What to Look for in CRM Software 2021
What is a CRM?
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a program that’ll allow you to organize, manage, and analyze your customers’ data.
Why should you invest in a CRM?
With hundreds of retail accounts to call and follow-up on, you’ll need access to your buyer’s details, orders, and history at a snap of a finger. It can be easy to misplace notes if you’re writing on the corner of order forms or keeping information in multiple spreadsheets. A CRM streamlines your workflow and processes between sales, marketing, and customer support to help you efficiently manage your customers from one central location.
5 Most Important Features Apparel and Clothing Brands Must Demand from their CRM Software in 2021 (and Beyond)
There are many CRM options available and while it’s possible to use a general one, you’ll get the most benefit from one built tailored for the apparel industry. Here are our picks for important features that’ll help fashion sales teams succeed.
1. Customer Interaction Tracking
Are you jumping between files or systems to manage your accounts through spreadsheets and other tools, or navigating thru piles of paper orders with ineligible writing? It’s a common scenario for sales reps to find themselves in this predicament before finally making the switch to a CRM.
Make your life easier by looking for a system that allows you to change your account’s sales status, send emails out of the system, create show appointments in a calendar, track communication history with date and time stamps and assign follow-up tasks.
2. Order Management
Don’t get caught up shifting thru piles of orders or emails when a buyer contacts you with after sale questions. With a CRM that links their accounts with their orders, you’ll be able to quickly reference their orders. You should also be able to pull up orders based on search criteria such as by location, sales reps, order date, cancel date, season, etc… and export these orders to a spreadsheet.
3. Reporting & Analytics
Gain insights into your business performance with summary reports of sales history based on customers or sales rep by season or date range. With proper data collected by the CRM, you’ll be able to make the most informed decisions around sales and marketing activities.
Information such as customer sales, best-selling products, and cancellations can be used to generate helpful reports for missed customers, commission sales, performance reports, and many more.
4. Ease Of Use
Getting on onboard with a new system is an investment in time so it’s imperative that the software is easy to set up, simple to use and feel intuitive to the user.
Look for a CRM that is flexible enough to grow with your business needs however be weary of overly feature-packed CRMs as they can easily become overwhelming. A system is only as good as the users who use it. To avoid this pitfall, make a wish-list of your must-have features prior to looking for a CRM to help you narrow down your search for the right program.
5. Accessibility
Whether you’re in the office, on the road or at a tradeshow, you’ll want to be able to access current data wherever you are so choosing a cloud-based CRM is a no-brainer. With cloud CRM, your customer data is hosted and managed by the software vendor which means you can access it over the internet using a web browser no matter what device you are on. Strict security standards are set up to ensure your data is safe and secure.
Apparel sales teams can get an edge in today’s competitive market with the right CRM software. Explore ShowroomHQ fashion CRM software today!
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