I'm Fredrik Kastenholm, and I'm the CRO here at Omnitas and one of the CO-founders of the company. "Choosing the right CRM system and what you need to know" So this is going to be 20 - 25 min with me. Hello everyone and welcome to todays webinar on And I kind of make CRM my everyday. So hopefully when you leave here you have some tips, tricks and some pointers. to go ahead with. So shortly about for those of you who are completely new and have never met us at Omnitas before, we are a digital consulting agency or digital management consulting agency. And what we interest ourselves for is workflows and work processes and sales and CRM is one of those workflows or work processes that we tend to deal with quite a lot. And why are we are speaking about choosing the right CRM? Well, a lot of clients come to us and ask for help in what should I be thinking about when I'm choosing a new CRM? Because that is something that will happen to any company, either getting a new one or switching out an old one which doesn't fit anymore into something else. And we are now going to dive into my head a bit and see what's my thoughts. What should you be thinking on? Basically. So today I'm going to talk a bit about the must haves when you're choosing a CRM. So what I think you really should investigate when you're kind of getting the lay of the land. Then we're going to go into our organizing and centralization of customer data, which is the alpha and omega of a CRM system. That is what it's there to do, basically, and how you should let it do that. Then I'm going to try to speak a bit about some time saving techniques and some personalization tweaks that we can easily impart to make your sales journey with your clients, hopefully clients a bit easier. And then I'm going to finish off with what are some trends we are seeing right now and talk a bit about automation. And I can tell you, knowing myself, automation, is probably going to be a bit of a running theme through this. But let's dive into it. Also, I would like to say before I get started, if any of you have any questions, you have a question button up there somewhere where you can post your questions. And I will try my best to make sure that they are covered or if they aren't, we will finish off with a Q&A and I will make damn sure that I have taken care of all of your questions. So please don't be afraid to do that. So some of the more common mistakes. Let's start with that one. Some of the most common mistakes when choosing a CRM is not doing your due diligence and basically going for what you might be needing right now. Well, hopefully your business is not going to be static. It's going to change over time. Hopefully it will grow. It will do new things or do old things in a new way. And this is something we need to kind of have in mind already when we're choosing a CRM. Otherwise, you might be ending up in a situation where you will not only be switching the way you do things, but also be switching your CRM system every few years, which I can tell you from experience is both expensive and boring. Takes a lot of time and effort to do that right. So make sure you actually evaluate your CRMs or the CRMs you're going for properly. And there are three key factors, at least for me, there are three key factors that I tend to look upon. First one is scalability. Can this system scale with me and my business? Or will I have to switch this system within a shorter amount of time? If the answer is yes, good. On to the next one. Flexibility. Is the system flexible enough for me to adapt it into what I need from it? Or is it more of an off the shelf type of solution, which I need to adapt into? There are pros and cons with both. A pro with an off the shelf kind of solution is, of course, yeah, getting into it might be quicker. There might be less costs in terms of implementation. But the downside is that you will need to do that adoption into how someone else have thought you should run your business. And also you will be at the mercy of that software developer, more or less at the end of the day on how they change their software for future purposes. So it's a bit of a mixed bag, but I personally tend to go for the more flexible range of CRM systems because that allows me to tell the system what I need from it. Because at the end of the day, not every company are just out from a template. We are not alike. It's like a person. There are quirks. There are specific types of ways we do things. There are, of course, such a thing at times, at least as best practices. But that should be taken with a grain of salt, I think, because there are definitely tweaks that you will want or need to do depending on how your workflows actually work, which comes out from how your organization is set up. And also what you are selling at the end of the day. Then the third one is integration and the capabilities of integration. This is usually not a big problem today when looking at CRM systems if we aren't looking at older type of software. But if we are looking at today's SaaS platform, so software as a service cloud platforms, they are usually fairly good. But there are things to be mindful of here. Because they're like any software, an API, so what you integrate into have limitations. So this might be a good thing to kind of have a look into what can this API actually reach in terms of what data can it reach, what can you do with it, but also in terms of what's the load capacity of it, how much can you use it, and so on and so forth. And also, how does trigger events work? Can it easily be triggered? Is the API itself in certain ways customizable? Or is it very static? And I can tell you from experience coming from a firm that help other companies integrate a lot with different types of CRM systems. There's a wide range out there. And also some of the market market leaders, which you would think have, you can do more or less anything, also have quite definite restrictions. So have a look into that. And if you're feeling insecure about what you are doing there, my top tip is have a chat with someone who knows something