Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a popular choice for many businesses. These platforms help to build a historical record of customer engagement and interactions over time by managing correspondence, keeping track of specific buyers and stakeholders, and even assisting with quote generation and marketing campaigns.

But even though companies use CRM software, many haven’t taken the time to build a cohesive strategy around the customer information within their database. Instead, the data captured by the CRM system just sits on the platform without being implemented toward shared key goals.

A good CRM strategy ensures that the entire system supports growth, retention, and a better customer experience.

In this article, we’ll cover the basics of CRM strategy, why teams should have one, and how to build one step by step.

Let’s hop in.

What is a CRM strategy?

A CRM strategy is a defined plan for how a business uses customer data to improve relationships, streamline operations, and achieve specific goals. Put another way, a comprehensive strategy connects the capabilities of the CRM platform with the needs of sales, marketing, and support teams.

Rather than treating the CRM as a digital address book or sales tracker, a dedicated strategy transforms the platform and its benefits into a tool for driving better outcomes. This may include better communication across teams, more personalized outreach, or stronger long-term retention.

A successful CRM strategy will also do each of the following:

• Outline who uses the system.
• Explain how the system should be used.
• Determine what data matters the most.
• Define how performance is measured.

The strategy also needs to align the CRM’s role with broader company objectives like increasing revenue, improving onboarding, reducing churn, or expediting deals within the sales pipeline. In this scenario, the CRM becomes a hub for customer interactions and helps to actively generate and log relationship-defining touchpoints in a lasting way.

Coupled with strong business processes and marketing efforts, a CRM strategy can help teams become more proactive and responsive to customer needs. Over time, this unified approach can contribute to better business growth and profitability.

Who needs it and why?

In general, almost any business using a robust CRM solution can benefit from a CRM strategy. Aligning the strategic component can help smaller teams stay organized and assist larger organizations with managing complex customer journeys and relationships.

A strategy becomes even more important when multiple departments begin to rely on the same customer information. Various teams will use CRM data in different ways, which can create information gaps or cause users to miss important data or context. Often, this leads to disjointed internal processes, where reps are confused and workflows become redundant or painful. This added disorganization ultimately results in a fragmented customer experience.

Example: A mid-sized software company recently adopted a CRM platform to support its sales and customer service teams.

Initially, the CRM was primarily used to store contact details, track email conversations, and manage open deals. However, as more users and teams were added to the software, there was no shared process for how to enter or interpret customer data.

Over time, clear gaps began to appear. Sales reps lacked the visibility into support records and onboarding processes. Support reps missed the context from earlier sales conversations. Marketing teams overlooked critical buying triggers from ideal customer groups because there was no consistent feedback loop.

The scenario outlined above isn’t uncommon in the business world. A CRM may continue valuable information but, without strategic guidance and coordination, teams never utilize it to its full potential.

As businesses continue to grow, the need for structure becomes even more important. A CRM strategy helps to ensure that the data being collected is accurate, relevant, and actionable. A strategic approach also makes it easier to coordinate customer interactions across sales, marketing, and support teams while tracking performance and adjusting processes over time.

Benefits of creating a CRM strategy

By default, CRM platforms can capture a vast amount of information. Many CRMs can also be customized from their default configuration to capture important details that may prove essential for other business functions.

However, without a dedicated strategy, data collection strategies fall apart. Information captured by default goes unused and, without a strategy in place, custom configurations may not be built.

A structured and effective CRM strategy ensures that data collection, team activities, and business goals remain aligned. Long term, this results in a greater organizational efficiency, more robust customer profiles, and a better buyer experience.

Here’s a closer look at some of the most important benefits of a great CRM strategy:

• Personalized experiences. With a strategy in place, teams can use CRM data to create better customer segmentation, improved buyer personas, and superior customer support solutions. Marketing and sales teams can move beyond generic messaging and deliver more personalized outreach while still taking advantage of marketing automation tools, automated follow-up systems, and other engagement solutions. Over time, these personalized experiences build trust and increase the likelihood of repeat business.
  
