If you run a small business and haven’t got a piece of CRM software, it’s time to listen up. I know it is easy to get put off by acronyms in business (let’s face it, they’re all over the place), but some of them are certainly worth paying attention to. CRM simply stands for “customer relationship management” and the software exists to manage your interactions with current and future customers. This blog post will go some way to helping you understand the concept a little bit further, and how it could be helpful for you and your business…
Why would you need a CRM?
The sales and marketing team of a business can really make use of a CRM system. It basically brings every single business contact into one place, making it simple to keep up-to-date records. A CRM allows you to categorise contacts and businesses into lead types, how they were discovered, and so on, and you can also allocate certain contacts to staff members within your business. This means there won’t be any overlap, or any embarrassing occasions where two of your salespeople try to sell something to a potential customer at different times. In short, your business will finally be able to get organised with a solution like this.
What features do they offer?
There are different pieces of software on the market, so you will need to look for something that suits your size and company processes. Many small businesses like the iComplete hosted CRM as their sales staff can access the information they need 24 hours a day, seven days a week – even when they are not in the office. This makes it very helpful for those who are attending exhibitions and meetings as they can still continue to do work when they aren’t at their desks.
Many CRMs can be partnered with other solutions to enable greater efficiency and minimal wasted time; you can find out more information about this online. They will often also have reporting functions where you can easily see the number of sales of proposals you sent out in a month, what is in the pipeline, and everything in real time. That makes it easy enough to see where more effort needs to be made, as well as identifying the leads that are really working for your business.
How do you find one?
As I mentioned above, there are many different CRM solutions available on the market. With any product or service, the pricing really depends on what features you want, and how many people need access to it. The internet is always a good place to start for your search as you can quickly access a list of companies who offer their own solutions. It could be worth speaking to other companies you trust to find out what they use within their own business. Finally, you might also want to attend business technology exhibitions to see what is being marketed as it can help to give you a better idea of the marketplace.
