Find the Best CRM for Small Business Needs

Customer relationship management software, often shortened to CRM, is a software system that helps businesses store and manage contact information for customers, track leads, find sales opportunities, manage marketing campaigns, handle customer service efforts, and more, all in a single dashboard. Your CRM needs to allow you to track customer interactions throughout their lifecycle, providing insights into the conversion process.

In short, a CRM lives up to its name. It helps your business manage its customer relationships, from the moment a lead learns about your company to the interactions you have after a customer has made a purchase. All of these interactions are part of the customer journey.

For example, a CRM can show you when a lead first contacted sales, when a sales team member scheduled a demo, when they signed a contract, and if they filed a support ticket. The software automatically collects a large amount of data, and your team adds additional notes, information, and data points to create a detailed, 360-degree view of each customer. A cloud-based CRM stores all that data in one centralized platform, where it’s immediately updated and accessible to all employees at all times.

Small business CRM systems have powerful automation features that streamline the sales process, improve customer service, and drive return on investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns. They also provide access to a vast amount of business intelligence data to help personalize outreach and build relationships. As of late 2020, 56% of small and midsize businesses are using CRM systems, which is a 24% increase in use since 2019.

But your small business isn't just about ROI; it's about people. A CRM keeps data about your customers organized and easy to access. Even so, how do you know it’s time to invest in a CRM platform instead of using the methods you already have in place for customer relationship management?

The right CRM can keep your business organized, help you build relationships, and streamline the sales process. But does your small business actually need one? Is it worth the investment?

While CRMs are essential for many businesses, not every small business needs one. If you are not interested in growing your business and are happy with your current system, you may not need a CRM platform.

However, if your business is looking to grow or improve just about any part of the customer journey, a CRM can help you get there. When SMB leaders were asked about the biggest benefits of a CRM system, 63% said that with a CRM, they were able to provide better or faster customer service.

Chances are good that if you’re researching CRM platforms for your small business, you could benefit from having one. Here are seven factors that may indicate your company is growing and needs a CRM.

In the beginning of a small business’s life, knowing what each lead or customer wants and how to serve them is fairly simple. Sticky notes or a spreadsheet are sufficient. Once your small business expands its customer base and has many leads with many different needs, it’s time to take the next step with customer relationship management. If your team needs help remembering who last contacted a prospect or where a lead is in the sales funnel, a CRM can keep you organized. With it, your team can document messages, points of contact, and where a contact is in the sales funnel.

It's easy to lose track of conversations when your team is communicating with several people, which happens often in the B2B space. Did you last talk to Dave in sales or Anne in compliance? Did your team receive the contract you need to move forward — and is it signed by the right people? A CRM allows your entire team to see all interactions in one place and serves as a single source of truth.

For some small businesses, it is challenging to track progress when the sales process lasts weeks — or months. A CRM keeps your business organized by tracking conversations, contacts, touchpoints, and individual prospect and customer needs, and by storing documents.

A small business CRM platform can help you sort vast amounts of data and use that data to target high-value customers, then treat them to personalized service. Your platform should help you create, segment, track, and optimize marketing campaigns, smooth the sales process, and help customers quickly, no matter whether you use built-in tools or third-party apps integrated using APIs and other methods.

If your small business runs on instinct rather than data, you may be missing out on growth opportunities. A CRM provides reports such as sales forecasts, customer insights, and marketing effectiveness. Not only are these reports based on data, but they’re also analyzed by algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) in order to more accurately predict trends and help your business plan for the future. Research from IBM shows that 76% of the best companies are investing more heavily in data-driven, decision-making solutions, including CRM platforms with built-in AI. IBM defined the best companies as those that “understand that customer experience is a direct reflection of employee experience and redesign their business and operations accordingly.”

As leads come in and convert into paying customers, your entire team needs to stay organized. A CRM is a scalable resource that helps businesses create data-driven processes so your team can work efficiently and stay on target as you grow.

