You need a CRM. It doesn't have to suck.

What we're learning in enabling better tech for sales.

Yes, most CRMs out there suck. They are big, clunky, and non-intuitive to use.

Aaron has already written about CRMs in the past and how ineffective they are at most law firms. You can read about that here.

Nevertheless, I am convinced more than ever that even the smallest law firm needs a CRM. Today, I'd like to share with you what we've learned in going through the process of finding and adopting a CRM.

The Problem with the Inbox

Your inbox cannot be the home for your relationships. It just isn't smart enough to be your CRM, and your reminder system, your meeting note taking hub, and your time management tool, and your place of work.

This is how most people are using their inbox. But that's not what it's built for.

Your in-box is just that. A place where messages, tasks, reminders, etc all come in. Imagine if we were back in the old days where you had a literal in-basket with memos and letters. The in-box is where you process things to figure out what the next step is!

If you let things pile there forever, they don't get acted upon.

We saw firsthand hundreds of opportunities sitting away in people's inboxes dating back to years.

When was the last time you took action on them? How many of these opportunities are just sitting there collecting dust?

Which leads us to the only thing CRMs are supposed to do for you…

CRMs Help You Act

This is the most important function of any CRM. If a CRM doesn't let you act, and act quickly with the incoming opportunities you're getting, the CRM is failing you.

That is why almost everyone must outgrow the Excel sheet at some point. You just cannot take action with an Excel sheet. It is a place to store information, not take the next step.

We evaluated lots of CRMs in the process. They all promised lots of bells and whistles, but if it was going to fail us in this most critical of actions, it doesn't matter.

That is why…

CRMs should be simple

Look for simplicity with the CRM you choose. The most important of it being that it integrates with your inbox.

We need a way to rapidly convert a new email we get into a contact and a deal. And if someone new is added to the email threads, we want to add that contact in our CRM as well tied to the same opportunity quickly.

This is where the whole thing falls apart for how most people use their CRM. It is indeed tedious to have to re-create all your records from one platform to another if you have to do it manually. Before you know it, you’re back in the stone ages with your sales process.

But if you can get your CRM hooked to your email system, it becomes a breeze.

In this way, you can rapidly "push" the deal into the CRM and take action from there.

Remember again, inbox for processing, CRM for taking action.

CRMs need to be part of your system

The other reason CRMs don't work for people is that it just isn't part of their way of doing work.

One of the things we are investing in is to replace all external forms of communications to actually go through our CRM instead.

If the CRM can become the central in-box for all of our sales work, that means it becomes trivially easy to take next steps.

This means things like:

• With each good reply you write out, you can store it in a template.

• With each inquiry coming you, you can rapidly pick a template and reply back in minutes.

• Client never replied back? Setup a rule in the CRM to automate follow-up if you don't get a reply back.

• Need to do a customer success interview a few months into the relationship? Program the CRM to do that for all deals that have closed!

• Going through feast and famine cycles in your practice? Run mass email campaign sequence directly through your CRM with new offerings.

Going Beyond Sales

The CRM is not just about sales. It's about relationship building. It's about what happens after the sale.

The CRM is the place to have your business relationships programmed on a piece of software.

Don't aim for complexity. Don't aim for something that does everything. Trust me, such a CRM does not exist, and if it does, it will be painful to use.

We're of course just scratching the surface here.

Our CRM works on mobile. It can scan business cards and pull the contact data directly on our system. Follow-ups can happen immediately.

Our CRM works with our meeting notes software, so all meeting notes go directly into our CRM and it creates a timeline of our relationship together.

You wouldn't rely on your memory to remember every birthday, anniversary, or special event of your friends and family. Then why rely on your memory to take the next steps with your customer?

We aren't going to publicly recommend any in particular in this message publicly.

That's because we love a lot of people working at half a dozen CRM companies ourselves.

But there are simple, affordable, easy to use tools out there that you should start using pronto.

You need a CRM.