• Stronger customer retention. A strong CRM strategy can help teams identify at-risk customers early and take steps to re-engage them before they churn. By following customized tasks and workflows, account management and sales reps can keep communications consistent and timely, improving the likelihood that customers feel supported and valued. If customer success is tracked internally, retention becomes a measurable, manageable goal.
  
• Better insights and forecasting. A consistent, strategy-driven approach to CRM data allows for more viable reporting options. When the right information is collected within the CRM, it’s easier for decision-making teams to get a measure of any existing key performance indicators (KPIs), and to generate metrics by which to gauge success.
  
• Streamlined internal communications. Teams using the CRM with a shared understanding of what data matters and how it should be captured can eliminate confusion and duplicate work. Sales knows what marketing has promised. Support understands what the customer has already experienced. By logging customer interactions as they happen, teams can build a more robust buyer journey and create a seamless handoff experience as customers interact with various teams.
  
• Improved productivity and efficiency. A CRM strategy outlines who does what and when (more on this below), reducing ambiguity and the risk of repeated processes. Document tasks can be automated, handoffs can be built into the workflow, and common bottlenecks can be addressed early. When implemented correctly, teams can benefit from a smoother day-to-day experience for employees and a more responsive process for customers.
  

These benefits compound over time. As teams grow more comfortable working within a shared framework, they become more efficient, responsive, and customer-centric in their focus. Sales processes become easier. Customers have a better experience, improving brand loyalty and creating higher lifetime value over a longer lifecycle.

Combined with smart goals and improved sales forecasting, a powerful CRM strategy can become central to how businesses approach potential customers and try to move them into the sales funnel.

Types of CRM strategies

CRM platforms are often categorized by type — operational, analytical, collaborative, or strategic — based on their feature set.

Similarly, these platforms can be utilized in different ways based on strategic and operational goals. These strategies aren’t defined by the CRM itself but by how the organization chooses to use it.

Most strategies are designed to solve a specific set of challenges and are built around factors like business objectives, team structure, or customer needs. While the type of CRM will determine what tools are available, most common CRM strategies can be deployed across any CRM type.

Retention-focused strategy

This type of strategy prioritizes loyalty and lifetime value by keeping existing customers engaged and satisfied over the long term.

It’s an ideal approach for subscription-based brands, account-based sales models, and service providers with long-term contracts. Rather than constantly acquiring new leads, the goal is to reduce overall churn and increase customer lifetime value.

Typically, retention-focused strategies are built around workflows that monitor account activity, schedule proactive outreach, and flag signs of disengagement. Teams might use CRM automations to trigger renewal reminders or prompt for personalized check-ins at key intervals throughout the customer journey.

In this scenario, the CRM becomes a central hub for customer success, improving both satisfaction and revenue stability by building brand rapport across the entire customer lifecycle.

Sales acceleration strategy

A sales acceleration strategy is built around shortening the sales cycle, improving lead conversion rates, and supporting reps as they move deals through the pipeline.

This strategy is a great fit for high-growth teams, fast-paced industries, and organizations trying to scale revenue while keeping headcount low. Emphasis lies in lead scoring, automated outreach, task scheduling, and pipeline visibility.

Here, CRMs are treated more like a sales tool. Teams might use templates, email sequences, and pre-defined workflows to save time and maintain brand consistency across customer interactions. The CRM might even integrate with CPQ or document generation platforms to further automate the production of quotes, proposals, and other business documents.

When configured correctly, the CRM becomes aligned with sales goals and can help teams identify bottlenecks earlier, prioritize high-value leads, and focus their time where it will have the greatest overall impact.

Customer experience (CX)-driven strategy

Strategies centered around CX will see the CRM and any integrated platforms focused on delivering consistent, high-quality experiences across various touchpoints within the customer journey.

Typically, CRM strategies focused on CX are a good fit for service-based businesses, high-ticket sales, and brands that charge premium prices who want to deliver a white-glove experience. The idea is that every interaction with the brand should feel seamless, coordinated, and relevant.