CRM platforms are proven to increase:

• Conversions
• Deal sizes
• Win rates
• Qualified leads
• Campaign effectiveness
• Customer retention
• Customer satisfaction
• Case resolution speeds
• Online revenue
• Deployment speeds

John Kucera, SVP of Product Management at Salesforce, writes that automation is like “your very own built-in personal assistant.” For example, each time a potential customer steps away from their cart on your website, marketing automation can immediately send an email to that person to remind them of their waiting purchase. Your team sets up this automation once and updates it as necessary, but doesn’t have to individually email each potential customer about their cart.

Automation is available for every section of the sales funnel and every department in your business. Your CRM can be set up to automate time-consuming tasks, keep customer records organized, improve compliance, send task reminders, and streamline workflows. In fact, research finds that after security and identity technology, workflow automation — putting technology to work on things that don’t need a human touch so employees can take care of more important tasks — is IT’s top employee experience technology priority.

Many small businesses aren’t aware that they would benefit from a CRM system; CRMs aren't just for enterprise companies. Small businesses with lean or growing teams can use CRMs to get more done and stay on top of their success.

A CRM stores and helps analyze and filter data, but how does that help your business grow? CRM platforms do more than track your current or prospective customers. They also offer a range of features designed to streamline the process of running a small business.

Benefits vary by platform, but there are four core attributes you should consider when comparing CRM platforms. Here are the most common CRM benefits, how they work, why they matter, and how they can help your small business grow.

Your small business will use a CRM platform to store customer and company details and contact information — including names, phone numbers, addresses, social media accounts, billing information, and every other detail — in the searchable database. This keeps departments organized and prevents accounts and tasks from slipping through the cracks.

For example, sales teams can use contact management to follow prospects through the sales cycle. Marketing can use contact management to build more effective marketing campaigns.

When comparing CRM systems, consider how easy the database is to use, the filters each offers, and whether the platform offers import and export features. Relationships are key: Research shows that 86% of sales reps report an increased importance of long-term customer relationships.

Your CRM platform should track interactions with leads, help with lead generation, create sales reports, automatically score leads, automate follow-up reminders, and even assign leads to specific salespeople. A CRM is a powerful tool, and small businesses that use it have massive advantages over their competition.

Salespeople often spend more time on account management than on actually contacting leads and building relationships, but with a CRM, your team can stay focused on closing deals, rather than spending time on paperwork and rote tasks.

CRMs don't just help your sales team. While salespeople were originally the primary users of CRM platforms, the technology has significantly expanded and now helps companies manage just about every aspect of running a business, including marketing.

A CRM can improve your marketing efforts in a variety of ways, including letting users manage and automate drip campaigns, providing insights into a contact’s customer journey, and helping monitor social media campaigns and sentiment. Small businesses can also use data to inform upselling, cross-selling, and personalized marketing, such as recommending related products.

Over time, your CRM becomes a treasure trove of information about current and past customers, including which customers are most profitable, when they are likely to churn, and what types of products or services they are likely to purchase. Marketing, as well as other departments, can use these metrics and this data to personalize the customer experience.

In business terms, personalization is “the act of tailoring an experience or communication based on information a company has learned about an individual.”

CRMs offer a variety of features to improve customer service and make it more personal, including first-contact resolution capabilities, contact tracking, and call recording. Plus, by storing all your customer information in one place, known as a single source of truth, agents can quickly see how a customer has interacted with your company in the past and address any issues that a customer may face — sometimes preemptively. Because a CRM hosts all your customer information, your reps can interact with each person with full knowledge of their customer history, speeding the process along and helping customers feel unique and valued.

CRM platforms do more than just keep track of customer names and manage marketing campaigns. The right CRM can improve your small business in other ways, with features like:

• Marketing and sales automation
• Document storage and organization
• Ecommerce features
• Detailed reporting tools with filters
• Cloud storage
• Workflow management
• Business intelligence
• Competitor analysis

When used to its fullest potential, a CRM can impact every aspect of your small business, including customer interactions, team communications, and workflows. With that in mind, what features should you look for as you consider your options?

Comparing CRM systems can be overwhelming. There are dozens of features to consider and plenty of platform options. When comparing different CRMs, here are several features and restrictions to keep in mind.

Is the system built specifically for small businesses? Investing in something that might work well for now, but will need to be replaced in the future can create frustrating, avoidable issues. Your CRM should fit your needs now and grow as your business does. Switching CRMs can be a hassle, so look for a platform designed for growth. For example, does it offer additional storage, user logins (seats), features, and reporting tools to help your business move forward?

