Managing complex relationships is an essential function of the private capital industry. Your network can be the difference between closing a high-value deal and completely missing out on the opportunity.
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is designed to track and manage your network efficiently and can contribute to business growth and success. A great CRM paired with a great CRM strategy can give you a competitive advantage, but it must be the right one.
CRMs weren’t historically built with the unique needs of private capital firms in mind, so finding one with the enhancements that ensure your requirements are met is important if you want to get the most out of your CRM.
We’re breaking down why private capital firms should use a CRM and the five CRM enhancements that help create the perfect software solution for private capital firms.
How can private capital firms benefit from a CRM?
Most organizations can benefit from CRM software, and private capital firms are no exception. A CRM designed for private capital firms is tailored for the industry’s longer dealmaking process and the complex relationships that come with these deals.
Relationships are a key component of success in private capital. For a CRM to be effective for private capital, it needs to focus on supporting relationship building and nurturing, as well as the deal sourcing and origination processes.
There are many benefits for private capital firms that use CRMs:
- Deal flow management: From deal sourcing to due diligence, a CRM system can help you track and manage your opportunities and active deals to ensure that nothing is missed.
- Relationship management: There are a lot of moving parts to relationships in private capital firms. You deal with stakeholders, founders, limited partners (LPs), and more, each with their own communication preferences. A CRM will help to keep all conversations and interactions tracked and organized in a single location. A good CRM will also have relationship intelligence, to help identify the quickest path to a warm introduction.
- Informed decision-making: A CRM allows you to take a data-driven decision-making approach. Access to up-to-date information enables you to conduct thorough evaluations and streamline the due diligence process.
- Better risk management: CRM systems provide easy access to insights on the performance of portfolio companies that you can trust.
- Advanced analytics: A good CRM will have advanced analytics, dashboards, and reporting functionality which will help your firm stay aligned with its overall business goals.
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Getting the most out of your CRM with enhancements
The first CRMs were designed for sales-focused businesses that needed to manage a high volume of customer data. Sales teams use CRMs to improve everything in their sales cycle, from marketing campaigns to lead generation to the customer experience. CRMs help sales reps improve customer retention, store customer information, and manage potential customers and leads.
As more private capital firms started adopting CRM technology, the need for a specialized CRM designed to fit the industry’s unique requirements became apparent. Looking for a CRM with the right enhancements can help ensure that it can handle the complex deals and intricate relationships that go hand in hand with private capital deals.
These five enhancements will turn your CRM into a private capital powerhouse that can track and manage your network, provide a warm introduction, and give you the data you need to source your next deal.
1. Use automation to increase deal efficiency
A big part of traditional CRMs is data entry—creating and maintaining individual records within your CRM is essential if you want to get the most out of your data. Manual data entry is a time-consuming process that takes dealmakers away from the integral work of researching, sourcing, qualifying, reaching out to, and following up with prospects and other key business processes.
Automating CRM data entry is the solution that will save your team time and allow them to focus on the essential elements of their roles. Affinity research found that using a CRM with automated data capture, like Affinity or Affinity for Salesforce, saves more than 200 hours of manual CRM work per user every year.
A CRM that automates creating, updating, and enriching CRM records streamlines workflows and reduces the time spent on data integration.
2. Tap into relationship insights
In this competitive market, every firm fears missing out on high-value, high-quality deals. When data is scattered across various inboxes, calendars, notes, and more, it can be difficult to gain valuable relationship or engagement insights.
And it’s those relationship and engagement insights that drive deals forward. So, how do you get those insights out of your emails and calendars? You need a CRM that uses relationship intelligence to automatically pull those insights from your firm’s inboxes, calendars, and third-party sources.
With relationship intelligence, you can transform what was once unusable data into actionable insights about your firm’s network. You can feel confident that you aren’t missing out on high-value deals because you were late to engage, didn’t fully understand the dynamics of the people involved, or missed a timely follow-up.