To support a CX-driven strategy, the CRM needs to become a single source of truth for a customer’s history and preferences. Reps across multiple departments need to consistently log interactions and access shared records so that any future reps accessing the account have a clear understanding of a customer’s unique journey.

CRMs deployed in this way allow reps to personalize communication, avoid asking repeat questions, and create smoother interactions between teams. Over time, this can lead to improved loyalty, stronger referrals, and better long-term outcomes.

Data-driven growth strategy

Built around the accumulation and interpretation of customer information, data-driven strategies are a staple of CRM software. Decision-makers can use insights collected from customer interactions to guide high-level business decisions.

Rather than focusing solely on execution, this strategy prioritizes visibility into performance, market segmentation, and behavioral trends. It’s a great fit for leadership teams, analysts, and marketing departments trying to fine-tune messaging or identify new market opportunities.

CRMs integrated with this approach often see data consolidated into dashboards or used for KPI reviews. Integration with analytics tools are common, along with tools that provide additional insights into how customers interact with things like quotes and sales documents.

Here, the business uses CRM data to track conversion rates, identify which touchpoints lead to closed deals, and forecast future revenue with greater accuracy. Over time, this approach can help to refine customer targeting, improve budget allocations, and remove guesswork from strategic planning.

Cross-functional alignment strategy

In many organizations, customer data lives in silos. Sales data isn’t accessible to support teams. Marketers can’t see what customers are buying or what made them convert. Each team operates with its own set of tools.

Often, these tools aren’t shared because teams feel like the details aren’t relevant. For example, the sales team may have a process map that visually outlines the pipeline process, but they might not instinctively share that with marketing or support since value seems limited.

A cross-functional alignment strategy attempts to fix that disconnect by making the CRM a central source for customer engagement across all departments. This is done by standardizing processes, establishing shared KPIs, and encouraging team transparency.

When aligned, the CRM becomes a collaborative workspace where all departments can see the full customer lifecycle and use that data to create a more cohesive experience — similar to a CX-driven strategy. It’s an approach that can help teams reduce miscommunications, duplicate efforts, and dropped handoffs while creating more efficient organization and a more seamless customer journey.

Building your own CRM strategy

It’s important to note that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. In practice, most companies will blend elements from several different strategies, based on existing priorities and the maturity of their internal processes.

What matters most is having a clear, documented plan for how the CRM will support existing business goals while making sure that the entire team is trained for and aligned around the initiative.

The process of building your own CRM strategy can be broken down into several key steps.

1. Set clear business goals

Before changing how the CRM operates, determine what success actually looks like.

Goals should be specific, measurable, and tied directly to both business outcomes and collectable data. Examples might include increasing customer retention, shortening sales cycles, or improving lead quality.

Without defined objectives, it’s difficult to track progress and evaluate whether a strategy is effective.

It’s also worth identifying which teams are accountable for those goals and how CRM usage will help them hit any new benchmarks. If the sales team is responsible for reducing time-to-close, that needs to be reflected in how the pipeline is structured and how overall progress is tracked.

In some cases, setting new goals might require additional training or partner solutions for the CRM. For example, if leadership determines that document creation time should be accelerated in order to push deals forward even faster, a solution like PandaDoc can be used to automate the majority of that workflow.

2. Understand your customer journey

Mapping the customer journey helps identify where and how the CRM can support future engagements.

Mapping should include every stage of the existing flow, from initial lead capture all the way to post-sale support. Take careful note of how that data is added to the CRM (automated or manual), and whether inputs need to be streamlined for better consistency and overall quality.

Understanding these touchpoints can help teams find gaps in communication, uncover existing inefficiencies, and ensure that no part of the customer experience is overlooked or duplicated.

New insights can also highlight opportunities for automation and personalization. For example, if leads consistently go cold between initial contact and follow-up, that part of the journey might benefit from automated document reminders or task reminders built into the CRM.

3. Choose the right CRM tools

Most CRMs are equipped with fields and features that aren’t enabled by default or that may not have an immediate use case. Ultimately, the tools and features that the business uses need to support its strategic goals.

For example, teams focused on retention might prioritize CRM platforms, features, and integrations that offer lifecycle tracking or assist with automated follow-ups. Brands that want to improve forecasting may see reporting and dashboard tools as more important.

