Best CRM for Small Business

Choosing the best value CRM software for small business guide

All businesses, large and small, depend on customer satisfaction. No matter how good your product offerings are, your company's customer experiences are just as important. But it's not simply a question of 'what' you deliver, but also 'how' you deliver it. That may be where things get a little tricky for some business owners. Maybe after focusing all the company bandwidth on delivering the 'what,' hearing that an equal amount of focus must be paid to the 'how' seems like a nuisance. After all, shouldn't a good product sell itself? Luckily, there are businesses whose 'what' is a solution to everyone else's 'how.' Those are CRM companies. The following guide highlights those features and the benefits you should consider when choosing the best value CRM to help your small business grow.

Best Value CRM companies: Their ‘What’ Is Everyone Else’s ‘How’

According to Gartner, CRM is the fastest-growing enterprise software category, and should retain the top position over the next few years. In fact, the CRM market hit $39.5 billion in global sales in 2017. A fair amount of that growth comes from CRMs for startups or those that service the small- to medium-sized business sectors. CRM is how any business can learn to improve customer relationships, and level the playing field between themselves and larger competitors with more resources. Properly configured, a best-value CRM software for small businesses can seem magical in its transformative benefits.

Small Business CRM Features and Benefits

The truth is, even the best value CRM for small businesses is just a semi-automated database with a customisable user dashboard. That means customised processes must be set up with a high degree of diligence and attention to detail. Setting up a CRM solution for a small business is a heavily front-loaded process. The best simple-CRM software for small businesses is only as good as the methodologies its users put in place. But there’s no reason to be put off by the prospect of upfront labour, because the rewards make it all worthwhile.
It's important for small businesses to choose the best value CRM that fits their needs. Large enterprises often go for total-package, turnkey solutions, and many CRM platforms are built to deliver that. Small businesses, on the other hand, often need a combination of cost-saving technology, customisability, affordability, user-friendliness, and scalability—including the ability to add features—to keep the ball rolling with all the growth they're hoping a CRM will create. That’s why choosing the correct CRM, not just any CRM, can play a crucial part in small business success.
Small businesses benefit from CRM systems by way of a few basic categories. Below, we’ll outline a few comparisons drawn from CRMs on the market that target small and medium-sized businesses, focusing on the categories that help define what makes a CRM solution ‘effective.’

Features of CRM for SMBs

  • Rated the best CRM tool for small businesses by businessnewsdaily.com, the basic Salesforce package is a contact management platform that features accounts and contacts, task & event tracking, Microsoft Outlook sync, Salesforce mobile app, content library, customisable reports, and a company social network. Group packages add opportunity tracking, lead scoring, routing & assignment, and email templates & tracking in the $25 package. The $65 package utilises cost-saving technology as you can work on one trusted platform with best-in-class apps. You can add mass email, campaigns, customisable dashboards, and Outlook Side Panel to all the lower package features. Taken together, these options provide a complete CRM solution.

  • Utilising a Salesforce CRM package, your small business will see increased productivity with automation, with Salesforce users seeing a 26% increase in employee productivity on average. Our package delivers automation, intelligence and real-time data across every team to boost productivity, accelerate collaboration and focus on the highest-value activities.

  • Other packages may include features such as sales forecasting, reports and dashboards, document library, roles and profiles, mass email, call centre connectors, and up to 100,000 customer records. Additional features would be email integration, social CRM, Google AdWords integration, workflow automation, inventory management, macros, plus territory management, custom modules, custom applications, custom buttons, workflow approval processes, time-based actions, and multiple currencies.

Benefits of CRM for SMBs

Every small business has its own unique set of needs. However, there are certain needs that remain constant throughout—such as the need for a CRM software platform that offers everything to make closing sales faster and easier. Of course, pricing is always going to factor, but when CRM yields an ROI in the $8.00 ballpark, pricing becomes less of an issue. What’s most important is having the right package of tools to make businesses more organised and on top of activity tracking and gathering insights, allowing them to make informed business decisions about how best to serve customer needs. Which is why Salesforce comes out on top of the competition in helping your small business achieve your CRM desires.

 

Questions? We’ll put you on the right path.

Ask about Salesforce products, pricing, implementation, or anything else. Our highly trained reps are standing by, ready to help.