- Details
What powers a business? What is the fuel on which a business runs and manages to scale peak after peak? That would be customers! And that is what we are going to talk about today - CRM or customer relationship management.
What exactly is customer relationship management? If we are to put it across in the simplest of terms, a CRM system or a CRM software would help you manage the following things in the best possible manner, on a single platform:
- Information
- Sales and marketing related functions
- Automation
When you bring in CRM for a small business, you are basically ensuring that you manage to increase your bandwidth with the simple power of organization. Not only would a small business CRM help you store and collect information in the right fields and keys, it would also match the information with the right functions so that the information can be called up for each individual task that your team members have to fulfill. This eliminates a number of monotonous and mundane tasks that can bring down your productivity by leaps and bounds. This would also bring up the overall productivity of your team and help you reach a higher rate of conversion.
CRM for small business is an absolute must since you would need to be better organized in order to maximize or optimize your bandwidth and your scarce resources. Let us look at the top five reasons why your business cannot survive without CRM or customer relationship management.
1. Information
Now, when we are neck deep in business operations, we would realize that the most important thing is information - whether it is information about your customers, the interactions that your team members have had with them, or even the metrics that are spurred by consumer behavior in your niche. It would be imperative to pay special attention to this aspect of doing business. Yet, we are living in the information age where it is easy to come by information and just as difficult to store it and make use of it. Information needs to be found at the right time without wasting time and missing out on any pertinent information. Therefore, one needs a system that would call up information and store it in the right place to begin with. This is where the CRM for a small business steps in. A CRM software would help you organize your information to correspond with the functions that you have set for the CRM framework you would be using. The information that you store would also come handy when you have to use it for targeted campaigns to reach out to leads and prospects as well. This information would be tied in with the various tasks that one would have to complete within the sales pipeline.
2. Reach
When you are running a business, the very first step is to reach people. These are people who would be your customers. When you have a CRM system in place, you would be able to achieve this reach with the help of metrics and analytics that would help you create targeted campaigns. With the information stored, the tasks in the marketing automation setup along with the CRM software, can actually work towards bringing out data based on the information revolving around your leads. In this way, you can create content and drive engagement in a way that would help you reach the right customers in the right way. Also, when you are running a business, you do not merely look to make a one time sale. The point is to also build customer loyalty so that you can up sell, cross sell and make repeated sales to the same customers, who would also be willing to recommend you to their various vendors and business associates or even individuals like family and friends. When we are talking about reach, a CRM system would also help you achieve that in an automated way by bringing in entire email campaigns that can reach people in a way that can keep them engaged and updated about what you are doing and what you are offering to them on a routine basis.
3. Building Better Teams
A small business CRM would not just be meant for your customers, but also for your team and your employees. When you go for a well loaded platform with plenty of features like EngageBay CRM or a similarly superior CRM system, you can be sure that all your projects will be managed in tandem with your team and the core skills of your team members. With a CRM software in place, you can actually build better teams that would have accountability at the very core of it. How would this happen? Well, to begin with, all the tasks would be lined up with automated prompts given to each team member once the previous task has been completed. This would remove the scope for duplication and missing out on tasks even as you would move through the sales pipeline in a much faster and more efficient manner. The small business CRM would also help in minimizing chaotic communication since everything would be automated. This can also increase productivity of the team in general.
4. High Quality Customer Service
CRM for a small business would help you render even better quality customer service since you would be more organized and you would not be so hard pressed in terms of your team bandwidth. The CRM system would help you reach out to your customers and answer their questions in a manner that is relevant for them since the information stored would be called up for you in an automated way. You can refer to this information while engaging with your customers so that you can actually articulate things in the tone of your customer.
5. Analytics
The final and most important thing that a CRM software would offer you is analytics to help you plan and improvise so that you are able to reach, engage, sell and service your customers in a far better manner.