CRM for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

For years, SMBs figured that CRM for small business was just not a possibility, owing to the high costs and intricate functionality that came with it. For the longest time, CRM solutions were well, meant only for the needs and budgets of enterprise businesses. The question is, how many clients does it take to justify a CRM system? Not to mention, what is the ideal budget to adopt an application - particularly a CRM for small business?

However logical these questions are, SMBs that deal with clients need a flexible CRM system just as much as larger companies do. If you interact with customers on a daily basis, how do you keep track of that information? Also, how do you expect to grow without accurate details on your clients? If you don’t have a CRM for small business yet, weighing the pros and cons of open source CRM software will always be a good place to start, as customization and implementation costs can be kept to a minimum, while also optimizing on scalability.

The best CRM system enables businesses to engage with their customers effectively. Furthermore, CRM software solutions facilitate in maintaining and enhancing the organization’s relationships with current customers, colleagues, and suppliers, by providing continued support and added services. Within a CRM system, customers' contact information can be stored, sales opportunities can be identified, and marketing campaigns can be managed, from a central location. 

Continue reading for additional reasons why a dedicated CRM for small business is essential for SMBs.

To choose a solution that is the right fit for your business, it’s best to compare CRM software and read CRM reviews end-to-end. With that said, below are some of the tools with the highest CRM ratings for 2022:

• FreshWorks
• HubSpot CRM
• Monday CRM
• Oracle NetSuite CRM
• Pipedrive CRM
• Quickbase
• Sage CRM
• Salesforce
• Zendesk
• Zoho CRM

Every business needs leads whether you sell a product or service directly to the consumer or B2B. This also means you must always be prospecting. How can you tell the last time you reached out to a prospective client? Do you even remember your last conversation? The worst thing you can do is talk to a prospect about the same thing over and over again. If they didn't buy from you the first time, then you must change your messaging. The only way to do that is with a CRM for small business that can show you exactly what was discussed during your last interaction.

Have you ever been given a phone book and told to call everyone between the letters "H" and "K?" Probably not, and it's hard to believe that some companies used that method only a few decades ago. Imagine not knowing who you are calling, who to talk to or how they would respond. That type of scenario might have you sweating bullets before you even make the first call. On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice to have a CRM for small business where you can better qualify clients based on niche needs, industry and demand?

Your company has a loyal customer base, congratulations, job well done. So, apart from finding new clients, what is the next step with your current clientele? Naturally, you would want to find a way to increase their average spend. With a CRM for small business, you could track their transactions, and then produce a report that shows you exactly how much they spend and during which time frames. After that, you can dissect it even further to figure out how to raise that ratio.

To illustrate, if your company sells pool cleaning services, perhaps you have clients who get their pools cleaned a few times a year and nothing more. But, what if you also sell maintenance products? A CRM for small business allows you to better think of ways to keep them using your services, as well as purchasing maintenance products in between professional cleanings.

You've heard of the ABCs (Always Be Closing), right? This is simply something you have to do. You can never tell when a customer might move on for a wide variety of reasons, from a lack of a budget to no longer having a need. You need a funnel and a pipeline of clients you can add to your roster. It would be difficult to monitor pipeline progress using only emails and typed messages. Instead, you can pull up a list of clients in your CRM system that have stated they intend to make a purchase within a certain time frame and follow up with them.

Partially due to globalization, clients today can be very price-sensitive. For every product or service, there seem to be 40 more offering the same service at a lower price. So, how can you stand out amidst a bevy of stiff competition? Well, it takes a lot more than a price war. You don't always want to be the low-cost leader as this can be detrimental to an SMB. What you want is to service a niche unlike any of your competitors, and go the extra mile with customer service. Nonetheless, it is hard to gauge your customer's expectations if you have no way of keeping them organized.

A CRM for small business can once again help you to stand out from the competition, by offering reporting tools that can monitor users’ sentiments, especially across social media. Known as social listening, these insights can enable your team to understand how customers truly feel about your product/service, so marketing efforts can be enhanced by making email marketing more relevant, or by targeting display ads to leads with a higher potential for conversion.

Sometimes, you just can't make it into the office for one reason or another. Or, perhaps all of your work is done from home and you manage a team of home-based contractors. Either way, you still want a single database that you can access regardless of your location. This means that even if you need to take your pet to the vet or your kids to soccer practice, you can still have the purview of the status of your clients, transactions, shipping history, sales funnel, and more.

Even within the same industry, every client is unique. For SMBs, it is critical to harbor the most important qualities of customer service in order to be competitive. If a customer files a complaint, you need a way to log that complaint, so that it doesn't happen again, and you can quickly amend it before it becomes a bigger issue. You also want to have records to look back on in the event another client files a similar complaint.

Overall, SMBs need a CRM solution just as much as larger businesses. In fact, it can make the difference between remaining a small company or morphing into an enterprise.