Businesses around the world are still feeling the effects of this global pandemic. It's hard to keep up with the latest consumer expectations and adapt to this new fast-paced, digitised world. But despite the global pandemic, some businesses are well into a massive growth phase.
Different organisations, industries, and regions operate at separate growth speeds. How fast a business can stabilise, adapt, and thrive is contingent upon some key factors. Like access to resources, available funds, time, and a sizeable workforce. Essentially, everything a large corporations has, but small and medium enterprises (SMEs) may lack.
SMEs are true powerhouses of the global economy. In the EU alone, businesses of 250 employees or less contribute 57% of the economic value—that's over €4 trillion! But with the impact of COVID-19 and fluctuating consumer behaviours, SMEs face major challenges. Like the lack of time to adapt the current market. This puts added pressure on workforce productivity and happiness. It also detracts from a healthy work/life balance.
1. Organise your customer data
One of the challenges of scaling a business is managing an ever-growing list of customers. Traditional management systems fail to present a clear picture of your customer base. SMEs need a clear overview of customers, all in one secure location.
A CRM system collects and stores important information about your customers, like their:
- email and phone number
- social media data
- website details and more.
Most importantly, CRMs save all customer engagements across multiple channels. This gives you a comprehensive view of your business relationship with the customers. And with a cloud-based CRM system, everyone can work remotely with the most up-to-date information. This supercharges your organisation.
2. Reduce admin with effective solutions
The more time you spend on administrative tasks, the less you can focus on your business and customers. You need to automate and scale administrative tasks that take up too much time. It also improves team communication, automates reports, and streamlines accounting tasks.
In our Time to Transform report, SME owners and employees cited overwork and stress as the biggest impacts on their mental health. These stressor detract from focusing on their customers, products, and growth. Currently, SME owners are spending 19% of their time on admin tasks and 17% on accounting and finance. That's 36% of their time spent on tasks that can be automated with a CRM system.
For instance, PensionBee built a Trailblazing pension admin app on Sales Cloud to simplify daily tasks. Since launching the Honeycomb app, PensionBee slashed the time spent on administration by 75%.
By automating repetitive tasks, PensionBee is tripling the number of customers that its service team can handle. It has already signed up 137,000 customers in only three years!
3. Grow your business
In the current business landscape, the competition is fierce. The businesses that win customers are more organised, better informed, and inspire trust. Running a small enterprise is a juggling act. So it can be difficult to move forward with a growth strategy when there’s barely time for the day-to-day.
To support your business growth, it is critical to complete the automation of all your processes and administrative tasks. This will helps improve team productivity and frees up time so you can focus on the top activity that add value to your growth: serving customers! It also keeps all your data in one place, eliminating disconnected systems, i.e., spreadsheets or physical paperwork. These outdated methods can slow your business down as you manage growth. The best systems scale with your business as it grows.
How to help sales teams identify new leads and maximise information to close more deals?
The information of each customer, recorded in the CRM, helps sales reps personalise responses and pitches. Marketers will identify the prospects that need more nurturing and prime them to become qualified leads. Email marketing — still the #1 marketing performer for SMEs — is useful for creating powerful journeys.
What our research shows:
In the modern business world, deals are no longer exclusively won by the biggest and wealthiest companies. Small and medium enterprises are positioning themselves as worthy contenders against their established competitors.
In the ‘CRM, a recipe for success’ eBook, you will learn how SMEs are changing the modern business landscape! We also understand that many SMBs need additional resources to stabilise during this crisis. Get the tools you need to adapt and grow your business with our Leading Through Change series and list of resources for small businesses in the EU facing the COVID-19 pandemic.
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