about it, talk to a partner of that CRM, usually better than talking to the CRM developer themselves. Important partner might be slightly more unbiased. at least hopefully. I know we always try to be even though we are a partner of a CRM system. But these are the three core pillars that I, these are the first things I check. So scalability, flexibility, and integrations or integratability and what I can do with it. Because this kind of sets the tone for what I need to really know. And also when it comes to other stuff I then go into to check in is pricing and terms of how does system scale in terms of price. So for example, certain systems, they might start off a bit cheaper, but how do that equate to me growing, me needing more, this beast growing in. So for example, some of the more enterprise aligned CRM systems might require me to actually have full time employees just managing my CRM system, that is a CRM cost that I need to factor in into my decision. So it's not only a licensing question, it's basically how much can I, me and my company do ourselves? And also if we can do a lot ourselves, how easy is it? How much time is it going to take? Is it manageable with the workforce we have? Or do we actually need extra staff to do this? Or will we need to bring in consultants? Or are we do we need to do both? There are definitely systems that come in that do both category. So there's a lot of things to think about when it comes to flexibility. It's not only can I do what I want, a lot of CRM software today don't only offer the core CRM functionality, but actually quite a lot more. more in terms of what it can do. So a CRM system might also be a good offset for other types of cost. And it might be worth checking what that might be, because that should definitely go into my decision. Of course, I come from a certain software or from a certain software point, monday.com in my case, which is an outstanding product management software, for example, as well, or an HR tool, actually. So there's a lot of different use cases we can get in into the same licensing fee. So basically, I might be able to also offset cost with bringing in other use cases. So this is also a good thing to have a look out for when I'm choosing my CRM. So when it then comes to a CRM, there is some just global truth when it comes to system. And that is the main one that we all heard so many times. garbage in garbage out. And that basically means that any system you employ is not going to be better than what you put into it. Right? So a CRM system does require some structuring and it should be acting as your single source or at least your main source of truth. This is where we keep our documents. I don't know how many times I've come out to different companies and I find information scattered everywhere. Some things are in different email inboxes and preferably then in some specific person's email inbox, which means it's not accessible by anyone else. Or in 5,000 different Google spreadsheets or Excel spreadsheets, whatever you use, and so on and so forth. And that, to me, it's kind of like trying to cook, but having the ingredients spread out over five different kitchens all the time. It's a mess. So we need to let our CRM be that main collection of where we have all our data. And we need to help the system and structure it. And this comes from the flexibility again. Can we structure it in such a way that the system makes sense to us? Or is it just predefined labels? For example, we need to do that. For example, we need lead segmentation. And of course, you don't segment the same way I would perhaps. You have your own ways and your own metrics that determine if a lead is a good lead or a not so good lead or a bad lead. How do we handle pipelines? How do we handle staging, for example? What can we do with that? Does the system allow us to do with that? Does the system allow us to concoct our own dashboards? Or are we more required to just fit the mold? So on and so forth. And I'm not saying that just because you do have to fit the mold, it might be the right choice for you. But you need to have a think of all of this and try to think towards the future. What might come up? Where are we as a company headed? What do we see coming along the lines? So there's some really big things to think about here. So basically my best tip, because what I see a lot when I talk to a lot of clients, most of people have just start scouring the interwebs and just pulling features. Don't start there. That's my best tip. Start by actually looking inward into your own organization. What do we need? What do we require? Then we can go out and start looking at different CRM systems. Also, you won't probably know best. That's a good measurement. So talk to someone, talk to their system developer, the vendor themselves, or talk to their system developer. Talk to a partner of that system. And you might get a slightly more unbiased gauging of what you need. But talk to someone who actually knows the system. Because yes, there are trials out there for most systems today. And you can go on and you can trial it for a week or a month or whatever the vendor will keep you with. But you are not a specialist in that system. So I've seen too many times of people come to me, oh, HubSpot can't do this. Yes, it can. Or monday.com can't do this. Well, yes, it can. You haven't found it or you don't know how to do it. But the system does. So have a chat with someone. That gives you a better picture of what you're actually dealing with. So that's a top tip. Talk to people. Don't trust your own research all the way. Do your own research initially, but then talk to people. So some time saving. Because that is one of the big things I would say for today that a good CRM should help me with. Not only collecting my data and keeping it as that one source of truth, but also making it available for me to use. And in a timely and time efficient manner. And this brings me on to kind of the lead section, but the overall communication with client. A good CRM should contain personalization value. So we can use that as a running