Feel familiar? When small businesses start growing fast, existing processes and technology  — right down to those post-it notes — soon becomes outdated. If you’re still putting your business on pen-and-paper, you’re losing a lot of time and information to an inefficient process, and it's hindering your growth potential. With a growing team, everyone has his or her own way of doing things and collecting customer information; and this doesn’t translate when working with other members, especially if you’re spread out geographically!  Plus, even with transferring notes to the computer, you lose a lot of accuracy in the process, which could be detrimental to your sales opportunities. You’ll find out quickly that running the business on spreadsheets and using post-its to manage your customer followup just isn’t sticking anymore.

So how do you set up your business for success? Follow these three steps to set yourself on the path to faster growth.

1. Invest in the right technology: It’s time to leave a digital paper trail — one your team can actually follow up on.  Any simple CRM solution can help capture all your customer activity — from a marketing lead, to a sales opportunity, and all the way to a happy serviced customer; but the right cloud-based CRM for small business will help you grow the business: reporting can show where you need to push through in the pipeline, and customer histories can show you when and where the next big opportunity lies. 

2. Automate business processes: Want to find the best marketing leads, work your sales process more efficiently, or route support cases quickly to next available service expert? Automation helps you do all that more efficiently. Then your team can spend more time focusing on the hot leads, big deals, and customer happiness you need to drive your business growth to new levels.

3. Get smart about your business: With 89% and 72% of business buyers and consumers (respectively) expecting companies to understand their needs and expectations, it’s tough to stand out. Using artificial intelligence (AI) technology and analytics helps take the guesswork out of running your business and let’s you uncover insights to make smarter decisions, anticipate outcomes, and suggest next actions. Simply put: AI is an easy way to help everyone work more efficiently in their jobs.

Check out the rest of our videos and learn how you can ditch the stickies and spreadsheets and drive faster growth.

Salesforce can help you find customers, win their businesses, and keep them happy so you can grow your business faster than ever. Learn more about our small business CRM solutions or join the conversation with #SalesforceGROW.