Many CRMs will have these features already built in. It’s just a matter of activating them and using them with a defined purpose.

If the strategy calls for more advanced functionality, like CPQ tools or proposal generation, teams might also need to evaluate which integrations are available and how they can extend the CRM’s capabilities.

4. Define KPIs and metrics

Key performance indicators can track whether a CRM strategy is delivering results. These could include metrics like close rates, customer lifetime value, churn rate, or sales cycle length.

However, keep in mind that the information required to track the KPI needs to be added to the CRM and will likely come from another source. Some of these processes can also be automated. For example, churn might be calculated by tying the CRM to a billing API and pushing payment information into the CRM. When a customer stops billing, a workflow within the CRM might flag the account as a churned account and trigger a follow-up or retention sequence.

It’s also helpful to define what success and failure look like for each KPI. For example, if the target close rate is 25% (not the win rate!), anything significantly lower might indicate a breakdown in lead qualification or follow-up processes. Defining clear benchmarks can help teams respond more quickly when performance trends in the wrong direction.

Regardless, KPIs should align with business goals and be monitored regularly, and performance should be tracked over time. Doing so can help to inform future improvements and course corrections for the brand.

5. Train your team

No CRM strategy will work unless teams are trained to support it!

Everyone who interacts with the CRM in any way needs to understand how the system works and what’s expected of them. This is particularly important for sales, marketing, and support teams, as much of the data and customer-facing interactions are generated within those three departments.

Note that training doesn’t always involve adding manual processes and procedures. It’s also possible to offset any new administrative burdens via automations and workflows. That way, teams can remain efficient and data capture is more consistent over the long term.

When building a CRM strategy, consider training as an ongoing process. As the CRM evolves or new features and integrations are rolled out that help the platform better align with existing strategic goals, users will need regular training updates and refreshers.

Quick note: Some integrated platforms will cover a robust library of training content to help teams learn how to better use the software. Others don’t. This is something to consider when choosing a new CRM or adjoining integration.

6. Align your departments

CRMs are often used across multiple departments. Without coordination, the data can become disjointed and fragmented.

A successful CRM strategy brings teams together with shared processes, common goals, and better visibility into customer data. When teams are aligned, handoffs are smoother, and the customer experience improves.

Cross-functional alignment is a key part of any RevOps framework and helps to reduce both duplicated effort and internal confusion. Many brands suffer from siloed information and obscure departmental processes. These lapses in data flow and utilization can lead to a fractured customer journey where buyers must repeatedly explain to various reps what they’re trying to accomplish and what has already been done.

By taking the time to align all departments with the same structure and intent, companies can maintain a more consistent experience across the sales funnel.

7. Monitor, optimize, and adapt

Even the most well-designed CRM strategy won’t stay effective forever. As customer needs evolve and business priorities shift, the CRM strategy needs to change with them.

By regularly reviewing CRM functions and metrics, it’s much easier to pivot and adapt as the flow of business changes. Review CRM data and performance metrics on a regular, consistent schedule. Look for trends, bottlenecks, or parts of the workflow that aren’t functioning as intended.

Revisit KPIs often to determine whether the existing strategy is still moving the business in the right direction. If not, identify what needs to change (tools, processes, etc.) and how teams are engaging with the system.

It’s also helpful to gather direct feedback from both users and customers. Form and surveys can help with this. Sales reps, account managers, and support staff may have insights into whether the company approach to the CRM is helpful or not. Longtime customers will be able to tell if processes have become smoother and interactions are clearer. Use this information to learn what should be refined and where to focus any additional effort.

By treating the CRM strategy as a living process rather than a static setup, brands can keep CRM data and workflows aligned with critical business goals and values.

How PandaDoc enhances your CRM strategy

A CRM strategy is only as strong as the tools that support it. While CRM platforms are essential for organizing customer data and managing workflows, they often lack the narrative functionality for proposals, quotes, contracts, and other key sales documents.

