CRM

Top 4 CRM goals to set for your business

Liucija Adomaite
LAST UPDATED
May 24, 2024
READING TIME
7 min.

CRM itself is worth nothing without the goals you want to achieve with it.

One of the most common mistakes business owners make is thinking a CRM system will automatically solve all the problems. But implementing a CRM tool is not a solution in itself.

Instead, the CRM strategy and clear objectives you set for your business with the help of CRM will solve your pain points. 

This article will help to understand how CRM corresponds to your primary business goals, as well as the top four CRM goals and objectives to achieve when using the software. 

Why do you need to set CRM goals?

CRM goals provide you and your team direction and focus. Defined goals are a must to ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives and using the CRM system effectively.

It's crucial because in order to get the most out of your CRM you have to get your team on the same page. After all, CRM is a customer-centric approach where your teams make unified and strategical efforts to improve customer experience andM satisfaction.

Moreover, CRM goals help to you to tack progress and measure the impact of your CRM efforts. Our advice is to use clear metrics to quantify achievements and identify areas to improve. 

Clearly defined goals motivate teams to utilize the CRM system consistently. Seeing progress towards these goals gives motivation. Effective CRM goals should be tied to customer-centric objectives like improved customer satisfaction, increased sales conversion rates, or reduced churn. 

The goal of having CRM objectives laid out is to drive better customer experiences and, ultimately, bring you a positive return on investment (ROI).

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What is a CRM strategy?

A CRM strategy is a company-wide plan that outlines how your business will leverage a CRM system to achieve specific goals related to customer relationships. It's essentially a roadmap that guides how you'll use technology, processes, and people to improve customer interactions, drive sales, and ultimately boost your bottom line.

An effective CRM strategy includes multiple touchpoints to target customers and lead your potential prospects through the sales pipeline. CRM strategy can include these touchpoints:

  • Online shopping
  • Email sign-up form
  • Social media platforms
  • Live customer service chat

The goal of these CRM touchpoints is to direct potential customers toward making a purchase. CRM is crucial here because it feeds your teams with all the relevant data and insights of customer interactions that help you to close more deals faster and with less effort. 

CRM gives you a unified 360-degree view of your current and future customers, and a well-designed CRM strategy will guide you through the steps to achieve your ultimate CRM goals.

4 top CRM goals for your business

The primary goal of any CRM is to enhance customer experience. The logic is simple - if your customers are satisfied with the sales experience, you will see sales increase. 

But to get the most out of your CRM, you must set measurable goals that are tailored to your business strategy. The 4 most important CRM goals to implement are:

  1. Improve business efficiency
  2. Grow your customer base
  3. Increase customer retention
  4. Improve the performance of your teams

4 CRM priority goals: a closer look

1. CRM goal: improve business efficiency

CRM software eliminates manual day-to-day tasks by automating them and organizing customer data in an easily accessible and comprehensive way. 

Thanks to your CRM, you can identify your customers' demographics, interests, pain points, as well as the stage of their purchase cycle and if they're ready to be pushed into making a purchase. This data can include both individual and group customer profiles.

CRM can also increase the speed at which your team addresses customer inquiries and solve their problems. This lead to greater efficiency and make your customers more satisfied, and likely to to repeat the purchase or refer you to friends.

2. CRM goal: grow your customer base

A CRM platform not only manages your current customers, it helps to keep in contact with prospects that are likely to convert. 

Many CRMs facilitate the capture of leads from various sources (website forms, social media, LinkedIn, etc.) and help qualify them based on pre-defined criteria. This ensures you focus your efforts on high-potential leads most likely to convert into customers.

Moreover, CRMs visualize the sales pipeline, allowing you to track lead progress, prioritize opportunities, and manage sales activities effectively. Looking at the behavioral patterns of your leads can help you predict what signals indicate a purchase is imminent – whether it be a visit to a specific webpage, the opening of an email, or attendance at a webinar or other virtual event.

CRMs provide a centralized view of customer data, including preferences and past interactions. This empowers sales reps to personalize their communication and tailor their approach to each lead, increasing the chance of conversion.

And lastly, a CRM tool will help you to funnel your new converts into a system so that you can keep in touch and make your service and product fresh in their mind. 

3. CRM Goal: increase customer retention

The buyer's journey is key to the overall customer experience. Mapping out your current buyer's journey will reveal new opportunities for improvement. This is especially relevant to the stages where the journey hands off in between teams, such as marketing to sales and sales to customer success, that otherwise usually remain invisible. 