3. Improve efficiency with a CRM that integrates with the tools you use
Finding ways to work more efficiently can increase your firm's productivity. Time saved can be redirected to higher-value tasks, and can help team members maintain focus. One workflow where this is evident is deal sourcing.
Deal sourcing and evaluation requires deals teams to pool data from websites, LinkedIn pages, Pitchbook, social media, and other valuable third-party data sources. To access key deal insights, you have to jump between tabs, platforms, and your CRM. This is not the most efficient way to work and can cause you to miss integral information as you switch between different data sources.
You can access relevant deal data beyond the platform when your CRM is enhanced with the right extensions. With Affinity, you can take immediate action to keep deals moving forward in your CRM, when researching startups in your browser, and while working on your email. If you’re already using Salesforce, Affinity for Salesforce lets you see relationship and deal insights directly in your email, calendar, browser, and virtual meetings.
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4. Get the most out of your network through data enrichment
An intelligent CRM should enhance your data through enrichment—the process of elevating the quality of your existing data. A CRM with enriched data consolidates all relationship insights, contact information and demographics, and business intelligence to create one comprehensive system of record.
With an enriched CRM, you’re able to focus on decision-making because your CRM is sourcing and compiling data for you. Your CRM presents all that data to you in an easy-to-digest format that simplifies decision-making. With all your data in one place, you can rely on relationship insights to learn more about prospective deals, and find clear success signals to help you make better investment decisions.
An enriched CRM also enhances your datasets by using your wins, losses, and other firm data. Every decision you make, those learnings inform your data engine, creating a single, autonomous system that supports finding and managing more deals in the future.
5. Integrate AI into your workflows
With a CRM that incorporates AI, you can boost productivity by reclaiming the time you spend capturing and gathering information. When AI integrates with your CRM, you can easily collect the information you need to make informed decisions across the entire deal lifecycle.
As mentioned above, relationship intelligence and data enrichment are two key ways that CRMs use AI. Affinity understands the importance of AI and has integrated it into key areas of the CRM. From deal sourcing to deal flow management to portfolio support and beyond, Affinity uses relationship intelligence to capture relationship insights.
Affinity has developed additional AI capabilities to help private capital firms get the most out of their CRM:
- Industry Insights creates an AI-generated list of companies that directly compete with a target company you’re viewing, and monitor changes to a competitive landscape.
- Affinity Notetaker transcribes your conversations, creates structured meeting notes including action items as next steps, and syncs notes to the Affinity records of all external participants.
- Deal Assist is a chatbot that uses notes and files captured throughout your meetings and emails to provide insight into your deals.
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Drive deals with Affinity
Designed to meet the unique needs of private capital firms, Affinity combines real-time automation, relationship intelligence, advanced analytics, and data enrichment right where you work. Emphasizing the importance of user experience, it is simple to use and helps improve internal CRM adoption.
Affinity helps drive deals forward and improve collaboration while managing your network at scale. Easily find the warmest introduction and never miss out on an important deal. Request a demo today.
Is your team already using Salesforce? Get all the benefits of Affinity’s relationship intelligence and insights without switching CRMs using Affinity for Salesforce.
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CRM enhancement FAQs
What is a CRM for private capital firms?
A customer relationship management (CRM) system for private capital firms tracks deals in the pipeline, manages investor relations, and helps team members stay in touch with portfolio companies, founders, LPs, and other key stakeholders in the industry.
What is a CRM enhancement?
A CRM enhancement is a feature that makes it easier for team members to use the CRM in their specific industry. CRM enhancements help organizations solve the fundamental challenges they face when using traditional CRMs.
What are the most important CRM enhancements for private capital firms?
CRM enhancements that are essential for private capital firms include:
- Relationship intelligence that provides insights to drive deals forward.
- Automation of manual tasks like data entry and follow-up emails.
- Data enrichment that ensures your data helps you make informed decisions.
- Extensions that ensure you can easily integrate your CRM with existing tools.
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