In the modern business world, deals are no longer won by only the biggest and wealthiest companies. Agility and flexibility in business are the new currency, allowing small businesses to position themselves as worthy contenders against more established competitors. This is possible thanks to the rapid advance of technology for business.
Armed with the right tools, a small business can rapidly access the most advanced technology to do more with less, while staying agile and able to adapt to customers changing expectations much quicker than bigger players with legacy systems and dated infrastructure and processes.
While many tools can help achieve this, one of the most useful solutions for growing and scaling a business is Customer Relationship Management (CRM). A CRM platform collects and manages the information and interactions your company has with your customers, sales leads, suppliers, or other businesses, allowing your team to manage customer relations and business processes efficiently without sacrificing quality.
You will find a comprehensive view of all the benefits a CRM system could bring to your growing business in this e-book: CRM for Small Business - a recipe for success. But for now, I will share three ways it can help you boost your business and gain a competitive edge.
Benefits of CRM for a small business
CRM has helped many businesses to streamline their relationships and interactions with customers. By leveraging the power of a tailor-made CRM, a business can maintain connections to customers, streamline business processes, and improve profitability. Customer relationship management, therefore, has many benefits, such as the ability to:
1. Boost your productivity and efficiency
The more time you and your employees spend on administrative tasks, the less time can be spent on the things that really matter - your business and your customers. Small businesses are, by nature, thin on the ground in terms of resources, so automating and making these tasks more efficient can free up you and your employees to focus where it counts.
CRM can automate many of the tedious, manual tasks you had to do before, including:
Prioritising leads by evaluating the best leads for your reps to work on.
Creating unique buyer interactions by defining buyer journeys and customer actions across touchpoints.
Lead nurturing by automating your marketing workflows such as email campaigns.
Reporting by creating detailed datasets and dashboards with just a couple of clicks.
Implementing the right CRM is like gaining a hyper-efficient invisible team member, leaving you time to focus on what matters.
2. Stay organised while you scale your business with a CRM
One of the challenges of scaling a business is developing an agile organisational structure and managing the information for an ever-growing list of customers and prospects. Many traditional systems keep information siloed and inhibit security, accessibility, and accuracy, preventing a clear picture of your customer base and business performance. A CRM helps overcome this providing a comprehensive 360 view of your customer.
An effective CRM can also help organise other aspects of your business. Though traditionally used as a sales and marketing tool, a CRM can integrate across departments and be customised to track information from supply chain, customer service, human resources, and marketing.
3. Understand and target your ideal customers better with CRM
To stay competitive, businesses need to deliver a great experience for their customers. Modern customers are savvier than ever before, and when choosing amongst all the available offerings, they focus on the experience.
Streamlined, organised, and prepared, your data is key to allow for a better and personalised interaction with prospects and customers alike and gaining an edge over the competition. CRM solutions give small businesses the tools to deliver excellent customer experiences by providing a full view of each customer.
A CRM system gathers information from conversations on social media, internal account discussions, account history, and business information. This data provides actionable intelligence that can be used to find the right prospects and make the right pitch at the right time, therefore closing more deals or successfully nurturing leads that are not ready to convert yet.
Gain a competitive edge with the right tool in place
In the current business landscape, the competition is fierce and everyone is looking for an edge. Winning the customer comes down to the business that’s more organised, better informed, and inspires more trust. These are areas in which small businesses or startups struggle to compete with the size and resources of large corporations, but not when armed with a CRM.
The right CRM system can enhance your assets to improve profitability and collaboration among team members and to build stronger relationships with existing and prospective customers- providing a competitive edge and alleviating time constraints for creative thinking.
Introducing a CRM platform produces real results, especially to the bottom line. Not only that, it can save significant amounts of time and resource, freeing small businesses up to succeed by focusing on their customers.
Want to learn more? Download CRM for Small Business - a Recipe for Success now.
