What To Consider When Choosing A CRM

By: Gerry Herbison, Optimal Outcome Coach

Advisors often serve hundreds of customers. Keeping track of relationships can become overwhelming. Emails get buried and follow-ups fall through the cracks. Team members need to access the same files at the same time, and it’s hard to assist a client if the person who helped them is out of the office when valuable customer information lives all over the place: in paper files, spreadsheets, and company supplied lists. This is when a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system becomes a necessity, rather than nice to have.

There are so many CRM options on the market, so choosing the right one is a daunting task. Our coaching clients often ask us which CRM is the best? The answer is, “the one you are going to use!”

Start with your real-world problems

Before looking at software, look at your workflows.

• Are you missing follow-ups?
• Do you struggle to remember the details of conversation with customers?
• Do multiple team members need access to the same customer information?
• What client information do you want to capture?
  • Birthdays, kid’s names and birthdays, policies, meeting notes, etc.
• What reports and/or dashboards do you want from the CRM?
  • Renewals, age triggers (e.g., 65), weekly quotes, sales by producer and/or line of business
  • Do you need custom reports?
• How will you use the CRM to track your pipeline? Stages of sales process.
  • Prospects
  • Referrals
  • Existing client business
  • Conversion/closing ratios
• Mobile device capabilities
• # of Users
• Export capabilities – Excel or Business Intelligence tools Does it need task management?
  • Sales
  • Service
• Document Storage?
• Email, text automation?
• Email and Calendar synchronization?
• What other software might it need to synch with?
• Training and Support?

We can’t list all of the questions you might ask, but your goal is to ensure you have a list that allows you to compare the important factors across your CRM options. Remember, CRMs exist to manage and control complexity, not create it. The most important factor in choosing a CRM is whether or not you and your team will actually use it.

Prioritize contact and interaction management

When you have a lot of customers, the key benefit of a CRM is centralization. Every call, email, note, and task should live in one place, giving you a single view of each customer. This is especially important if customers interact with your business through multiple channels, communicating with different people on your team. Ask questions such as:

How will:

• Phone calls be entered into the CRM? Will it be automatic or manual?
• In person visits be documented? Will meeting notes be uploaded or typed directly in?
• Workflows from a home office be entered? Will they be automated or manual?

Think carefully about pricing and scalability

CRMs are typically priced per user per month. What seems affordable today can become expensive as your team grows. It’s important to know that you need a license for each user, or you’re already limiting the ability to optimize CRM functionality. Look for transparent pricing and make sure you understand which features are included at each tier. Cloud-based CRMs are often the best fit for small businesses because they require less upfront investment and scale over time.

Test before you invest

Most reputable CRM providers offer free trials or free tiers. Take advantage of them. Import a sample of your customer data, run real scenarios, and see how the system fits into your daily operations. Just like test-driving a car, hands-on experience reveals issues no feature list ever will. Use the business requirements you created above to ensure that the CRM does what you need it to do. If the CRM doesn’t have a free trial, be sure to have detailed demos where the salesperson can show you how your business requirements would be achieved.

Final thoughts

Choosing a CRM isn’t about finding the “best” platform on the market—it’s about finding the right one for your business and your customers, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, THE ONE YOU AND YOUR TEAM WILL USE. When you focus on simplicity, scalability, and real operational needs, the right CRM becomes a growth enabler rather than another piece of software to manage.