Thursday, January 12, 2017

How a CRM solution can help Business Brokers and M&A Advisors?

We have been trying multiple CRM solutions for the last 11 years and most of them fell show of our expectations. The business brokerage and M&A industry has unique needs that we could not fulfill using general purpose CRM solutions such as Salesforce or Zoho.

First, general purpose CRM's require tremendous amount of customization. Users are required to  build software on top of software to reach a solutions that works for them. Large amounts of time and money are spent on top of the hefty monthly fees just to reach an outcome that is simply not good enough.

Second, those branded Customer Relationship Management Systems are generally built for the profitable large corporations and not for small businesses. Decision makers are large IT departments and senior managers rather than the salespeople who are the day to day users. As a result, most salespeople generally hate these complex and time consuming systems that don't seem to bring value to them except for helping them accomplishing their mandatory reporting duties.

A CRM for Business Brokers needs to be adapted to the industry, save valuable time for Business brokers, help them organize their practice and protect a professional image when interacting with their buyers and sellers.

Since deal making professionals are extremely busy and work on a very low budget, the solution should not require additional investments in time and money. It should be user friendly, intuitive and easy to learn.

By using the solution, Brokers would be able to easily access buyer, seller and listing information and act on it. A good system should also organize relevant files and folders and link them to the right contacts, listings and offers for easy access. It should also manage emails, email templates, newsletters as well statistics and graphic reports about buyers and sellers activities.

A good system could also go the extra mile by enabling electronic signatures, automatic contract creation using customized document templates and forms. This would relieve the paperwork burden for Brokers and help them to focus on their real business, managing relationships.