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CRM System for Small Business
Learn how to better manage contacts, gain visibility into sales, and unite your team around one source of truth.
Learn how to better manage contacts, gain visibility into sales, and unite your team around one source of truth.
Small businesses need to be as efficient as possible in order to grow. That’s why it’s more important than ever that they employ the use of a CRM system for small business. A solid CRM system lets you automate the time-consuming parts of business administration so your team can focus more time on growing your business. It is particularly important for small businesses looking to grow, because it aligns your teams around one source of truth and allows a small team to do the work of an enterprise-level business. Plus, a CRM system is customizable to any industry. Let’s dig into some of the specifics to gain a better understanding of what a CRM system is, and how it benefits you.
CRM stands for contact relationship management, and essentially that is exactly what it does. It provides your business with a single repository of customer and prospect information. Each contact in the database has his or her own contact page, and all the details about that individual are stored there. This includes demographic data like geographical location, industry, company size, etc. It also stores contact information such as email, telephone, and address. If you have a robust solution, it provides social media profile information too—for example, take a look at Agile CRM’s social suite.
Some CRM systems for small business have marketing automation built in (see Agile CRM’s marketing automation suite). This means it also tracks all the interactions a contact has with your company, such as websites visited, emails opened, buying history and more. This is critically important as it gives you insight into a contact’s interests, allowing you to personalize your approach to them. The way this information is organized depends on the solution you choose. Probably the best type of contact data organization is a 360-degree view—such as Agile CRM’s 360-degree contact view that also includes a chronological timeline of those interactions.
When you use a CRM system for small business, everyone in your company who uses it sees and can take action off the same information. When one user enters new information on a contact, it is updated in real time for everyone to see. This helps to minimize data entry and boosts efficiency. To learn more about some of the features of a CRM system, check out Agile CRM’s contact management features.
The extensive information that is stored for each contact in your CRM database software slowly builds a very detailed profile of each contact, including interests, past buying behavior, web browsing habits and more. It means that each person in your database gets treated like they are valued. They get a personal approach that helps them stay satisfied with your brand. This is especially helpful if your CRM also has customer support capabilities, such as Agile CRM’s full customer support suite.
When each customer interaction feels more personal, customers stay happier and more loyal to your brand over the long term. But, if five people call them about the same issue, they get frustrated. If they have expressed frustration about an issue to customer support and are threatening to leave, then sales calls them asking them to do a favor, they are likely to start looking at competitors.
It’s easy to see where deals are in the pipeline, so reps can close them faster and keep the funnel flowing. They can see potential deals by stages and maintain insight into where their energy is needed most. Sales managers can check in on the performance of individual reps as well as the team as a whole. They can run pipeline and growth reports, access funnel and cohort analysis, and keep a finger on the pulse of the team’s results. Essentially, it helps you organize your sales today, so you can reap the rewards tomorrow.
The sales team will have access to view every interaction that prospects have had with your company. This includes every email they have opened and every web page they visited. Imagine how well this prepares a salesperson for a conversation. They know exactly what to hit on to engage the prospect, and what to say to establish a better rapport. This translates to a higher conversion rate and a higher close rate. Plus, you’ll close even more deals in even less time if your CRM has sales enablement and automation features built in, such as Agile CRM’s suite of over 50 sales features.
