Do I Really Need a CRM for My Small Business?

In today’s highly competitive world, you are probably looking for a leg up on your competition. By adopting a CRM system, especially one crafted for your business-specific needs can help you gain that much-wanted edge over your competitors.

What exactly is a CRM system?

The ultimate goal of any successful business is Customer Delight, and a CRM system is essentially all about keeping your customers happy.

Keeping your customers happy requires a personalized approach for each one of them. However, this involves a lot of data digging and time invested into dealing with each customer separately. Rushing things, in fact, may backfire.

This is where the CRM solution taps in. It empowers teams and businesses to manage customer information and data and ultimately build stronger customer relationships. By offering tools and functionalities that help you collect, process and analyze data coming from your client interactions, it allows you to organize and make sense of said disperse data to extract useful information that identifies sales opportunities and creates marketing campaigns and sales funnels.

Pushed mainly by cloud technology, the CRM industry has been on a continued upswing over the last decade. Once considered a software service for the few, has transformed into a thriving worldwide sector, accessible to companies and teams of all sizes.

Besides the main things you should look for in a CRM, I know immediately what questions pop into your mind, I had the same ones.

By scaling a solution down from an enterprise level one to one for the needs of small business, are the expected benefits still relevant?

Will I be fooled into adopting a “mass market” version of a CRM system just because companies identified space in the market and decided to jump in?

You need to be clever here and choose a CRM solution built with a small businesses needs in mind. If you do so, the delivered benefits will amaze you.

What sort of benefits?

Let’s get specific. A good CRM will empower you to:

Scale Your Sales Process

With the use of a CRM, you’re able to craft your sales process expertly.

Initially, you will regard an increase in the volume of your sales. A good CRM system allows you to identify qualified leads, check conversations to identify potential engagement and conversion points or upsell opportunities.

The performance indicators and stats stored in your CRM system(i.e., tracked emails, Real-time opens, clicks and response notifications) will help you spot effective and ineffective patterns in your sales communications. It’s vital to know how effective your outreach is performing. It is of high importance for small businesses to track what’s working and what’s not.

All-in-all, a good CRM you will be able to generate an accurate sales funnel for you, making it easier to forecast sales and prepare to serve more customers with the same level of service, in less time.

We talked already about the delivered impact at the end of your funnel. But what about prospecting? Small businesses heavily rely on email marketing to drive traffic and attract website visitors to increase sales.

This is exactly why you should opt for a CRM offering email loaded with the smartest features available. Powerful features such as email tracking, shared templates, and excellent bulk-mailing.  Advanced personalization options will save you time, drive awareness, and help you reach more prospects.

Lastly, once your sales process is set up in a CRM, you can easily modify it as you need. Test new sales motions and strategies, and extend that new process across your whole team with the help of the offered automation and collaboration tools. No more having to regularly check-in with your team to make sure they remember to follow the new process.

Make More Informed and Intelligent Decisions

Digging out stats,e.g., emails sent, email opens, is confusing when you don’t have all the information in one place. You’re left to rely on hunches or your gut to tell you, for example, if the client has read your proposal.

Instead of wasting time on searching notepads and past email conversations, or creating your own spreadsheets and graphs, all the info you need is right there in a dedicated dashboard.

You can also identify patterns and behaviors based on this information.

For instance, you might notice satisfied customers are more likely to see your emails if you send them out on Thursday afternoons instead of Monday morning. Others might respond well to a particular subject line. Having this kind of information at your fingertips can help you tailor your outreach even more.

Get More Control Over Your Communications & Boost Team Collaboration

CRM's help you organize your information around a conversation with a prospect or a customer. As most of our discussions happen via our main communication hub, our inbox, it is only logical for your business emails to be captured in your outreach tool so you will be able to access all your information in one place.

By further centralizing your communications and all information around them, you will be able to keep a detailed track of the conversations you had with customers.

For small businesses, this information is vital to get your team on the same page, promote collaboration, and run your sales process smoothly.

You can also keep tabs on your leads with automation tools such as reminders (follow-ups) and dedicated Boards to know when you’ve last touched base with them, to know exactly when to follow up.

Efficiency and Productivity

Trying to remember every single detail in a conversation you had with a client can be arduous, and as you grow, it’s going to be more and more taxing on your mind and your sanity. By using a CRM and features such as notes, you’re able to put your thoughts in a trusted, organized, and central system instead of having to rely on spreadsheets or worse your memory.

It will not only give you some peace of mind but the upper hand in your communications with your customers. You’ll have all the needed info on a lead and not waste time on trying to remember a bunch of details.

Lastly, for small companies, an investment in a robust project management solution is an unjustifiable expense, so what you need is a light task manager to go with their CRM, organize all your processes and projects and boost your team’s productivity.

More Time Means You Are Able to Get More Things Done

By using a good CRM for your needs, you’re creating a more productive work environment that lets you get more things done without having to clone yourself or overwork your team.

So whether you’re just starting a business and need a way to manage your first few clients, or you need a helping hand to scale your processes as your client list expands, there are many good reasons to consider looking for the right CRM. It’s a win-win. You’ll get more organized and have more control over your business, and more importantly, your customers get a better experience!

So if I convinced you to start looking for a CRM Software for your and would like more information to help you choose the one that’s right for you and your particular needs, contact us at Gmelius; we’ll be happy to help.