Keeping track of contact information and communications while growing relationships and staying up to date on sales can be a challenge for any small business. You don’t have to be a large corporation that makes million dollar sales to need a little help with your business. This is where a CRM can come into play. Let’s find out if a CRM is the missing piece for your small business.

What Is a CRM System?

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is software that helps businesses manage customer interactions and relationships. It allows you to store client information, track communications like emails, texts, and phone calls, and automate sales and marketing processes. The features that make a CRM the missing piece for small businesses include contact databases, sales tracking, lead nurturing, and marketing automation. 

The goal of a CRM is to ultimately improve your client’s satisfaction when doing business with you and help you grow your business.

How Can a CRM Help Small Businesses?

Businesses of any size often need help managing and organizing customer data effectively. Missed opportunities, disorganized communication, and a lack of insight into client behaviour are a reality for small businesses with less time and resources. A CRM ensures you never lose a lead, organizes your customer data, and looks into how people find and contact your business. With the correct setup, a CRM streamlines processes while improving customer relationships and driving growth.

1. Centralized Customer Data

As a small business, managing and organizing contacts can seem like a disorganized mess. Contacts might live in disconnected spreadsheets, emails, or text threads. A CRM stores contacts in one place and gives you a way to store all their information to help you make that sale. You’ll find information from names, emails, and phone numbers to more specific details like how they found your business.

It's easy to add contacts to your CRM, as new contacts are automatically created when people reach out to you through connected channels. These channels include website forms, text bubbles, social direct messages, appointment bookings, and more. Having this contact information captured and stored every time someone interacts with your business is important to avoid leads falling through the cracks. Incoming phone calls can even be tracked and grouped with current contacts in your list. If you’re looking forward to not sifting through spreadsheets or sticky notes to find important customer information, a CRM could be the right solution. 

2. Improved Customer Relationships

Building and maintaining strong customer relationships is an important part of the sales process for small businesses in today's competitive business landscape. People need to build trust with you before they hit the buy button. However, with their limited resources, small business owners need efficient strategies for managing customer relationships.

A CRM allows you to provide personalized attention to your customers. One way to do this is by sending monthly emails to your contact list to keep them in the loop. A CRM system also allows you to see all your messages in one place, so all you see are organized conversation threads.

Additionally, you are provided valuable insights into customer behaviour, like which channels people use most. These insights can inform business decisions and marketing strategies. For example, when you use an Easyleads CRM website form, you can see which pages a contact visited before filling out the form.

3. Sales and Lead Management

When new leads come into your business, it's not just about acquiring contact information; it's about ensuring a smooth transition from lead generation to conversion. A CRM plays a key role in this process by allowing you to designate which team members are responsible for following up with leads. This level of accountability creates a well-organized and efficient sales process. A CRM helps keep lead information visible so you can pass it off to another team member at any point. You can also stay organized by leaving tasks for yourself or others. 

4. Calendar and Appointment Management

Managing customer appointments and scheduling can be time-consuming as a small business owner. That's where CRM's capabilities can make a significant difference. With its seamless integration with calendar and appointment tools, your video, phone, and in-person appointments can be automatically scheduled for a time that works best for you and your prospective customer. 

By connecting the calendar booking system in a CRM like Easyleads to your Google or Outlook Calendar, you will avoid conflicting meetings and have a clear view of your schedule at all times. A CRM system also allows for efficient re-scheduling and cancellation of appointments, making it easier to provide top-notch customer service.

5. Marketing Integrations

With Easyleads, you can easily integrate your CRM with your Google Business Profile, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Ads, Google Analytics, phone number, and more. This means you can manage all aspects of your marketing efforts directly within the CRM, saving you time. Connecting different integrations keeps your processes centralized, so you don't have to jump back and forth between platforms.

6. Track Your Customer Journey

Not everyone who comes into contact with your business is ready to buy today. They generally go through a journey from knowing, liking and trusting you before becoming a customer.

This is why sales pipelines are your new best friend. A pipeline lets you track your customer journey, giving you a bird's-eye view of your entire sales process. This ensures smooth communication and internal organization, allowing you to give the attention that each lead needs. An overview of where each lead and customer is in the customer journey can allow you to set specific sales goals.

Furthermore, a CRM system offers workflow automation that auto-populates your pipelines. For example, when someone fills out your 'Get a Quote' form, a new lead opportunity can be automatically populated on your pipeline, once again saving you time.

Successful CRM Strategies for Small Businesses

CRMs can benefit small businesses by helping them organize and manage customer data, streamline processes, and improve customer interactions. However, setting up and implementing a CRM can overwhelm your team if done too quickly and without the right strategy. A managed CRM solution is the best option for small businesses, so you don't have to go at it alone.

Proper Onboarding

Proper onboarding for your CRM system is crucial for the success and growth of your business. It ensures that all your marketing tools are integrated seamlessly into the system. Getting help implementing website forms, chat bubbles, booking calendars, and general setup can make a world of difference.

Also, properly onboarding your team to use the CRM system effectively is crucial. If your staff don’t know how to use the system properly, they are likelier not to use it. With a managed CRM, that support is there for you. Now, you can actually use the system and not worry about the technical details as they are handled by someone who knows the system inside out. You can also customize your system to match your company's processes best.

Utilization of the Features

A successful CRM strategy involves using the features laid out for you. Sure, this may involve changing some of your current business processes, but the result may be well worth it. The new features will give you an edge over your competitors. The efficiency gained from using a CRM will ultimately lead to more closed deals and satisfied customers.

Reflecting on What is Working and What Isn't

An essential step in CRM adoption is to regularly assess the effectiveness of the systems and tools in place. After a few months of using a new CRM, reflecting on what is working and what isn't is essential. With Easyleads CRM, you can rest easy knowing we help manage your account, meaning you are not alone in your CRM adoption.

Our team can review your needs and determine how the CRM can be improved. With Easyleads, you can trust that any necessary changes are made to your account, allowing you to focus on running your business. This level of support and attention to detail is crucial as you streamline your operations without getting bogged down in the technical aspects of CRM management.

Make the most of your CRM by utilizing a managed CRM like Easyleads. We'll handle the heavy lifting while you focus on caring for your customers.