrate email marketing and CRM in a single software that offers advanced email marketing features, and you’ll have more success generating and nurturing leads. As a result, more of them will become sales qualified.
For email marketing to be most effective, you need to be able to segment your target audiences and send the most personalized and relevant content possible. Therefore, you need to be able to segment using demographic and behavioral data. To do this effectively, you’ll need a CRM software that offers both lists and tags to manage contacts as well as advanced filtering options and a robust search tool.
One of the things that makes a CRM tool such an important part of the entire customer relationship management process is its ability to provide detailed historical data about each contact in the database. It’s so valuable to be able to look up a contact and instantly see who they are, what their needs are, where they are in the sales pipeline, what email marketing campaigns they’ve engaged with in the past, who has contacted them and when, and notes about the contact and their relationship with your brand. Marketing, sales, and customer service teams can use this information to do their jobs better and get better results for your company.
You want a CRM software that collects and stores a vast amount of data that you can easily extract for analysis and decision making. Metrics such as email open rates, click rates, sales volume, subscription end dates, and so on are crucial to knowing when to communicate with contacts and what those communications should include to best manage each relationship.
When your business prioritizes CRM, there will be times when you collect contact data that you’ll want to add to your CRM tool. Imagine you go to a trade show and collect data on 100 contacts who you want to add to your CRM. You don’t want to have to add each person’s data individually, so be sure the CRM software you choose offers imports. Exports are also important if you want to be able to export data to upload into a separate tool or to slice and dice the data outside the CRM software.
While it would be fantastic to have a single software that you can use to manage all aspects of your business, such a tool doesn’t exist yet. CRM software can do a lot and will eliminate the need for several different types of separate tools. However, there will still be some tools that you won’t be able to replace with CRM software. Therefore, it’s important to choose a CRM software that allows third party integrations with those third party tools you can’t replace.
Most sales teams have a leader who monitors their performance to ensure they’re on track to hit their sales goals. If that describes your business, then the CRM software you use should allow leaders to see what their team members are working on, assign, cancel or move tasks, review communications, and so on. The CRM data about each salesperson’s work and efforts could be used for compensation, workforce planning, and to hold team members accountable for meeting deadlines and hitting quotas.
Do your research and make sure you choose a CRM software that offers the 10 features above so you get the full benefits that tool can bring to your business. Remember to consider marketing, sales, and customer service needs, and choose a tool that most effectively allows you to manage all stages of the relationships with your target audience in the cannabis industry.
If your target audience includes cannabis or hemp license holders in the United States, Canada, and other international territories and markets, then the Cannabiz Media License Database is the right CRM choice for you! Schedule a demo and see how using the cannabis industry’s only CRM and verified source for license holder leads can help your business.
