Guide to hiring a CRM consultant

Any serious (moving) company, with a serious intention to prevent gaps in its customer service, is nothing without a CRM consultant (or moving company leads management software, for that matter). That might be a bit over the top but it isn’t that far from the truth. Once your CRM is in place, you’ll need someone to help you get the most value out of it. Needless to say, hiring a CRM consultant has plenty of benefits. In this article, we offer professional insight into the importance of hiring a CRM consultant as well as how to do it.

What is a CRM consultant?

We start with a definition. A CRM consultant is the person responsible for providing operational services for a business. Those services could include customer development, application management, and business process outsourcing. This definition sounds a bit difficult to understand. Next, we explore what are the main tasks a CRM consultant has to deal with.

What are CRM consultants’ main tasks?

Here’s a list of responsibilities that a CRM consultant has:

• coordinating with business partners to make sure that general business solution is placed and implemented on a universal scale. 
• building rapport with external vendors to provide a solid ground for your company’s main objectives. 
• tweaking apps to increase the chance of your company reaching the abovementioned goals. 
• balancing client and customer demands and requirements with certain tech constraints. 
• developing and updating high-quality roadmaps of your company’s initiatives and objectives. 

What about the benefits of working with a CRM consultant?

Here’s what a CRM consultant does for your business:

• Helps you pick out the right CRM platform. Needless to say, a professional is someone who knows what kind of platforms are in circulation, and which one of them might suit your company’s needs the most.
• Help you get the most out of the platform’s features. It’s kind of sad to know that most businesses regularly end up paying for features that they never use, or at best, they use them in an improper manner. With a CRM consultant, this won’t happen to your business.
• Help train your employees. In order for a CRM system to succeed and do some good for your company’s results, employee education is crucial. Everyone needs to know the platform by heart.

There are many other benefits we couldn’t count down since we didn’t want to keep you waiting any longer. Let’s proceed toward our guidelines for hiring a CRM consultant.

Guide to hiring a CRM consultant

These are the crucial steps you’ll have to make before hiring a CRM consultant:

#1 Pose some questions

First of all, you’ll need to consider what is that you’re trying to achieve with CRM. For instance, if you’re coming from the moving niche, you’ll want to see how can a moving company client relationship management software work for you. Also, are you able to pinpoint what’s working for your company, and what’s not? Where do you feel some improvement might come in handy? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you choose a CRM consultant who’s capable of solving the issues that bug you the most.

#2 Outline the expectations

Once you’ve figured out what you want to do with CRM, it’s time you outline the expectations you’ve got from your CRM consultant. In other words, consider the deadlines, success criteria, timeframes, and why not – a reporting structure. Plan the whole thing in detail just so you’re able to pick out the right person for the task.

#3 Communicate with potential candidates

Your next task is to communicate with the candidates you’ve picked. It’s the good old communicate & compare phase. Of course, once again, you’ll have to ask some questions:

Question 1: Do they possess any experience working with companies such as yours?

You’ll want to find out whether your candidates have any experience in working with companies similar to yours. We’re talking about the similarity in size or organization, not to mention the niche your company’s trying to achieve success. This will help you make an even smaller selection of candidates.

Also, you’ll need to ask what kind of CRM systems have they worked with. For instance, maybe they’ve worked with customer care software for movers but you’re not from the industry. Therefore, it won’t mean much to you.

Question 2: Do they have any references?

Now, if they’ve worked with companies similar to yours, you’ll want to ask for some references. If they’re not so keen on doing such a task, it might be best to skip hiring the candidate in question.

Question 3: What kind of ongoing service can you expect?

The next thing you’ll need to inquire about is what kind of ongoing service can you expect from your CRM consultant. This is crucial because your business will if things turn out to be alright, grow & evolve with time. One can’t expect the CRM to be one & done, as they say. Therefore, your consultant will need to modify their work in accordance with the way you’re evolving just so you’re able to serve your trusty customers & clients in a proper manner.

Question 4: Do they offer training?

You’ll want them to say YES, of course.

Question 5: How closely will they work with your business?

Lastly, you’ll want to hear something about just how closely will your CRM consultant work with your team. Also, you’ll want to know if will they modify the system to meet your company’s needs. Are they willing to return & perform some extra training as your company grows and changes over time? These are all the questions you’ll want to pose.

Final words on the subject

With this, we conclude our step-by-step guide on hiring a CRM consultant. Once you’re done with the interrogation, we’re guessing that you’ll have no trouble picking out the right person for the task. Lastly, since this is someone you’ll be in contact with, opt for a person that you’ve got good communication with. In the simplest terms: pick out someone who you share the vibe with. However, their qualifications and professionalism shouldn’t be taken into question.