A major benefit of using CRM software is to gain an understanding of what your customers want from your business. This keeps you from wasting time guessing what their needs are.

A CRM system gives you the tools to organize all of your customer data in one place. It ensures you have a full picture of your current and potential customers, their needs, and detailed records of what you have discussed with them in the past.

CRM software is a great way to strengthen those consumer relationships and personalize the way you market to them. It is also a big help to your marketing, sales and customer service teams, letting them organize customer data more efficiently and move through their sales tasks quickly.

When you seek a CRM program, it's important to know what you need. Here are common features you'll find in CRM systems so you can decide which ones would best serve your business.

Workflow Automation
Workflow automation is the basis of how your system moves and the automatic actions within the software. For example, you could set the software to automatically send a message to a sales representative whenever a customer fills out a form on your website. This feature moves certain procedures and data along within your program, minimizing your workload and taking care of the tiny details of your team's sales and marketing tasks.

Reporting
CRM reports break down your sales and marketing data to help you better understand and analyze leads, customers' buying behaviors, the number of outbound calls your team makes, and other important marketing metrics. Some CRMs offer more report types than others – with some allowing you to tailor your own reporting metrics – and more ways to view the data, such as in bar graphs or pie charts.

Customer Data Management
Understanding your customers is the first step in running a successful business. Customer data management tools allow you to organize data on customers clearly, helping you improve customer relationships.

Customization
Making your CRM your own will reduce the learning curve of using it and ensure it provides the information you need. When a program is customizable, you can pick the features you want and mold your contact fields, dashboard, reports, extensions, and plugins to best support your needs and budget.

Third-Party Integrations
Third-party CRM integrations provide a wider range of tools to use within your system. You can connect your CRM to programs with features the CRM may not have, such as your email marketing or accounting software. This saves you from manually entering data you already have in another program, constantly flipping between apps, and spending money on additional tools for your CRM.

To ensure you get the most out of your CRM system, outline what you're looking for and need before buying. This will keep you from overpaying for features you'll never use.