Most CRM pricing is based on the number of leads or customers stored in the database. When comparing plans, pay attention to contact limits, which can increase the cost as your business grows. Ensure your CRM platform allows you to easily switch plans or upgrade and is cost effective for the current number of contacts you have — and for the number you plan to have in the future.

Price comparison is not always straightforward. Some CRM providers offer affordable plans, but limit the storage or number of contacts. Features such as automation or marketing tools may only be available as add-on features. The price is low, but the value may be, too.

For small businesses, a la carte pricing can lower costs, as you only pay for the features you need. However, the costs can quickly pile up as you add on features due to evolving and expanding needs. Consider contact limits, available features, and growth potential when comparing different plans.

CRM platforms can help users automate manual and repetitive tasks, which is a boon for small businesses with limited teams. Rather than using valuable time entering routine information, generating sales reports, and following up with leads, your CRM can take care of these tasks, and others, all on its own. Once you configure the settings, your CRM will handle the rest.

For example, your CRM can automate social media responses to routine questions, create a task to respond to customer service requests, or score a new lead and assign it to a member of your sales team. When evaluating new technology, 46% of small and midsize business owners and leaders rate automation capabilities as extremely or very important.

CRMs are powerful, and for best results, you should integrate your other business software and tools. Integration refers to connecting two pieces of software so they can share data. Most CRMs integrate with other platforms, software, apps, and tools, which allows them to share data and automate tasks across platforms. Salesforce has AppExchange, a library of free and paid add-ons and integrated tools that quickly install and work with Salesforce solutions.

For example, you should connect your CRM and email marketing platforms. Then you can better create a segmented email marketing blast, or you can connect your CRM with Gmail to assign emails to specific clients. Integrations with tools can provide access to more data and streamline processes, so make sure the platform you select works with the other tools you use to power your business.

Mobile access to your CRM enables your team to log in and manage crucial business data from any device and any location. This improves adoption rates and allows you to run your business from outside the office. Furthermore, 99% of IT leaders say businesses must be mobile-enabled to survive in the future. Give your teams the freedom to work from a mobile device in order to succeed.

Some CRM platforms offer limited mobile features or may not work as well on mobile devices, such as phones or tablets. Ensure the solution you select offers the level of mobile access your team needs to work efficiently.

Workflow management tools such as task reminders, project tracking, and approval automation simplify processes and ensure employees can manage tasks and deadlines. For example, rather than an employee manually changing a lead from “prospect” to “customer” status, workflow management tools can automate the process based on prerequisites or specified actions.

As a result, your team can stay organized, provide faster service, and work proactively. Look for a platform that provides the workflow features your team requires.

To reduce the risk of data loss, consider how and where your CRM data is stored. The top CRMs today offer cloud storage or are based in the cloud, which means the provider stores data in multiple locations, and your team can use the tool from any location with an internet connection. Look for a system with redundant backups to ensure your data is safe, and for a provider that keeps your business compliant with applicable laws and regulations.

Security can be a concern, especially for businesses that work with sensitive data. Make sure your CRM provider can handle this kind of data. For example, you may need data encryption. The company you trust with your CRM needs must take your security needs seriously.

Some CRMs offer ecommerce features, such as a chatbot, 360-degree customer journey tracking, customer review features, and even the ability to launch and optimize ecommerce pages. If your business sells or plans to sell products online, make sure your CRM will support your ecommerce growth and goals.

Effective marketing campaigns rely on accurate data. A small business CRM can help gather and analyze data, and it can also help you manage and optimize your campaigns through built-in features and app integrations. To make the most of your data and marketing budget, make sure the platform you choose provides the marketing features you need.

No two businesses are alike. This means the CRM your competitor uses might actually slow you down. Look for a CRM that is customizable so you can adjust it to meet your needs. For example, does it allow you to create customized sales reports or add custom fields to your contact database?

Finding the right CRM for your business takes time, but it’s worth the effort to find the platform with the resources your business needs to thrive.

When comparing different CRM platforms, keep these six questions in mind.