Moreover, CRMs allow you to identify customer trends and potential issues. You can then use this information to proactively reach out to customers, address concerns before they escalate, and strengthen relationships.

By analyzing customer data and purchase history, CRMs can help identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities. This allows you to recommend relevant products or services that add value to existing customers, increasing their lifetime value.

4. CRM goal: improve the performance of your teams

For sales teams, CRM simplifies lead management and prioritizes and nurtures potential customers. It does so while automating mundane tasks to focus on closing deals. CRM platform also allows for customizing sales strategies through in-depth customer data analysis and enhances collaboration across departments. 

CRMs also aid in monitoring sales performance, providing valuable feedback for improvement and goal setting. 

When it comes to your customer support team, CRM systems consolidate customer information for quick, personalized service and streamline the resolution process for customer inquiries. 

CRM tools enable proactive engagement to prevent issues and integrate multiple communication channels for a unified customer experience. By collecting customer feedback, CRMs help refine customer service approaches.

10 signs that show you achieved CRM goals:

Here are ten most important indications that show you successfully achieved your CRM objectives:

  1. Shorter sales cycle and effective buyer's journey
  2. Improved operational efficiency in all departments (sales, customer support, marketing, etc.)
  3. Improved customer retention and decreased churn
  4. Reduction in CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
  5. Higher total revenue
  6. More conversions and more total transactions
  7. Increased customer lifetime value and increased average deal size
  8. Faster support resolution times
  9. New opportunities identified (new customer segments, upselling possibilities, new marketing channels, etc.)
  10. Meeting or exceeding your targets

How do you set an effective CRM goal?

The most effective CRM goal is then one you can measure. There's no secret about it. Your CRM objective will be a success if you select a specific goal with a deadline, measure metrics, and lay out action plans.

Our advice is to implement the SMART approach when setting a goal:

  1. Specific: What exactly will you accomplish? What actions will you take?
  2. Measurable: What data will you use to measure this goal?
  3. Achievable: How realistic is this goal? Do you have the resources you need to accomplish it?
  4. Relevant: Why does this goal matter? How does it fit in with your broader business objectives?
  5. Timely: When will you reach this goal?

By incorporating these SMART criteria into your goal setting, you create clear, actionable objectives that increase your chances of success. SMART goals provide direction, focus, and a way to measure progress, making them valuable tools for various endeavors.

This table shows how an effective CRM goal based on SMART criteria looks in practice:

[TABLE]

CRM goal examples

The CRM goals you set for your business should be specifically tailored to your growth and sales strategy, as well as your business's pain points. Ideally, your objectives should follow SMART approach as explained earlier.

In addition, your CRM goals can be tied to the type of CRM you're using. Depending on what software you implemented, you may expect outcomes in slightly different areas.

For example, the operational CRM goals can be:

  • Increase sales rep productivity by 15% within 6 months. The goal could be measured by the number of calls made, emails sent, or deals closed per rep.
  • Reduce the sales cycle by 10% in the next year. Track the average time it takes to move leads through the sales pipeline.
  • Improve lead qualification rate by 20% in the next quarter. Ensure your CRM helps identify high-quality leads most likely to convert.
  • Enhance customer service resolution rates by 10% by the end of the year. (Track the percentage of customer inquiries resolved on the first contact.)

If you're using analytical CRM, your goals could be:

  • Improve customer segmentation accuracy by 15% in the next quarter. Ensure your CRM effectively groups customers with similar characteristics for targeted marketing.
  • Identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities for 10% more customers within the next 6 months. Use customer data to personalize product recommendations.
  • Reduce customer churn rate by 5% by the end of the year. Identify at-risk customers and develop strategies to retain them.

Collaborative CRM Goals:

If you have implemented collaborative CRM, your goals could be:

  • Reduce internal communication gaps by 10% in the next 6 months. Measure the efficiency of communication and information sharing within the CRM system.
  • Increase cross-departmental collaboration on customer cases by 15% within the next quarter. Track the number of cases involving collaboration between sales, marketing, and customer service teams.)
  • Improve first-call resolution rate by 20% by the end of the year. Empower customer service reps with easy access to customer data and interaction history for faster issue resolution.
  • Shorten lead response time by one business day in the next quarter. Track how quickly leads are contacted and nurtured by sales reps after initial interaction.

Key Takeaways

Ideally, your CRM goal should be SMART (Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based.)

The best CRM objectives are the ones you can measure. Make sure your goals are tangible and specific and involve metrics.

