How to choose the best CRM tool for your cannabis or cannabis-related business

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The best CRM tool for your cannabis or cannabis-related business is one that includes features for managing all aspects of your brand’s relationships with potential, current, and past customers. CRM is so important to your business, but any legacy CRM software won’t cut it. The tool you choose needs to provide the specific CRM benefits cannabis and ancillary businesses need.

With that in mind, read the 10 ways CRM can boost your business in the cannabis industry and make sure you fully understand the importance of CRM. You can’t choose the right CRM software until you understand why managing customer relationships is so important to your business and develop a CRM strategy.

Once you have the knowledge you need to make an informed choice, look for CRM software that offers at least the following 10 must-have features.

1. Contact Management

You can’t manage customer relationships with a CRM tool if the software doesn’t make it easy to manage contacts within the tool! The CRM software you choose for your cannabis or side business should store all relevant contact information, including name, company name, email address, phone number, mailing address, job title, social media profile links, job level, company size, and Type of each person’s license and license status for people working in licensed cannabis facilities, and more.

2. Sales pipeline and deal flow management

A primary purpose of CRM software is to make it easier for your sales team to manage sales leads and deals. Therefore, your CRM tool should include features to build and manage your entire sales pipeline. This includes assigning deals to specific sellers, assigning tasks, following up on communications, and tracking progress to ensure you meet your sales goals.

3. Workflow Management and Automation

One of the best parts of robust CRM software is the inclusion of tools to automate processes so you can create systemic workflows. For example, the CRM you choose should allow each user to configure and schedule email and/or SMS alerts and notifications so they don’t miss any tasks or contact opportunities. Your team saves time and makes fewer mistakes when parts of their workflows are automated.

4. Email Marketing

In your CRM software, not only should personal email communication be quick and easy, but email marketing tools should also be integrated with your CRM tool. You cannot effectively and efficiently manage customers when your data is siled. Integrate email marketing and CRM into one software that offers advanced email marketing features and you will have more success in generating and nurturing leads. As a result, more of them will become sales qualified.

5. Advanced segmentation

For email marketing to be most effective, you need to be able to segment your audiences and send content that’s as personalized and relevant as possible. Therefore, you need to be able to segment using demographic and behavioral data. To do this effectively, you need CRM software that offers lists and tags for managing contacts, as well as advanced filtering options and a robust search tool.

6. Historical communication

One of the things that makes a CRM tool such an important part of the overall customer relationship management process is its ability to provide detailed historical data on every contact in the database. It’s so valuable to be able to look up a contact and instantly see who they are, what their needs are, where they are in the sales pipeline, what email marketing campaigns they’ve participated in in the past, who contacted them, when, and notes about the contact and their relationship to your brand. Marketing, sales, and customer service teams can use this information to do their jobs better and achieve better results for your business.

7. Detailed Analysis

You want a CRM software that collects and stores a large amount of data that you can easily extract for analysis and decision making. Metrics like email open rates, click-through rates, sales volume, subscription end dates, etc. are critical to knowing when to communicate with contacts and what those communications should include to best manage each relationship.

8. Imports and Exports

If your business is prioritizing CRM, there will be times when you collect contacts that you want to add to your CRM tool. Imagine you go to a trade show and collect data from 100 contacts that you want to add to your CRM. You don’t want to have to add each person’s data individually, so make sure the CRM software you choose offers imports. Exports are also important if you want to export data to upload to a separate tool or to dissect the data outside of the CRM software.

9. Integrations

While it would be fantastic to have a single piece of software that would allow you to manage all aspects of your business, such a tool doesn’t exist yet. CRM software can do a lot and eliminates the need for several different types of separate tools. However, there will still be some tools that you cannot replace with CRM software. Therefore, it is important to choose a CRM software that allows third-party integrations with the third-party tools that you cannot replace.

10. Team Management

Most sales teams have a leader who oversees their performance to ensure they are on track to meet their sales goals. If that describes your business, then the CRM software you use should allow executives to see what their team members are working on, assign, cancel or reschedule tasks, review communications, and so on. The CRM data on each salesperson’s work and efforts could be used for compensation and workforce planning, and hold team members accountable for meeting deadlines and hitting quotas.

Your next step in choosing the best CRM tool for your cannabis or cannabis-related business

Do your research and make sure you choose a CRM software that offers the 10 features above so you can reap all the benefits this tool can bring to your business. Remember to consider marketing, sales, and customer service needs, and choose a tool that will help you most effectively manage all stages of relationships with your cannabis industry audience.

If your target audience includes cannabis or hemp license holders in the United States, Canada and other international territories and markets, then the Cannabiz Media License Database is the CRM choice for you! Schedule a demo and see how using the cannabis industry’s only CRM and verified source for licensee leads can help your business.