Without fail I am pitched daily by people wanting me to
Today is no different.
However, today I was asked this question about how to choose the best CRM for an E-commerce business.
The easy and obvious answer (which nobody ever wants) is to take my CRM Quiz.
Once you take the quiz, go through my Process Before Login planning tool.
Then know your sales numbers via my free Sales Calculator.
With the proper questions considered, answered, and even unanswered, you're ready to do meaningful analyses and reviews of CRMs that will meet your needs and help you achieve your goals.
Without doing the above, you're simply dabbling and kicking tires, which is fine to pass the time, but I don't pass the time. I get shit done.
So if you want to get shit done with your E-commerce business and get the right CRM, let's dig in...
What are you selling?
Not all CRMs are set to handle all of those types of sales equally.
Let's say you're selling software that requires a licensing key and annual renewals.
How will you generate a unique key for the one or 10, or 1,000 sales you make each week?
How will you stay in touch with those customers when you have patches and updates for the software?
How will you stay in touch to let them know it's time to renew?
If you're selling a physical product, do you need to integrate with a 3rd party vendor that does your packing and shipping?
Do you need to notify your Operations department of both your predicted pipeline so they can plan inventory purchases and your Closed/Won pipeline so they can build and ship to satisfy your customers?
Maybe you're selling a monthly subscription like Netflix or Microsoft Office and need recurring billing capabilities.
Do you ever bundle your offers and include a physical item like a signed book or thumb drive with bonus material to augment your membership sales or live event attendees?
There is a lot that goes into just the sales side of your CRM + E-commerce purchase, so take your time with this or reach out and let's talk through this together.
If you didn't get paid for your product or service, did you really sell anything?
You need to have a flexible, affordable, easy-to-use payment-collection ability tied to your CRM to grow your E-Commerce business.
Of course, you need to accept all major credit cards, including AMEX.
But Wes, American Express charges higher fees that eat into my margins."
Then raise your prices by 1-5%!
How hard is that?
Or keep your prices the same and enjoy closing *16.7% more deals.
(*That's the percentage of customers who have used an American Express card to purchase from me this year, according to my own system. What percentage of those would've still purchased if I did not accept Amex? Probably most...but why chance it? 16.7% preferred using their Amex, and I'm happy to oblige them. If you need help raising your prices and selling on value, hit me up.)
Closely related to payment types are payment plans.
If you have an item that is a few thousand dollars or maybe even just a few hundred dollars, you may want to offer payment plans so your customers can start right away and pay you over time.
When offering payment plans, you can have several options, of course, but these are the minimum you should be able to offer:
Receipts/order confirmations should also be sent immediately by your E-Commerce/CRM platform automatically.
This will save you a lot of time, effort, and client satisfaction, so make sure your platform has this. (Note: any of the major platforms do this automatically.)
Recommendation: Shopify is not a CRM, but it is a leader in the E-Commerce space that offers most of the features I describe here, along with secure blogging and website hosting with great support and security. Take a look at them if you haven't already.
We do judge books—and landing pages and order forms and shopping carts and checkout pages—by their cover.
How easy is it to build nice-looking, fast-loading, secure, responsive pages in your CRM and/or E-Commerce platform?
Spiffy is an excellent tool to enhance your Infusionsoft and HubSpot CRMs.
I already mentioned Shopify as an excellent E-Commerce platform with both blogging and website tools, but it's not a pure CRM.
Look for a platform with a free trial or a detailed demo with a sales rep or certified partner, and make sure it's easy to create, edit, publish, and share the E-Commerce pages you create.
As a rule of thumb, I prefer not offering discounts and selling on price.
However, it's a crazy world out there, and as long as you have a reason for the discount, i.e., Father's Day, Black Friday, your birthday, etc., give 'em a whirl.
With that in mind, dig into your E-Commerce tool to see how easy it is to create:
This sounds simple, but I got into some tight spots back in the day when I first got started with this whole CRM/E-Commerce thing.
