Media: how to choose your CRM?

In the space of 20 years, customer relationship management (CRM) software has effectively become an essential for sales teams and the media and sales house have not been spared from this trend. So obviously, there are a plethora of CRMs on the market: business CRMs, generic CRMs, etc. Therefore, how do you know which one to select when you are a sales house or a media company? What steps should be followed when setting up such a project? Discover our explanations in this article.

Sales House , identify your needs.

First of all, before committing to the choice of your CRM, you must frame your project. By defining your needs and asking yourself numerous questions, you will establish clear and concise specifications.

Define your business

• What is the size of your company ? Indeed, between a multinational group with around a hundred subsidiaries and managing numerous media and a medium-sized sales house

• What is the annual turnover of your company?

• How big is your sales team ?

• How many users are affected by the CRM project?

• Which teams should have access to it (finance, support, sales, management, etc.)?

Indicate the specifics of your sales house 's activity

• Do you need software that shares a common repository with your advertising booking software?

• Who are your clients ? How did you structure them? (adaptation of clients / Advertisers / advertising group, mandates to be published, etc.)

Specify your project

• What benefits do you expect? (Increase in sales, better traceability of contacts, better monitoring of the sales team, etc.)

• Do you need a tool that connects to your other software? (Email, reservation and invoicing software, etc.). To do this, we invite you to prioritize the software that must be connected to your CRM. Indeed, choosing a tool that connects to your advertising space reservation and invoicing tools is essential to reduce your sales cycles and facilitate your transactions because it will facilitate the daily work of your salespeople.

Determine your goals and KPIs

For a sales house , the CRM must fulfill certain objectives.

• Accelerate the sales process : with COVID, today even more than before, it is essential to accelerate sales. By equipping yourself with a CRM, you can better monitor your prospects and customers and you know who to follow up with at what time. However, you need to equip yourself with a CRM that can facilitate customer relations and adapt to their specificities.

• Simplify sales : Selling advertising is a unique commercial activity that requires consulting your reservation software quickly. This saves you time creating your quotes based on your stocks, your prices and the discounts provided for in your contracts.

• Secure turnover : it is essential to have complete visibility over your campaigns from quote requests to invoicing because you will know exactly who you need to follow up with and when to do so.

• Make commercial monitoring more reliable : by generating reports in real time and in connection with your advertising reservation software, you guarantee the reliability of your commercial monitoring. Indeed, having a single shared database guarantees consistency and eliminates double entries.

To measure the return on investment of CRM implementation, you can follow some key KPIs such as:

• The number of campaigns sold,

• The average length of your sales cycle,

• The number of leads generated,

• The turnover and its evolution since its establishment,

• The number of appointments made by your salespeople,…

Choose a CRM

Once you have finalized your specifications, you can then contact the service providers and select a CRM.

Selection criteria

By having followed this first step carefully, your selection criteria will be easy to establish. As a sales house , here is a non-exhaustive list of selection criteria that you can take into account:

• The price : you must do everything possible to respect your allocated budget.

• Simplicity and of use

• Support and training offered

• Connecting to your reservation software

• Setup time

Generic CRM or Business CRM?

As a media, is it better to take a generic CRM (Hubspot CRM, SalesForce, SugarCRM, etc.) or a business CRM ( MediaCRM , Aloha, etc.)?

Generic CRM

Advantage :

• A multitude of features available.

Disadvantages:

• Sometimes you have so many features and possibilities that your CRM can become a gas factory, being underused, or even not used at all, by salespeople.
  
• The integration budget may be more important because it is necessary to personalize the screens and develop interfaces with the rest of the client's advertising information system.

Business CRM

Benefits :

• You therefore work with people who know your profession and the issues specific to your industry.
  
• Thanks to a business CRM, you have a turnkey solution with an interface already configured for your specific needs.

Inconvenience :

• It may be necessary to use advertising space reservation software connected to the Business CRM.

Mistakes to avoid when setting up a CRM

Finally, we would like to share with you some best practices to follow when you are a sales house with a CRM implementation project.

Indeed, we ourselves offer a CRM dedicated to media and sales house , and during the numerous installations of MediaCRM, we have been able to observe the best practices to follow.  

• The CRM must be adapted to your needs and respect the practices of your industry (including the typology of advertisers, advertising groups, mandate management, etc.)

• The teams must be involved in the project to understand the added value. You can notably use the RACI method which is very effective for this type of project.

• Sales teams must undergo training and support in order to master the software and drive adoption.

• The CRM must be accessible remotely so that salespeople can work from home or from their meeting places.

• Data must be up to date. To do this, nothing could be simpler: just update them as you go. There is in fact nothing more frustrating for a salesperson than having to spend 1 full day just before your monthly reporting meeting.

• Use the data produced by its CRM to support your sales meetings because your sales teams will be much more involved and encouraged to update their current transactions.

Finally, if you would like to know more about setting up such a project, we invite you to watch the replay of our webinar “CRM in the media” . Media CRM product page , our CRM connected to Media Pilot.