What is CRM onboarding?

This article lists things to consider before starting a CRM onboarding process. We specialise in HubSpot CRM onboarding.

Choosing the right CRM to meet your business needs is no easy task. The number of CRM systems is overwhelming, lists of functionalities can be difficult to compare, and pricing is usually far from straightforward. This article assumes that you have not made that decision yet.

CRM onboarding is your gateway to mastering your new Customer Relationship Management system. Think of it as a personal guide introducing you to the amazing (and sometimes overwhelming) world of managing customer interactions effectively.

Here’s what you can expect:

1. Goals: define what you want to achieve with the CRM. This helps tailor the onboarding to your specific needs, whether it’s boosting sales, improving customer service, or streamlining processes.
2. System Setup: this involves importing existing data like branding and email templates and configuring user settings to match your goals.
3. Exploration Training: Get ready to discover the power of your CRM! The onboarding manager will guide you through key features like contact management, deal tracking, reporting, automation, reporting and more.
4. Data Migration: Moving existing customer data into the CRM? To ensure a smooth transition, cleaning databases for optimal clarity and accessibility is most likely to take time.
5. Support: Make sure that you have provision for hands-on practice sessions and support to answer questions, address challenges, and ensure you’re comfortable navigating the system.

Depending on the type of the CRM, additional steps might include:

1. Integrating with business tools like email or marketing campaigns,
2. Defining best practices for data entry and communication,
3. Establishing user roles and permissions,
4. Setting up reporting dashboards and automated tasks.

Remember, CRM onboarding is a collaborative process. To make the onboarding a success, don’t forget to locate time, communicate with your team and let them actively participate and ask questions.

Items to consider:

Functionality

You have to consider:

• What do you want the CRM to do? Examples of these may be:
  • Creating a sales or service process
  • Gather and follow up on sales leads
  • Communicate with groups of clients or leads
  • Centralise emails, calendars, and tasks
  • Manage a sales team
  • Manage advertising campaigns
  • Storing and managing business contacts
  • Ensuring client’s data is GDPR compliant

Your business may need your CRM to do 1, multiple or all these things. And for each of these functionalities, there is a process required to set them up to match what your business needs.

Cost

Then there is the cost.

• Do you use a free trial for a paid solution?
• Do you find one that has a free to use entry level?
• Do you jump into a paid solution?
• If so, at what level should you pay for?

Implementing a CRM system on an SME level can be an investment of £300 per year or £30.000.

Team Access

Next, you may need to consider:

• Which team members will be using the CRM:
  • Will it be 1 team member or leader with an overall view of everything?
  • Will you have individuals who will have access to everything?
  • Will you have individuals who will only have access to the areas that are relevant to their role?
  • Will you have a team with different roles within (access, supervisor etc)?

Ensuring the right team member has the right access to the right elements in your CRM can ensure a seamless process instead of a potentially clunky internal procedure, so getting the profiles set to exactly what your business requires is essential.

GDPR Compliance

Also, something every business needs to explore:

• Ensure the data used is GDPR Compliant and show you can:
  • Show you are reaching out to prospects or customers for the right reasons
  • Easily be able to act upon customer’s wishes around receiving marketing messages
  • Present your GDPR permissions, terms and conditions for your CRM and any linked websites or programmes

GDPR permissions are essential for the legitimacy of any business and are required to show that your business is responsible for client data and give your customers confidence. Ensuring these are robust and fit for purpose should always be a priority.

Making sure all these elements of your CRM and more are set up correctly and personalised to your business can be a challenge. That is where our advice and the onboarding service can help.

What do we include in HubSpot onboarding?

It is, in a sense, like moving into a new office or warehouse. HubSpot comes with all these worthwhile modules but is empty and disconnected at the start.

The onboarding is making HubSpot a home for your company. Our onboarding team will customise and connect your HubSpot with your company’s IT, communication and marketing infrastructure.

In general terms, adopting a CRM consists:

1. General advice – how CRM systems can help with sales and marketing, a demo of the system,
2. Implementation – migrating and integrating your existing data (client lists, online mailboxes, digital advertising data and more) into your new CRM platform. Whilst there are online resources to guide you, the process can be time-consuming and complex, and you may not know the full value of a CRM system.
3. Training – Introduce the team to your new personalised, integrated HubSpot account. Training the team on how to start.

Framework Digital offers a customised HubSpot CRM Onboarding package which offers:

• 1. consultancy,
  2. data import,
  3. system customisation,
  4. integration,
  5. training.

We want our clients to use their new CRM system and benefit from its full potential, to see the value of this investment to sell more and use advertising money more efficiently. As HubSpot Solution Partner, we are confident in providing valuable support.

More information about our HubSpot onboarding service with a detailed list of tasks and training can be found here