Oct
12

By CommenceCRM

Digitalize Your Small Business and Save Money by Implementing CRM Software

CRM Customer Relationship Management Business Internet Technology Concept

Despite the advent of management software, small business owners are still hesitant to adopt new technologies, mainly because software such as CRM feels like an unnecessary addition to smaller operations.

Can small businesses benefit from software like CRM? Definitely. With CRM software, small businesses can get enterprise-level analytics, without having to hire expensive marketing, sales, and analytics team. By automating some of your processes and knowing how to optimize your sales processes, you can redeem multiple benefits and scale your business in no time.

What Is CRM?

A customer relationship management (CRM) software is a system that helps businesses manage data from customers. CRMs can be built with industry-specific components or general features such as customer support, sales marketing, and information storage.

Think of CRM as the ultimate salesperson. This “employee” of yours has information on everything about every single customer your business has interacted with. From purchase-related information such as items/services purchased, preferred method of payment, and contact details.

As such, the CRM can help you figure out what your customers want, when they want it, and how to give it to them. By studying information on customers, you can improve your relationship with existing ones and use this data to get more customers and grow your company.

Why Have CRM Software?

If you’re making less and less sales every month or you just realize you’re not growing at the pace you want, there’s obviously something wrong with your current process. The problem is, business processes become complex over time, and it’s difficult to figure out which variables are making your ship sink.

CRM software is a bird’s eye view of what works and what doesn’t, right down to the source. You don’t have to rely on guesswork or gut feeling; you’re looking at numbers and data and using those to plan your next course of action.

With CRM software, you figure out which parts of your sales process are time-dumps, giving you more time to focus on efforts that will actually bring in more money for your company. You save money because you’re channeling your resources on methods that are proven to work.

Benefits of Having CRM

1. Automate Business Processes

Growing your small business involves doing tasks you don’t necessarily enjoy. Instead of hiring another person, you can automate certain tasks using your CRM software. This ensures that important but time-hungry tasks are being done routinely and efficiently.

2. Keep Track Of Sales Team

No leader wants to micromanage his or her sales team. With a CRM software, your sales team can log their performance, allowing you and other members of the team to assess each other’s productivity. This can store data such as clients/prospects taken in, deals won vs lost, amount of time spent on calls and emails, among other things.

The CRM software is a way to accurately assess your sales’ teams performance and translate their work into quantifiable information. With this, you can assign accounts based on performance and history, and use this to decide on incentives and bonuses.

3. Smarter Email Marketing

Want to know how your email campaign is performing? Sync your CRM with Outlook, Gmail, or other email providers to get an insight on interactions. You can finally track opens, click throughs, bounce rates, and other important metrics that will improve your email performance.

4. Customer Relationship Management

Consolidate all customer information in one accessible hub. With a CRM software, you can make personalized decisions based on individualized customer preferences. Manage patient requests, concerns, and questions in real time. You can also use your software to increase communication between your brand and your community.

5. Perform Multiple Functions With One App

Instead of using ten different softwares to perform multiple tasks, you can use the CRM software to complete the majority of your customer-related operations. Easily share resources and information with other team members, manage relationships with partners, vendors, and organizations, and create a community of loyal customers with just one software.

Are CRMs and Small Businesses Compatible?

Small businesses tend to think that CRMs, or any other automation system or software for that matter, are only reserved for the big leagues. And there’s logic behind that: as a small business, you pride yourself on personalization and you’re confident with your people skills.

You know who your most loyal customers are and you work hard to ensure their specific needs are met. When you reach out to new prospects, you want to pitch customized solutions for their problems and find the best ways to do so.

It’s these things that make small businesses stand out from their bigger competitors. It’s also these very values that CRMs want to enhance.

Your ValuesWhat A CRM Can Provide
Offering specialized deals to reward loyal customers or invite new onesTrack patronage and automate reward-giving; sync to their email for instant coupons when certain milestones are met
Make every interaction personalized and feel humanStore numerous, relevant info on customers (name, birthday, family members, years of patronage, preferences) to help you really understand every single customer
Train sales team to be personable and professionalCRMs aid sales teams by providing useful info on customers and practices, as well as share data learned by one team member to another for continuously improved service
Prompt response times with personalized answersPrevious interactions are stored, allowing you to study them when necessary. Calls, emails, texts, and other interactions can be saved and scheduled using the CRM app

How Does CRM Help Businesses Grow?

A CRM software does more than just store information. Ultimately, all the tracking, managing, and monitoring it does for you will help you scale your business. With the right information at the palm of your hand, you don’t have to waste time and resources chasing around bad leads and enhancing the value of wrong customers.

Instead, you can directly work on those that are proven to be profitable to your business. By making this your new sales process, you can grow your small company with the same momentum as a medium-sized venture.

Lead Management

Just because you’re a small company doesn’t mean you have to exclusively rely on repeat business. Smaller brands tend to close down because they only take care of their old customers, never bothering to venture beyond and look for new ones.

The Challenge

As a small business, you only know leads that work. You are hesitant to reach outside your current customer base because you’re not sure who else would benefit from your product or service. You don’t want to spend countless hours figuring out if a new market will be profitable for you so you stick to what you know.

The CRM Solution

CRMs help you evaluate which leads are profitable or not. Every single lead that qualifies your set criteria can be stored and monitored, allowing you to compare leads and identify which ones you should prioritize. Congregated data will help you see patterns in new and upcoming leads and gain confidence in tapping new markets or even introducing new products and services.

With this data stored in one hub, your team can easily share new techniques, leads, and information with each other. This will bolster your lead generation skills and improve your sales marketing as a whole.

