CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management” and is a software system that helps business owners easily track all communications and nurture relationships with their leads and clients. CRM software for small business replaces the multitude of spreadsheets, databases and apps that many businesses patch together to track client data. On top of all that, the information a CRM holds and organizes makes serious automation for serious small businesses possible. The result: organization, efficiency, better time management, fewer manual tasks and impressed clients.
A CRM connects all the data from your sales leads and customers, all in one place. It also consolidates all communications (form fills, calls, emails, text messages and meetings), documents, quotes, purchases and tasks associated with each lead and client. Your entire team can access those details at the right time — to close a sale or deliver outstanding service.
What does a CRM for small business
do?
Contact management is the core function of any customer information system, including CRM software. The purpose of a CRM is to store and manage all data for every kind of contact — from leads to business partners. You might be thinking, “Ok, this sounds kind of like a spreadsheet. What does a CRM do that a spreadsheet can’t?”
Level up with a CRM
A spreadsheet is great if you have
under 100 contacts or you’re only tracking static info like name, email
address, phone number, company name, website, etc. A spreadsheet can’t compete
with a CRM in tracking more complex, dynamic data, like what emails a
contact has opened, what pages they’ve visited on your website or their last
purchase date. Your CRM is always updating automatically as your
leads and customers take actions, while data in a spreadsheet becomes stale the
second you stop manually adding to it.
The best CRM software shows how hot or cold a lead really is, thanks to lead scoring. Based on rules you set, points are added to a lead record for important actions your lead takes (like submitting a form or clicking a link), so your sales team can identify the hottest leads to focus on. Lead scoring is next to impossible without a CRM.
What a CRM doesn’t do
CRMs aren’t designed to help with
backend operations like production, warehousing, shipping, engineering or
finance.
And, of course, CRM tools can't
manage what they can't see. So if people work leads or deals outside the
system, that lowers its effectiveness for the whole team.
Some CRM software is used for data management only. However, an all-in-one CRM system like Keap also offers important features like business automation, landing pages, quotes and invoicing to help entrepreneurs manage their entire businesses more efficiently.
Examples of how a CRM works
A good CRM doesn’t stop at
collecting information. It helps you harness all of that data to:
Get personal at scale, sending the
right messages at the right times to leads and clients
Focus sales teams on the hottest
prospects
Shorten the sales cycle
Monitor, analyze and improve
results
Here’s an example of a personalized email that a consultant might send to a lead, utilizing data captured in their CRM.
A CRM absorbs as much lead
information as possible before guiding them — or helping you guide them —
through a planned journey toward purchase.
For example: Suppose a real estate
agent is looking to grow her contact list by offering a free educational course
on home-buying basics. She runs a Facebook ad campaign, linking to a course
registration page with questions about desired location, property type, price
range and timing.
Each lead’s responses will trigger
different automated follow-up communications from the realtor.
A lead looking to buy a home within two months in the realtor’s service area would be tagged as a “hot lead” and enter a fast-track communication sequence.
A lead in the realtor’s area whose
purchase timeframe is six months out would be tagged as “long-term nurture” and
receive a series of emails offering home-buying resources, designed to keep the
realtor top-of-mind until the lead is ready to buy. The CRM could also create a
follow-up task to contact the lead via phone four months later.
Leads whose target purchase
location is outside of the realtor’s area will be tagged as such and will only
receive communications related to the course.
As you can see, there are many benefits of CRM software. Two business functions that benefit most from CRM software are sales and marketing. Let’s see how.
How Do I Get Started with CRM?
The best way to fully understand
how to use the right software to organize and grow your business is to test out
the best CRM for small business. Try Keap’s CRM and business automation
software for free with a 14-day free trial (no credit card needed).
Once you’ve signed up for Keap’s
free trial, get started with these simple steps:
Import your list of contacts and
map your fields
Add custom fields to capture any new data points you’d like to store for your leads or customers
Categorize your contacts with tags for easy segmentation (website leads, repeat
customers, vendors, partners)
Add tasks, notes, files, and other
details to a contact record
Create a lead capture form or
landing page to collect lead data directly in your CRM
Explore additional features that will help you level up your business like Easy Automations, Appointments and email marketing