Depending on the CRM platform you use, the focus of your objectives can vary slightly. Some CRM will help you improve customer resolution rate, enhance internal communication gaps, reduce customer churn or reduce sales cycle.

Make sure you have a clear target set for each of your CRM goals before working on actions.

Overall, whatever your goal is with implementing a CRM system, it will be inevitably tied to customer experience and satisfaction.

When you customers are happy with the smooth and pleasant sales experience they had, you will see increase in sales and revenue.

Liucija Adomaite
Liucija Adomaite is a viral content writer and organic traffic expert on a mission to help turn ambitious businesses into big names.
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G2 Rating
Price
Best for
Standout feature
Con
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/mo
$75/mo
$2,999/mo
Large, distributed sales teams
AI evaluation precision, gamified KPIs
Lack of tracking system
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Sales operations and finance teams
Powerful configurability
Limited training resources and complex to navigate
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Mid-market and enterprise businesses
Comprehensive incentive management
Potentially high cost and steep learning curve
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$15/user/mo
$40/user/mo
Enterprise: custom price
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Collaborative teams
Connected planning
Complexity and steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with complex sales structures
Complex incentive compensation management (ICM) with high efficiency and accuracy
Complexity for smaller teams and potentially high costs
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies who want to automate commission calculations and payouts
Simplicity and ease of use
Lack of features like redirection
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$30/user/mo
$35/user/mo
Custom: upon request
Businesses that need a comprehensive and user-friendly sales compensation management software
Ease of use and adoption
Lack of ability to configure the product based on user needs
4.8
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with modern sales culture and businesses who want real-time insights
A built-in dispute management and real-time visibility
Users say it works slowly, customer support is slow
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/user/mo
$50/user/mo
Smaller sales teams
Powerful automation
Lesser user base and average user interface
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with scalable needs
Automated Commission Calculations
Lack of filtering by date, no mobile app
ERP vs. CRM
ERP
CRM
Summary
Backbone of a business's internal operations.
Backbone of customer-centric interactions and operations.
Goal
To centralize and streamline core business processes in a company.
To increase customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty, and boost sales.
Focus
Internal operations and processes across departments (finance, accounting, inventory, supply chain, HR, and sales).
All interactions with leads and customers.
Manages
Internal business data like financial data, inventory levels, production details, supply chain, HR info.
All customer data like contact info, purchase history, communication history, customer preferences and more.
Users
Finance, accounting, operations, supply chain, and HR departments.
Customer-facing teams like sales, marketing, and customer service.
Benefits
Streamlines operations, improves data accuracy, enhances decision-making, boosts collaboration, increases productivity.
Improves customer relationships, increases sales, strengthens customer service, personalizes marketing campaigns, provides insights.
Price
$150 per user per year on average.
$10 to $30 per user per month on average.
PRM Tool
Rating
Feature
Pro
Con
Mobile App
Integrations
Free Plan
Pricing
4.65
star
star
star
star
star-half
Org-wide alignment
User-friendly layout and database
Suboptimal as a personal CRM
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-check
Team: $20/month
Business: $45/month
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Social Media Integration
Easy contact data collection
No marketing/sales features
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-xmark
7-day trial
$12/month
4.75
star
star
star
star
star-half
Block Functions
High customization capability
Not a dedicated CRM
square-check
Limited
square-check
Plus: €7.50/month
Business: €14/month
N/A
Open-source
Open-source flexibility
Requires extensive manual input
square-xmark
Limited
square-check
Self-hosted
$9/month or
$90/year
3.1
star
star
star
Simple iOS app
Ideal for non-tech-savvy users
iPhone only
square-check
iOS only
Limited
square-xmark
1-month trial
$1.49/month or
$14.99/month
3.6
star
star
star
star-half
Smart Contact Management
Feature-rich and flexible
Reported bugs
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
7-day trial
Premium: $13.99/month
Teams: $17.99/month
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Customizable Interface
Customizable for teamwork
Pricey for personal use
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
Standard: $24/member
Premium: $39/member
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Integrated Calling
Integrated Calling
Too sales-oriented & pricey
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