kind of thing in our communication. Because a lot, let's face it, we think about ourselves and our clients and our sales processes many times quite dynamic and quite unique to every case. But actually, if we start breaking things down, we can usually spot those trends and see. Now it follows a certain cadence, right? And it follows a certain way. And that means we should be able to use the data we have in our CRM to automate. A fair few number of CRMs today, they offer this straight in the CRM system. Other ones don't, but then you need to basically start checking that integration. So that's a great ability. How can we use the data still? Or you have opted into a sales engagement platform or something that you are using. And then the question is, how well can that talk to my CRM system of choice? And here, a good tip is usually, don't just check that there is a plug and play connector because that is yet again, often built from a quite specific use case. And that's how it works. Instead, check the APIs. Because if they have fairly solid APIs, and they should have all of them, that means you can do it to your specifications and your needs, not to what someone else have set up. But other ways. So some top features, I think, which is really good is lead qualification. So can the system run for formulas or run use AI or something like that to actually create lead scoring, lead qualifications, etc. Can we automate that one? Saves a bunch of time of when a lead comes in, depending on how it comes in, can we score it? And knowing already from the start, is this a low percentage opportunity or is it a high percentage opportunity? Of course, then we can handle it differently. Or just route it differently, maybe. For example, we talk to clients about both CRM systems and we talk to clients about product management systems and so on and so forth. Maybe it's not the same person that should have those discussions. So then we can control routing of such leads. And today with AI, even if it's just a free text kind of form or whatever you have, we can still use the AI then to actually actually fetch the sentiment of those emails and actually use that for routing purposes. I'm talking about AI, one big thing, AI driven customer or lead insight. Just to give you one thing we do here at Omnitas, actually in our CRM, we have a button. So I can press that on if the lead is registered in my lead board. I can click that and then AI will basically take a look at that company's website. It will take a look at the person's LinkedIn, have a read of their latest posts and also have a check at the official company numbers. So something like Endol if you're in the UK or Alla Bolag here in Sweden and so forth and basically check the official number. So how many employees are we? What's the revenue? What's the industries? Addresses, all of that. And taking that in to account and making a BDR report. So who's this lead? What's their probable pain points they're having depending on their industry, their roles, what they are writing on LinkedIn and so on and so forth, their growth numbers, etc. And also actually writing a first or even a second email or at least a draft of those for me. So I don't have to. This saves a lot of time and it also uses those personalization elements. So it's not just a template that we basically send to everyone. We actually use their data to be sending something that is at least slightly more personable. Because at the end of the day, most of us, especially if you're selling slightly more expensive or slightly more complex products or services, we tend to like to talk to a person, not a robot. So personalization is a key factor here. When it comes to the trends that we see right now. When it comes to the trends that we see right now, it's yes, AI, AI, AI, AI is everywhere and very much so in the world of CRM. AI can be used for quite a lot. So predictive analysis, customer summaries, so basically using it for that personalization piece, using it as a assistant overall in the system. So for example, we use AI, of course, to record the meetings we have with our clients, at least as long as they are on web meetings, with full on transcription and also plotting tasks and what action points that comes out from those meetings. So we make sure we have all of that information in our system. So it can be a good leverage point. But there's a lot happening right now in the world of AI and in the world of CRM, therefore. So that is a big trend. We see a lot of even older type platforms switching to a more no code type of automation, systematic. monday.com has definitely done it. monday.com comes from the no code world. HubSpot has started bringing stuff in. So we see a lot of different things happening. So making the coding part or the development part more accessible to you. However, this is an area which you maybe should have a look into. What's relevant for you? How much can you do? Or are you going to bring in a partner and so on? And what's your actual needs and what can it actually do? Because that is very different from platform to platform. In some platform is actually quite static, but it's a nice user interface. In other platforms, you can actually fetch a lot of different data and actually make rather complete workflows. But it's a new and interesting development. And we see this speeding up. So we see almost the implementation of platforms like Zapier or Make, well known automation platforms on a light version being baked into. So we see almost the implementation of the new RCRM systems, which I welcome. It's a good democratization of tech, basically. So yes. Those are the biggest trends right now. And I would say one thing I look upon quite a lot, because a lot of things in sales at the end of the day are fairly repetitive. We need to take care of our leads. We need to reach out to our leads. We then need to take care of our opportunities and keep engaging with the ones we actually have discussions with, so on and so forth. And at the end of the day, we also need to hand it over. So unless we sell a very simplistic product, it's