5 Signs it’s Time for a CRM System

As an owner or operator of a child care organization, you know how crucial your relationships with parents can be in relation to your success. The idea of managing your relationships may not be a new idea, but implementing a system or software to help with it may feel like a stretch.

So, how do you know if a CRM system is worth the investment? Since 2009, ChildCareCRM has been the only system specifically designed for the child care industry, which means we’ve heard challenges and frustrations from other owners, directors and administrators just like you.

Here are just a handful of struggles we’ve heard from our customers that helped them decide it was time for a solution:

1. Frustration with lead follow-up processes

If you’re one of the organizations out there lucky enough to have the phone ringing and tours walking through your door but are struggling to keep up with follow-up, you may notice your conversion from inquiry to enrollment isn’t where you want it to be. A user-friendly CRM system will help you quickly sort your follow-up tasks, automate email and text communication and help the directing staff get back to potential enrollments in a more timely, efficient way.

Since your Enrollment Team’s focus is solely on making contact and walking each new family through the inquiry process, they lose the distraction of daily center life. This allows Enrollment Team members to interact in a timely, thorough and personalized way with each potential enrollment.

2. You wrote that email address down somewhere, but…where did it go?

Post-it notes, clipboards, spreadsheets, OH MY! These might have worked just fine when you were starting out, but those tools are likely holding your team back from connecting with parents in a tailored and specific way. This is where ChildCareCRM steps in to give your staff –- at the center, regional or corporate level — a central source of accessible data that can help you move prospects from initial inquiry through enrollment more quickly and increase retention rates of your current enrollments.

3. It doesn’t seem like your team is building relationships like you’d hoped

Getting parents in your community interested in your brand is tough enough already. The last thing you want is for them to enroll elsewhere because they didn’t feel as connected to your center as another. If you’re worried that your directors and assistant directors aren’t as responsive to the individual needs of each family, it may be time to put a CRM in place. Being able to call on specific needs and history of each family who’s inquired gives your center staff the chance to connect on a deeper level and deliver the WOW service you expect.

With the information you’ve gathered on these families, ChildCareCRM can also trigger individualized follow-up automatically that parents will connect with so directors can spend more time doing what they love to do and not stuck behind their keyboards emailing the same information over and over.

4. You’re trying to measure results with not-so-great data

If your directors manually enter information onto spreadsheets or hand you the binder of death each week, your whole team is spends less time doing what they should be doing –- connecting with children, parents and staff. Since ChildCareCRM keeps all your information in one place, you can quickly recall information on your enrollment funnel, phone and tour conversions, revenue pipeline, wait list and more. Schedule reports to run automatically in time intervals or an as-needed basis and start making data-driven decisions that will improve the way you do business.

5. Revenue isn’t where it needs to be so you can grow

Do you know for sure you have a rush of new enrollments hitting soon? Are you sure you can open your next center whenever you’d like? If not, it’s probably time to implement a solution that fits or improves your current enrollment processes.

ChildCareCRM can grow with you and be customized to handle the different enrollment cycles within a multi-location or multi-brand organization. With unlimited seats, each member on your growing team can access account history and grow your enrollment without sacrificing productivity.

Is it time?

If any of those sounded like you, it might be time to take the next step with a CRM. Implementing ChildCareCRM will help you find out where your leads are coming from, close more tours, build better relationships and connect your entire team leaving your organization ready to grow your enrollment one relationship at a time.

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 About the author

Emily Smith
Marketing Manager/CRM Specialist
CRM Web Solutions, LLC

Emily Smith has been passionate about Early Childhood Education and development for most of her life and has been uniquely involved in the education and business side of the child care industry for over 12 years. She is currently the Marketing Manager and CRM Specialist of CRM Web Solutions, a company that has created the only Customer Relationship Management and Marketing software solution designed specifically for the child care industry. The ChildCareCRM web-based system has been deployed in over 2,500 centers in the United States, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. Emily has served as an Executive Director for three national child care organizations and was actively involved with the marketing and enrollment of her centers for most of her career. She has extensive experience and a vast knowledge of successful sales & marketing systems, methods, strategies and techniques that she has brought to the development of ChildCareCRM and to her consulting with child care centers on best business practices.