Automated Marketing

Engaging your customers is just as important in small businesses as it is in gigantic enterprises. Marketing keeps your current customers interested in your services or products. The right marketing tactics will encourage brand loyalty and solidify your relationship with existing customers. It’s also useful when branching out to new markets and targeting new demographics.

The Challenge

Based on the channel you’re using, marketing efforts are costly when you don’t get any returns on your investment. The pros can outweigh the cons, especially if you’re a business owner without a lot of marketing experience. If you have a small team, spending hours engaging with customers online or through email can feel unnecessary.

The CRM Solution

CRMs analyze the channels you use (from Google ads to Facebook clicks) and figure out which one is bringing in the most interest. Instead of spreading your budget across five different channels, you can allocate your resources on one specific avenue to get more customers.

Email marketing and social media management may feel like menial tasks, but they are crucial work for your brand. Engaging in social media can help increase brand awareness. By understanding who’s interacting with your posts, you get a better idea of who might be interested in what you offer. You can also use your CRM software to automate emails based on specific interactions (after a customer makes an inquiry, after a customer makes a purchase) to make your company more responsive and engaging.

Customer Nurturing

Good customer service is a solid bedrock for any profitable business. More than anything else, small businesses are expected to be dedicated in managing customer relations. Neglecting their concerns and suggestions is a surefire way to lose loyal customers.

The Challenge

Monitoring individual concerns is taxing and stressful. It can also be challenging to share and streamline information from one team member to another, which can delay problems from being solved.

The CRM Solution

Having a CRM software means you’re at the front desk, whenever you need them. Know your customers’ concerns in real time and answer them using any platforms they prefer. Most CRMs are becoming more accommodating of different channels (from email to social networks) so you don’t have to shuffle between multiple apps to answer your customers.

Personalized messages and rewards can be sent to loyal customers, improving your customer service rating. Doing so will make customers feel valued and make them likelier to recommend other people to use your product or service.

How Can CRM Help Businesses Reduce Costs?

cost reduction concept image

Reducing your costs and becoming smarter with how you spend time and money will help you scale your company in no time. Having a CRM software can help you with decision making by telling you how to spend your energy.

Here’s how a CRM software can help small businesses save money:

  • Target The Right People: Stop chasing leads that don’t work for your business. With a powerful software giving you the right answers, you can spend more time nurturing quality leads and getting more by spending less.
  • Better Leads, Better Results: Qualified leads can either mean a shorter time spent in the pipeline or less resources needed to convert the customer. Either way, knowing who to talk to will make it easier (and therefore less costly) to land a sale.
  • Know Where To Allocate Resources. Optimize your process like never before. With a CRM, you get a bird’s eye-view of your entire sales process. You can evaluate every single aspect of your operations, helping you see if you’re productive or just keeping busy.
  • Eliminate Wasted Time. Manually collecting, analyzing, and studying data is a huge time-dump for small business. With automated help, the only thing you have to think about is implementation. With more time on your hands, your team can prioritize operations that actually bring in more money to your business.
  • Improved Sales Team. Instead of relying on one person to bring in the majority of the monthly quota, you can increase your sales team’s productivity by ensuring every crucial information is accessible to all team members.

This way, you don’t have to rely on one person having the right tactics and the right contacts. With an accessible software, each member will have the opportunity to use the best tactics, figure out better ones, record it on the system, and help the rest of the team improve their game.

Which Businesses Use CRM?

Whether you’re a local grocery store owner or an up-and-coming SaaS provider, your CRM can provide your business value regardless of your industry. Here are some ways organizations of all sizes can take advantage of CRM systems:

Manufacturing & Distribution

Businesses predicated on manufacturing and distribution can get overwhelmed with deadlines and demands. A small hiccup can cause delays in production, costing you money and your reputation. A CRM software can prevent this by:

  • Managing individual deals on the pipeline
  • Setting reminders and alerts for deadlines
  • Categorizing leads and opportunities based on value, length in the pipeline, and other relevant rubrics
  • Tracking service ticket history
  • Producing reports on production and using those to accurately forecast sales
  • Storing virtual receipts from vendors, shoppers, and organizations, as well as track other forms of interaction
  • Tracking inventory and production schedules

Insurance

Juggling different accounts is a bane for most insurance reps. With a CRM software, insurance companies can be smarter in managing customer information, converting these into insightful decisions and helpful solutions. A CRM software can help insurance companies by:

  • Automatically following up on renewals, payments, and penalties for individual customers
  • Storing a history of claims for different insurance policies
  • Tracking performance of individual insurance reps and planning their commissions accordingly
  • Keeping relevant documents (birth certificate, driver’s license, hospital receipts) of every customer virtually
  • Categorizing policy holders from most to least profitable
  • Sharing vital information across all insurance reps for easier communication

Business Services

Providing logistics for other businesses can be hard to manage. One slip up can damage your relationship with customers. As such, a CRM software can improve the way you work by:

  • Evaluating marketing performance across different channels
  • Managing activity of individual sales members
  • Automating email blasts based on prompts and interactions
  • Managing leads and opportunities based on profitability
  • Creating analytics and reports for improved forecasting
  • Storing crucial PDFs, contracts, resources online for easy access to all team members
  • Integrating Outlook, Google products, and website data into one dashboard

How to Apply CRM to Your Small Business

Your CRM software saves you money and energy by doing the tasks you would hire other people to do. Whether you’re working solo or have a small team, a CRM can help you improve the way you do business, increase your profits, enhance customer service, and scale your success.

Still not sure how a CRM system benefits your business? Get in touch with a Commence team member to learn how our management software has helped small businesses in the past, and how it can help you today.

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