Startup: $59/user/month
Professional: $329/user/month
4.8
star
star
star
star
star
Business Card Scanning
Business Card Scanning
Mobile only
square-check
Limited
square-check
$9.99/month
4.45
star
star
star
star
star-half
160+ app integrations
Comprehensive integrations
No free app version
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
$29.90/month or
$24.90/month (billed annually)
Capterra Rating
Free Trial
Free Plan
Starting Price (excluding the free plan)
Maximum Price (for the most expensive plan)
Best for
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-check
€15/month/seat billed annually
€792/month/3 seats billed annually + €45/month for each extra seat
Versatility and free plan
4.2
star
star
star
star
square-check
30-day
square-xmark
But it offers reduced price to authorised nonprofit organisations
€25/user/month
€500/user/month billed annually (includes Einstein AI)
Best overall operational CRM
4.3
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-xmark
square-check
Limited to 3 users
Comprehensive incentive management
€52/user/month billed annually
Small-medium businesses and automation
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-xmark
€14/seat/month billed annually
€99/seat/month billed annually
Sales teams and ease of use
4.1
star
star
star
star
square-xmark
square-check
Limited 10 users
$9.99/user/month billed annually
$64.99/user/month billed annually
Free plan for very small teams up to 10
CRM goal
Increase the sales conversion rate for qualified leads from marketing automation campaigns by 10% in the next 6 months.
SMART Breakdown
1. Specific: It targets a specific area (conversion rate) for a defined segment (qualified leads from marketing automation).
2. Measurable: The desired increase (10%) is a clear metric, and the timeframe (6 months) allows for progress tracking.
3. Achievable: A 10% increase is possible based on historical data and potential improvements.
4. Relevant: Boosting sales from marketing efforts aligns with overall business objectives.
5. Time-bound: The 6-month timeframe creates urgency and a clear target date.
Actions
Step 1: Refine lead qualification criteria to ensure high-quality leads are nurtured through marketing automation.
Step 2: Personalize marketing automation campaigns based on lead demographics, interests, and behavior.
Step 3: Develop targeted landing pages with clear calls to action for qualified leads.
Step 4: Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads for sales follow-up.
Step 5: Track and analyze campaign performance to identify areas for optimization.
Outcomes
Increased sales and revenue
Improved marketing automation ROI
Marketing and sales alignment
Data-driven marketing optimization
Table
CDP Software
CRM Software
Approach
Data-centric
Customer-centric
Focus
Interactions across various channels and touchpoints, both online and offline.
Sales, marketing, and customer service interactions.
Functionality
Automatically collects, organizes, tags, and makes data available in real-time.
Helps businesses track customer interactions, sales pipelines, prospects, and service requests.
Goals
Personalized customer experiences across all channels.
Better customer relationships, streamlined processes, and improved profitability.
Benefits
Data integration, management, and accessibility, allowing for detailed analysis and segmentation.
Better communication within teams and with customers by organizing information about customer interactions and history.
Data Handling
Handles both identified and anonymous data, stitches together various data points.
Deals primarily with identified customer data.
Use Cases
Personalized marketing campaigns, targeted advertising, content customization across multiple channels.
Managing campaigns and leads, enhancing customer service, providing better customer support, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Examples
Insider, Bloomreach, Salesforce Marketing Cloud CDP
HubSpot, Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, and Zoho CRM
CRM
Free plan
Best feature
Best for
Con
1. HubSpot CRM
square-check
Sales automation
Sales teams
Up to 1,000 contacts
2. Insightly
square-check
Custom fields
Basic needs
Not enough info about the free plan
3. Agile CRM
square-check
Deal and sales pipeline tracking
Small teams
Up to 10 users
4. Zoho CRM
square-check
Lead and contact management
Businesses of all sizes
Limited to 3 users
5. ClickUp
square-check
Unlimited tasks and unlimited members
Personal use
Up to 100MB storage
6. EngageBay
square-check
Live chat
Small and midsize enterprises
Up to 1,000 branded emails per month
7. Bitrix24
square-check
Unlimited users and 5 scrum teams
Big teams
Up to 5GB of cloud storage
8. FreshSales
square-check
Easy to use and simple setup
Beginners
Up to 3 users
9. Mailchimp
square-check
Very beginner friendly
Marketing teams
Send up to 500 branded emails per month
Type of Affiliate Marketing
Unattached
Related
Involved
Format
Paid advertising
Social media or YouTube channels
Dedicated website or blog
Focus
Quick income
Your niche
Your audience
Engagement with your audience
square-xmark
square-check
square-check
square-check
square-check
Very close connection with your audience
Pro
Little effort
Higher credibility thanks to your niche
Long-lasting and scalable
Con
Paid ads cost a lot
Potential for bias since you don’t use the thing you promote
Require time, effort, and dedication

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