CRM Setup Costs

Most CRMs charge per user per month (PUPM), which has a direct impact on the initial and ongoing cost of the CRM. CRMs are also not just for sales people, they are also for managers, operations, finance, HR, project managers, and marketers. To get an idea of the ongoing cost, look at the people in your business who need regular access to the data held within the CRM. 

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Example: a company with 15 salespeople, 2 sales managers, 1 CEO, 1 account rep, and a 5-person marketing team will need 24 CRM licenses

Apart from being a way to manage sales, CRMs are also brilliant at automating workflows and reducing manual work. Each automation needs to be built, most often by the team implementing your CRM, but they are worth it. Each automation may take 1-2 man-days for the dev team to build and save your business 10-20 working days through the course of the first 12 months. 

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Example: Your current sales order process includes hand writing a sales order, manually checking the price, entering the customer data into an excel spreadsheet, messaging the order details to the accounts team and sending the order to the warehouse. With automation, what was 5-10 steps is now 1 step and with each sale, your business recoups an hour of work. Breakeven = 16 sales

Very few companies are completely analog and it is likely your business has a tool or software for managing finance, inventory, marketing, order processing, or something else. First look at which tools can be replaced by a CRM (like marketing and inventory tools), and then look at which tools need to be integrated into the CRM. The process may be manual now but integration can automate it. 

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Example: Instead of manually entering the sales data into the ERP or the finance system, the data can be sent automatically when a sale is closed in the CRM 

One of the most overlooked aspects of implementing a new CRM is training employees on how to use it. Every CRM is only as good as the data that goes into it, and while a lot of information is created automatically through integrations and automations, the sales and marketing teams will be the front line in managing those customers and new leads. 

Your CRM will be the repository for all of your customer information and data, but where will that data come from, how will it be entered, what aspects of your customers should be searchable or filterable, and what information will trigger other things to happen? 

Who will be the champion for your new CRM in your business? Who has the capability to make changes to an automation flow or update an integration? Some of these things can be done internally but retaining external support, usually for less than the cost of an IT rep each month can give your business the edge when processes and needs change.