In order for strategies to boost customer loyalty and customer satisfaction, teams will need apps like PandaDoc that can integrate and make use of CRM data.

PandaDoc integrates directly with leading CRM platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive, and many more, allowing teams to generate, send, and track documents without ever leaving the CRM interface. Reps can pull data directly from customer records to create personalized proposals in seconds, while automations handle follow-ups, approvals, and e-signatures.

On top of that, every document interaction is logged in the CRM, giving teams deeper visibility into what’s working and where deals stand. That matters — especially for brands focused on maximizing speed and consistency within the deal workflow.

Want to learn how PandaDoc can help your CRM strategy succeed? Sign up for a free 14-day trial or book a demo to see firsthand how PandaDoc helps teams close deals faster and operate more efficiently.

Disclaimer

PandaDoc is not a law firm, or a substitute for an attorney or law firm. This page is not intended to and does not provide legal advice. Should you have legal questions on the validity of e-signatures or digital signatures and the enforceability thereof, please consult with an attorney or law firm. Use of PandaDocs services are governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

FAQ

Do I need a CRM strategy?

Strictly speaking, it’s possible to use a CRM without a strategy. However, if you want to get the most out of the platform, you’ll need a strategy to go with it.

Without one, teams may be capturing data but failing to use it in a way that supports the business and its goals. They may even collect data that has no purpose or use, slowing down sales and support processes for information that neither department can utilize.

A clear strategy helps a business identify its pain points, improve communication between team members, and turn raw data into valuable insights. Particularly for small businesses, this level of efficiency and clarity can be critical.

A CRM strategy helps teams stay focused on the target audience, create better experiences for new customers, and make the most out of every customer interaction across multiple channels (email, social media, direct outreach, etc.).

Which is the best CRM for sales?

While you can see a great selection of CRMs right here, the best CRM for you will depend greatly on business size, structure, goals, and budget. Popular CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot can be powerful tools, but the built-in modularity can quickly push prices out of reach for smaller organizations.

Additionally, most CRMs on the market have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to things like pipeline management, automation, and reporting. Overall business goals and operational workflows will also play a major factor in determining which CRM makes the most sense, as will specific use cases.

For example, teams that are frequently quoting, sharing documents, or need to work with multi-step approvals may also need to integrate with PandaDoc or similar platforms. Other factors to consider might be how well the platform tracks customer behavior, purchase history, and real-time activity. These features make it easier to identify target customers, personalize outreach, and create more effective sales flows.

The best CRM will be the ones that aligns with existing internal processes and gives teams the tools required to act and sell with greater efficiency.

What KPIs should I measure to see if my CRM strategy is successful?

While KPI selection will vary between brands, any metric should be directly tied to the goals of your CRM strategy — which should be tied to the greater goals of the business.

Common metrics include:

• Lead conversion rate
• Customer retention rate
• Average sales cycle length
• Deal win rate
• And others

If your CRM supports it, you might also want to track targeted marketing statistics like email open rates, response times, or how often team members are logging activity within the platform.

To get even deeper insights, consider using your CRM to segment your target audience by demographics, behavior, or purchase history. By doing so, teams can measure how specific groups respond to campaigns and customer journey touchpoints. If you’ve built a journey map, you can also measure drop-off rates at key stages and adjust your strategy accordingly.

How can a CRM strategy enhance the customer experience?

A CRM strategy improves the customer experience by making every interaction more timely, relevant, and consistent.

With the right structure and supporting platforms in place, teams can access real-time data about a customer journey with the brand so far, including details like past purchases, support history, and any requested quotes. With this information at hand, reps can deliver a more personalized experience while eliminating repetitive or disconnected communication.

By aligning the CRM strategy with the customer journey map, it’s possible to spot gaps where customers may be dropping off or experiencing roadblocks. Savvy teams can use this information to overcome those hurdles and keep deals moving forward.
Keep in mind that this level of personalization isn’t limited to enterprise companies, either. For small businesses, robust automation and targeted messaging can make a huge difference. Combined with a capable CRM and a strong strategy, it’s possible for small brands to deliver a consistent, high-quality customer experience with every interaction.