Choosing CRM For Small Business: Tips And Advice
Your small company got its first customer base, so you decided not to waste time and automate the processes that are related to sales or/and customer service. This means that it's time to choose the right CRM. We’ll give some advice on choosing CRM to help you make your small business more efficient.
Choosing The Functionality
Sales Automation
If your small business is built on long sales, then you need to make tasks such as increasing lead conversion, for example, automated. Therefore, CRM has to be able to maintain a detailed contact database, store information about traffic sources, monitor transactions at each point, and predict customer behavior and a possible refuse.
When it comes to long sales, it’s important to observe the manager’s work and monitor the stages that can cause problems. CRM should have a possibility to record telephone conversations, analyze and gather statistics on contacts with the highest conversion, and have a system of reminders for sellers.
If we’re talking about short sales, it’s important to automate the process of repeat sales, upsales, and cross-sales and solve the problems of increasing costumers’ loyalty, working with negative feedback, and forming personalized offers. In this case, CRM should store the history of interaction with each customer and the history of purchases.
Reaching to Customers
First, decide how your customers reach out to you: leave an order on the site or make a phone call. And how you communicate with them: call, write, or use newsletters. Depending on your answers, choose the following CRM features: integration with the site management system, built-in telephony or integration with external services, integration with the email, or mailing automation.
Think about whether you need to work with different customer groups or not. Here’s the functionality of customer segmentation and the possibilities of email marketing in CRM you should pay attention to: personalization, trigger mailings, and individual offers for different groups.
Analytical Reports
You’ll most likely want to track not just the efficiency of your sales, but the efficiency of all managers, the current state of sales, and a lot more specific parameters. When choosing CRM for small business, specify which types of reports it offers.
If you have a non-standard sales cycle, your CRM should be able to customize at least such parameter as customer types. It’s great if you also can upload info from the accounting system and the goods from the price list to the CRM.
Teamwork
If there are constant tasks of communicating with colleagues and sharing documents within the sales department, it’s convenient to do this right in the CRM. To make it possible, be sure that the system provides tools for working with tasks, integration with your corporate social network, chat, and intracorporate document storage.
Determining The Requirements For The Product
First, you need to decide whether you’re ready to use the Open Source solution or prefer a proprietary product. Open Source is not always a synonym for a free product, especially if you need to adjust the product according to your tasks. A simple open source solution can be rewritten as many times as you want. But there’s no guarantee that subsequent updates to the source product won’t affect your system’s performance.
In case of using a commercial product, you receive a standard solution, warranties and vendor’s tech support, as well as a number of certified studios ready to make any improvements to the product.
Correctly chosen CRM is not only easy to implement but is also able to increase the productivity of your work and demonstrates the first results almost immediately.
Choosing The Functionality
Sales Automation
If your small business is built on long sales, then you need to make tasks such as increasing lead conversion, for example, automated. Therefore, CRM has to be able to maintain a detailed contact database, store information about traffic sources, monitor transactions at each point, and predict customer behavior and a possible refuse.
When it comes to long sales, it’s important to observe the manager’s work and monitor the stages that can cause problems. CRM should have a possibility to record telephone conversations, analyze and gather statistics on contacts with the highest conversion, and have a system of reminders for sellers.
If we’re talking about short sales, it’s important to automate the process of repeat sales, upsales, and cross-sales and solve the problems of increasing costumers’ loyalty, working with negative feedback, and forming personalized offers. In this case, CRM should store the history of interaction with each customer and the history of purchases.
Reaching to Customers
First, decide how your customers reach out to you: leave an order on the site or make a phone call. And how you communicate with them: call, write, or use newsletters. Depending on your answers, choose the following CRM features: integration with the site management system, built-in telephony or integration with external services, integration with the email, or mailing automation.
Think about whether you need to work with different customer groups or not. Here’s the functionality of customer segmentation and the possibilities of email marketing in CRM you should pay attention to: personalization, trigger mailings, and individual offers for different groups.
Analytical Reports
You’ll most likely want to track not just the efficiency of your sales, but the efficiency of all managers, the current state of sales, and a lot more specific parameters. When choosing CRM for small business, specify which types of reports it offers.
If you have a non-standard sales cycle, your CRM should be able to customize at least such parameter as customer types. It’s great if you also can upload info from the accounting system and the goods from the price list to the CRM.
Teamwork
If there are constant tasks of communicating with colleagues and sharing documents within the sales department, it’s convenient to do this right in the CRM. To make it possible, be sure that the system provides tools for working with tasks, integration with your corporate social network, chat, and intracorporate document storage.
Determining The Requirements For The Product
First, you need to decide whether you’re ready to use the Open Source solution or prefer a proprietary product. Open Source is not always a synonym for a free product, especially if you need to adjust the product according to your tasks. A simple open source solution can be rewritten as many times as you want. But there’s no guarantee that subsequent updates to the source product won’t affect your system’s performance.
In case of using a commercial product, you receive a standard solution, warranties and vendor’s tech support, as well as a number of certified studios ready to make any improvements to the product.
Correctly chosen CRM is not only easy to implement but is also able to increase the productivity of your work and demonstrates the first results almost immediately.
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