Here are some great reasons why you need to be using customer relationship management software in your business
Many small business owners are hesitant to adopt Customer Relationship Management software because they feel that it is too complicated or expensive. While using a CRM system might seem like an exotic solution for small business problems, there are many compelling reasons to use one in your company's daily workflow.
In fact, about 60 percent of companies with 100 or fewer employees use some kind of CRM. And for good reason—CRMs can provide an array of benefits, including improved communication between departments and with customers, more accurate data collection, better customer retention rates and many other helpful features.
Most CRM systems are priced affordably, so if you run a business with low overhead costs and only need to manage the contact information of your customers, it's easy to get started, and if you feel like your company could benefit from having more control over its important data it's generally easy to upgrade to a more powerful package later.
One way that CRM systems help companies save money is by reducing the amount of time employees spend on manual data entry tasks. For example, instead of having your staff member manually enter contact information into an excel spreadsheet every day or requesting all new leads be added as a shared drive document, you can have data automatically imported into your system.
CRM systems can help your company share important information freely and can keep everyone on the same page when it comes to clients. The system can provide a place where all your employees can easily access customer information, such as contact details and purchase history, which keeps every department working together at top efficiency.
A CRM system is generally easy to configure and bend towards the way your business works. For example, you can easily create custom fields for information that will be useful to track such as: what stage a lead is at in their buying cycle or how long it took them to close on a previous purchase. This level of customization makes it simple to adapt your CRM system as you change and grow as a business.
A CRM system can help you stay in touch with your customers and nurture existing relationships. A lot of these systems have automated email marketing features that give small businesses a way to easily send out targeted messages to specific segments of their contact lists at scale.
When used properly, these automation tools allow companies to easily distribute information about new products or promotions without overwhelming their clients.
Keeping track of your customer data can be a hassle, but with the right CRM software you don't have to worry about losing an important phone number or address. Most CRM systems allow companies to back up all their important contact details on secure cloud storage platforms so if anything happens to local files it's easy restore them from an offsite location.
With a CRM system it's simple to see important company data broken down into charts, graphs and tables that can be exported as .pdf documents for sharing with other team members. For example, if your sales department is struggling to meet their quotas you can quickly run an analysis of which leads are most likely to become clients or what times of the day your phone line is most busy.
Once you know this kind of information it becomes much easier to make decisions that will help increase sales and retain customers!
When you’ve got a small business, it can be tough to keep track of all the moving parts. And if your company is growing rapidly or has many different departments and workers who need access to shared information at any given time, this challenge only becomes more complex.
If you need help choosing a CRM for your business, get in touch to receive a free no-obligation consultation and we can go through a few good options that you have at your disposal.