CRM for small businesses: What’s in it for me?
CRM has been a buzzword in the business community for years. But as with most trends, it can leave you wondering: is it worth it?
Especially for small and medium-sized businesses, purchasing, setting up, and managing a CRM solution can seem like more trouble than it’s worth.
Customer relationship management is exactly what it sounds like:
- Maintaining information about your customers and prospects
- Identifying and acting on sales opportunities
- Managing complaints and service issues
- Executing marketing campaigns
CRM solutions like Salesforce.com, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, and others make it easy to have all of these functions in one place so that everyone in your organization so that your sales team, marketing, leadership, and anyone else can easily access customer information.
But what does all of that really mean in terms of CRM for small businesses? Let’s use an example. Larry Lights owns a small company that rents out production equipment like lights, projectors, speakers, and cameras. With such a small team, he has to do everything, including sales, marketing, billing, and even transporting equipment to their customers.
However, with the size of his business, he, like other small business owners, finds himself asking what the point of investing in a CRM system would be. We’re going to explain how Larry Lights – and you –could benefit from a good CRM.
Tracking Customer Lifecycles with CRM
Small business owners like Larry Lights have a lot on their plates. It can be difficult to keep track of customers. CRMs like Salesforce.com allow organizations to use pre-built or custom flows to track customer lifecycles, from leads to prospects to sales.
Once Larry Lights’ company announced they had a new projector, a local theater reached out to rent it for their production. Larry Lights entered their information into a lead form while they were working on figuring out details, like what dates they would want the projector and what other services they would need. Once they nailed down the weekends of the show, Larry Lights moved them to the next stage of the customer journey, which for him is Reserved, and invoiced the theater for the deposit.
Small Business, Big Sales Opportunities
Many CRMs can make your life easier by automating your sales. Everyone’s got a lot going on – how do you make sure you’re on your customer’s mind next time they need organic pet food or bespoke clay jewelry?
Larry Lights knew that this theater put on a new production every three months. He easily set up a reminder in his CRM system so that three months later, he knew to reach out to them again and ask if they needed a projector for this show too. They didn’t, but they were so impressed he thought to reach out, they used Larry Lights’ company for their sound and lighting equipment, rather than going with their old vendor.
Providing Service with CRM
It’s inevitable – issues happen, things break, customers complain. It’s how you deal with it that matters, especially to your customers. Having the ability to manage these complaints can help you build trust and a lasting relationship with your customers.
The day after their opening night, several lights seemed to break out of nowhere, and the director started to panic. The stage manager contacted Larry Lights, and he was able to document the issue, coordinate a technician to go fix the equipment in plenty of time for curtain and follow up with the stage manager later to make sure everything was still running smoothly. The next time the theater needed lighting equipment, they remembered how quickly and efficiently Larry Lights’ company fixed the issue, and they were their first choice when picking a veAnd on top of that, having documented that this theater was prone to having issues with equipment, Larry was able to offer them a stand-by technician for a surcharge in case anything went wrong again. The theater was relieved by Larry’s forward-thinking and quickly took him up on the offer.
Marketing Campaigns driven by CRM
Marketing works best when you know your audience. But who can remember each and every detail about each and every customer? CRM systems can store this information for you, and help you build campaigns that target segments of your customer population based on specific characteristics.
Larry Lights and his company suddenly found themselves with several high-quality projectors, perfect for all kinds of productions, but especially small to medium size theaters. Larry Lights ran a report on his customer population to find all of those that used theaters sized for these projectors, and started a multichannel marketing campaign to let them know about the new equipment offering they had. Within days, all their projectors were booked for several months out.
So, is CRM for small businesses worth it?
Customer relationship management systems help you move your customers through their journey with you, turning leads into sales. They can mean the difference between just having customers and having loyal regulars. A customer relationship management system isn’t just for corporations and enterprise businesses – small and medium-sized companies can benefit just as much. From tracking customer lifecycles to creating and capitalizing on sales opportunities, to nurturing relationships through superior service and targeted marketing, a solid CRM system could be the difference-maker your small business needs.
So, in our opinion, it is definitely worth it.
Check out Everest Customer Solution’s CRM Solution Calculator to get an idea of your organization’s needs and learn how we can help you improve your customer’s experience.