How to measure the ROI of a CRM?

Guilty. I am guilty of always wanting to measure the return on investment (ROI) of each of my actions and decisions! Since I started using CRMs or automations, I’ve learned that there are many actions that are worth automating. But there is also a downside to this. Some actions take far too long to automate, and the return on investment often takes too long. You should therefore learn how to measure the ROI of a CRM or your automations to focus where it pays off!

There are mainly three reasons to automate processes or use a CRM in your business:

• Save time (and money)

• Reduce the error rate

• Gather centralized information on our prospects and clients

Initially, a CRM will undoubtedly allow you to accumulate information about your prospects and clients and then make it accessible according to predefined criteria to the right people. However, when it comes to saving time and reducing the error rate, there is an analysis to be done.

Start with introspection

The best approach is to start by introspecting your operations. What do you do daily? What repetitive tasks do you perform in front of a computer that you could easily delegate?

• Follow-up emails

• Takeover emails

• Invoice sending

• Purchase orders to suppliers

• Calendar validation

• Etc.

Now, assess how much time this task can take you. Let’s take an example of a representative in the roofing industry. This representative meets 8 clients per day, so he does 8 estimates. Let’s imagine the following scenario:

1. Client meeting

2. Taking measurements on paper

3. Creating the estimate on carbon paper (15 minutes)

4. Handing it to the client

5. Follow-up by email 5 days later (5 to 10 minutes)

6. Follow-up by email 15 days later (5 to 10 minutes)

Now, with an electronic proposal tool combined with a CRM, creating a proposal takes a maximum of 5 minutes. Then, follow-ups by email can be done automatically. The time saved is therefore 25 minutes per client. For 8 estimates per day, that’s a time savings of 1.5 hours to 3.5 hours… per day!

Creating this process in a CRM, like Pipedrive for example, takes 2 to 3 hours. The ROI is therefore huge, 2 to 3 hours of very simple setup to save up to 3.5 hours per day! Over 200 working days, that’s almost 700 hours saved. Do you think I’m exaggerating? Cut the numbers by 4. That’s still nearly 175 hours saved per day and, most importantly, you can be sure to make thorough follow-ups with your prospects using this method.

Use the following calculation for your ROI

The calculation is very simple to do to precisely measure the ROI of your CRM and your automations:

• Time saved if the task is automated X hourly rate of the person doing the task

• 15 minutes per day (0.25 hour) X $25 per hour

• $6.25 per day X 200 days per year

• $1250 in savings per year

As you can see, knowing how to measure the ROI of a CRM isn’t very complicated! Focus on the simplest tasks at first, and you will see that you can really save a lot of time (and money)!

If you want to create a game plan for implementing a CRM or preparing the automation of your business, send me an email!

See you soon!