going to be slightly more than an order form sent to the warehouse for shipping. Especially if we're in the service industry and we need some one to take over keep what we promised as salespeople. Here, that flexibility part and integratability part is huge, because what happens when we can bring that into a system and we can automate those workflows because let's face it, and I say this often, and I'm a salesperson myself, we might not always be the champions of administration. We just need to own up to that one. But here is also an important part. Can we have a CRM system that actually helps the salespeople do that? Because that is usually not what they're best at. And that means it takes longer time and it takes more effort, which means they spend their time doing less of other things, which might be more fruitful. So this is one place where we can really bring in automation and AI to help along with doing that. So for example, can we automate the handovers of our sales motions into the delivery organization? Perfect if we can keep them in the same platform, but if we can't, can we then integrate? So on and so forth. And we're seeing big trend steps in this on making these types of motions now with a lot of different tooling. So my only warning here is that also a trend that we see right now is that the sales department is becoming the next marketing department. And what I mean with that is a department that relies on very many different softwares and therefore starting to creating that scattered information, driving a lot of licensing costs and so on and so forth. But we see on the back end of that, those who start resisting that and actually start having a think of instead of just buying that app or just buying that, having a good think of what can we do? What are those apps really? Can we actually build this ourselves and integrate this into our platform depending on what we have? That's always a good thing to have a think about. I recently helped one client who were in that kind of situation and we could actually get rid of a fair number of smaller different apps because they actually already had most of what they needed in their CRM solution. And then we could hook on and most of these were AI apps. And then we can actually hook on directly onto OpenAI and Anthropic and Midjourney and whatever we needed and build those kind of because many of those apps at the end of the day is a fancy way of making a prompt. And we could do that directly and build it into the workflow. So have it done by automation every time. So have a good long think about those things. For now, I'm going to move us into the questions and answers section. And I can actually see we have a few questions. So what's the biggest frustration you've had with a CRM system in the past? Oh, that's a good one. And there have been so many. I would actually say it's when you usually my biggest grievances comes down when you handle your CRM system as a more kind of a less safe hair kind of situation. You need to set policies for how you operate your CRM systems. That is one thing you need to do because and you need to use required fields and whatever to kind of enforce it. But you need to have a way to structure your CRM to make sure that you're actually get your data in. Because I don't know how many CRM systems I've been working in myself over the years or that I've seen from on the client side when I've been brought in to try to shape something up. That is just a lot of garbage at the end of the day. So that is usually a big frustration of mine. And there is not a system in the world that would solve that for you. So you actually need to have a plan for how do we do this. A system might help. But it won't do everything for you. But with a lot of good features that's out there in a lot of different systems and maybe a tweak of AI, this can be solved for. We have another question. What key data points should every business track in their CRM? Well, I can give you a list. But this yet again, this is on that personal side. The metrics that are here to me that I feel is important might not be the ones that you are looking at. But there are some that I think are at least interesting to a lot of people. And those are, of course, quite normal things. So industries, how a lead came in. So lead attribution. In my case, since I'm dealing with a lot of licensing question, of course, number of employees are important to me because that determines kind of like, okay, how much money can I make from a deal? So that kind of puts the priority on it, right? So there's a lot of different factors. But I don't, I wouldn't say here's the list and this is what you should go on. No, this is one of those steps you should do in the beginning. What is important for us? Let's see. We have something from Mr. Ripper as well. Out of the box versus fully customized, which is better? Well, I would say at the end of the day, a fully customized is usually for most companies better. That's my feeling of it. But it might come with a different type of price tag. And even if it don't, because there are great systems today that don't need to cost a lot to have customized. But you might have, well, you won't start working in the day after you bought it. So there might be a layover time. But from my point of view, what I see, and I have made a small gallop on this one, the customized tends to be better. And also McKinsey and company actually did a survey of this. I think it was one or two years ago. And they found that the tailored approach actually gave 10 to 15% increase in revenue. So if we're going by their numbers, well, definitely the customized one. And I think that was all of the questions. And with that, I would like to bid you a very pleasant afternoon. And if you have any questions, feel free to email us. Or use the form on our website. And also make sure that you are subscribed to our newsletter where we post our upcoming webinars, events, and tips and tricks. And also we don't spam you. We only send once a month. So make sure you are on our newsletter. Until next time, everyone. Have a great.