I would add products to my CRM, which were added to my storefront and available for sale, but the shipping would be set to $0!!
Or international would be the same as domestic.
Or priority would be the same as standard.
Since I'm stubborn, slow, dense, and pig-headed, it took me more than a few losses in this department to figure it out once and for all.
If you have higher quantity orders of physical products, you may want to outsource your fulfillment because you may not have the physical space to store all of your inventory, and/or it may be cost-effective to have a professional fulfillment house pick, box, ship, and track your orders.
So make sure your CRM/E-Commerce platform plays nice with others.
In a pure E-Commerce play, you probably don't have opportunities that your salespeople are tracking and working through various stages in a pipeline.
However, as you grow, maybe a division is created that goes after larger vendors or partners for more strategic accounts.
If so, you will want your CRM to handle opportunities and stages.
Things to look for include:
Salesforce automation, marketing automation, and sales enablement are the names of the game today.
While the pipeline is still a valid concept within this framework, your pipelines, funnels, etc., all happen under The A.B.C.D.E. Sales & Marketing System™ umbrella that looks like this...
The more, the merrier here. You need to be able to slice and dice your data to know what the heck is going on.
However, don't get bogged down here. At the end of the day, you need to know just a handful of things to have a thriving business:
Yeah, yeah, there are all sorts of pivot tables and pie charts and trend analyses you can run on everything from your PPC to CPC to CPA to CPM to ROI and KPI and...and...and...
As you grow, it pays to refine every step of your process because squeezing out 1% of the margin in a $100 million business is worth $1 million dollars.
But if it takes you three weeks of tinkering and an extra $200/mo for some add-on tool that helps you get an extra 1% out of your $100,000 business...you just lost a lot of money and time, which is money.
So be smart about this.
The gov'mint is gonna get its share, so make sure you're tracking sales and taxes accurately.
Some states want you to charge taxes on subscriptions.
Others want you to collect disposal fees on what they deem hazardous materials, such as computer monitors.
With 50 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico and countless cities and counties that may want their fraction of a penny, you need to know what the rules are and abide by them or get ready for a world of hurt. (I've been audited by both the IRS and the California Board of Equalization, and it's friggin' painful! [Both times, I won and owed nothing, but both were extremely time-consuming and worrisome.])
So make sure your E-Commerce platform makes it easy to account for taxes and/or has integrations with 3rd party tools that can do it for you.
With tools like Zapier, you can make almost any major software platform on the market speak to and work with any other major tool.
However, it is nice when your platforms have native integrations. Not only will it save you a little money, but it's also more reliable, faster, and easier to troubleshoot when glitches do occur.
So as you consider a CRM, dig into how it connects with your preferred E-Commerce platform. Is it native? Is it via API? Is it via 3rd party connectors like Zapier or Piesync?
Some CRMs do not have broadcast email capability, so you will need it to connect to/integrate with something like MailChimp or Aweber.
Will you be sending direct mail, text messages, or making VoIP calls from your CRM? What about video emails, as I do with BombBomb and Bonjoro?
Do you need your team to track, post, and engage with your social media following?
All of those types of integrations and more must be considered when you're looking at CRMs and E-Commerce platforms.
So what do you do now?
If you're just getting started, the argument could be made that there is no wrong move other than not moving. In other words, jump in and figure it out as you go.
That's how I got started back in 2006.
However, by 2008 I was ready for some structure, for some best-in-class CRM/Email Marketing/Marketing Automation/E-Commerce tools.
Fortunately, I did not have a large team to re-train or fight with, so it was an easy transition.
Then I did it again in 2014-2015, and it was much harder, more involved, and took a lot more planning, coordination, and time.
So start by taking my free CRM Quiz.
Then go through the Process Before Login planning.
Then schedule some time with me to review your answers, and I'll help you make the right choice.
This decision will shape your business, your income, and your life for years to come, so commit the time and energy to make the best decision you can.
Market like you mean it.
Now go sell something.