CRM software for small businesses - What, how, and why?
A small business CRM software can help in managing sales, leads, accounts, opportunities and much more. Learn how to choose CRM for your business and use it beneficially.
“The best business strategy of all is a satisfied customer!”
Have you been implementing the best business strategy yet?
Ever scanned through your spreadsheets or dug through a stack of old business cards to find particular information about your client? Or maybe burnt your pockets to get various tools for Sales management, Lead generation, Quotation management, and more?
If the answer to these questions is a resounding yes, there is an easy and effective way to resolve these. All you need is a reliable, fully-integrated CRM software designed for small and growing businesses!
A small business CRM software is a single tool that can unify your business processes and help you manage your sales, leads, and opportunities seamlessly. It performs tasks as simple as storing customer information and as complicated as automating the sales process.
Before we further dig into how CRM can help in small business growth, let’s first understand what is CRM software and how does it work.
What is a CRM system?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a tool or a solution that helps businesses to build strong relationships with their clients in real-time by effectively handling sales, marketing, and communications via technology. In other words, CRM software is a multidimensional map that stores all the customer information at one central location and empowers your team to win deals faster while providing your customers with a personalised experience. On the other hand, a perfect CRM software for small businesses can offer end-to-end sales management through sales pipelines and help in streamlining the sales process.
Do small businesses need CRM?
- What is CRM software and how does it work?
- Can a small business implement CRM?
- Why should a small business use a CRM?
- What can CRM do for a small business?
- Do small businesses need CRM software?
Those are the questions that are asked time and again.
Considering the fact that the best CRM software can increase sales by 29%, CRM software can just be the right tool that a small business needs.
Apart from streamlining business processes, a B2B CRM (Business to business CRM) can assist in growing your business in multiple ways.
Here are a few benefits of CRM for small businesses.
Helps you build a bond with your leads
As per a study, businesses make 50 per cent more sales when they are focused on lead nurturing.
That’s because when the leads and the clients feel valued and respected, they will work with you in growing your business.
A good CRM system allows you to organise and access customer data easily. And in doing so, it empowers your team to customise the communication plan and your customers’ sales journey. A truly personalised experience for your clients can boost your sales.
With CRM, you can build and customise a sales pipeline for your business segment, track your leads, enhance sales visibility, analyse your sales cycle, and gain access to real-time sales projections.
Digitalises your sales process
According to a study, 32% of the small businesses said they spend up to 60 minutes on data entry or manual tasks and 19% spend up to 120 minutes.
That’s up to 1-2 hours a day! Entering the data manually in multiple spreadsheets is neither smart use of time nor a long term solution.
On the other hand, with the millennials using Emails, WhatsApp, Facebook and other messaging channels to communicate, the demand for immediacy and effective communication has increased multiple times. Digitising and automating can be a genuine solution in such cases.
A B2B CRM system can help you consolidate the customer details, conversation history, sales activities into one software and design a digitally transformed sales journey for your customers.
Enhances customer experience
We know, “The key for any global business is communication”! However, capturing the data of customers and utilising it appropriately to build the sales funnel has always been a challenge to most businesses.
Implementing a B2B CRM can help you understand every move of your client and provide your team with a 360-degree view of your customer details and conversations. And thus, empower your team with the required information to tailor the sales journey for your customers.
Provides actionable data insights
The best CRM for sales reps is the one that can provide access to accurate, information without any delays and offer deeper insights on the performance. This helps in determining the action plan to close deals faster and win customers effortlessly. Additionally, the sales performance reports generated by CRM can help you forecast your sales for the future and help you fill in the performance gaps.
Centralises decentralised customer information
Ever switched between different tools or files to access sales information, marketing data, accounting knowledge, etc. of a client? If you have, you know how frustrating it can be to access siloed data every time you need a piece of information.
Contrastingly, imagine being able to access customers’ order history, conversation history, activities associated with sales (such as calls, emails, demos, etc), social media handles, customer support requests, marketing analytics, everything at one place.
CRM is capable of offering all the information of a customer at a centralised location through cloud technology. And thereby, allowing your team to access the updated information anytime, anywhere.
Protects the customer data
Businesses store important information about the customers in their databases such as their contact details, the conversations they had with the team, their buying patterns and their requirements. This could be just what the hackers might need. But thanks to CRM!
Unlike spreadsheets, a CRM can protect your data with multilayered data security methods and can keep your data safe and secure.
Increases team productivity and profits
Small business owners undoubtedly know the challenges of wearing multiple hats to manage leads, sales, accounts, and communications. Not to mention the struggle they go through to make the most out of limited resources.
A fully-integrated CRM system can do the heavy lifting by streamlining the business processes, providing easy access to the information your team needs, automating the workflow processes and thereby increasing productivity and team efficiency. In simpler words, the best CRM software for small businesses can facilitate business growth by empowering the team with various CRM features and functionalities.
What to look for in CRM for small businesses?
According to statistics, there are at least 600 companies out there building CRM tools and systems, for various sized businesses. Learn about different types of CRM tools and decide which CRM suits better for your business needs.
Use the following CRM checklist to ease the process of choosing CRM!
Ease of use
According to Inside CRM, 65% of sales professionals find ease of use the most important CRM feature.
A convenient CRM should be intuitive, easy to implement, learn, and navigate. Otherwise, your team may just stay away from CRM.
Integrations
CRM system is intended to streamline your business operations. Hence, before choosing a CRM for your business, make a list of technologies your team uses. A CRM that integrates with most of those technologies is certainly the best sales CRM for your business.
Customisable
The requirements of every business are unique. However, the CRM that can be fine-tuned to fit the needs of your business is the CRM you should be looking for.
Local support
Let’s face it! You are good at what you do. But an extra hand to guide you with the best practices can be highly advantageous. A team of CRM professionals who are available at your service when you need them will help you understand the CRM tool and use it as effectively as possible.
Scalability
Your business will grow. But is your CRM flexible enough to upgrade with you? Conversely, do you have an option to downgrade the functionalities of CRM, if it needs to be? - Ask before you choose.
Cloud-based
With cloud-based CRM, you can enjoy multiple benefits such as low initial investment, no software licensing costs, data is handled in the cloud, affordable service costs.
In a nutshell, your customers’ experience is built on the relationship you cultivate with them. So, analyse different types of CRM and choose the best CRM software that nurtures your customer relationships and grows your business.
Simple CRM software for small business
Small and medium enterprises need a simple, easy-to-use, and intuitive CRM that helps the businesses to grow. Pepper Cloud CRM is a perfect fit!
With useful features and functionalities such as Sales and Lead management, Opportunity tracking, Quotation generation, WhatsApp and Facebook integration, Auto lead generation, and more, Pepper Cloud CRM empowers your team and helps you take charge of your sales process. Book a FREE demo now to know how Pepper Cloud CRM can accelerate your business growth.
