The Impact of CRM for Small Business

Saphyte Team

6 min read

Updated: June 9th, 2020

Technological transformation has taken over most companies. Taking over from the sales and marketing aspect to the back office. Well should you be afraid of the changes that are taking over business?

No. Technological transformations were not meant to bring businesses down, rather technology contributes greatly to their growth. Speaking of contribution for growth, one software is contributing greatly for businesses worldwide. This software is called Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and has grown popular among small businesses and enterprises alike. 

To fully understand the rapid rise of popularity among CRM systems, one needs to take a look at the origins and influences that shaped this software. 

What is CRM?

CRM is a technology or system built for managing all a business’ relationships and interactions with its customers and potential customers. CRM built with the idea of the welfare of your customers, not your business.

A CRM software for small businesses and large enterprises is the other wing of your customer relation needs. Of course, the other wing should be the part where your strategies keep your customer satisfied.

This system basic function is to help you manage your customer data. The software can support your sales management, give actionable and data-driven insights, integrate with social media, and facilitate team communication. 

Among the famous CRM systems are Saphyte, Zoho CRM, Agile CRM, and Hubspot CRM. The aforementioned CRM systems are unique, varied and adapted to the various needs of the customer. In the uniqueness of the systems there are no two CRM tools built are the same. 

What’s Inside a CRM software

What you see inside a CRM solution software will vary. CRM offers a broad set of applications designed to help businesses manage their customer, marketing, and sales. Each feature is designed to make workloads lighter and faster implementation of sales processes. The features include but not limited to the following: 

Client Management. A feature that enables your contact manager to effectively and efficiently manage your contacts database. Easily automate your processes, organize your data, manage your tasks, generate your reports, and do more for your client. 

Sales Management. A feature that allows you to manage your sales activities. This feature will let you know where your sales are in your business process by visual sales pipelines. You can also close your deals faster through other sub-features.

Marketing. You can accelerate your marketing strategy to the next level through campaign management, social media marketing, email marketing, and more.

Team and Workspace Management. A good CRM software allows you to manage your own team by creating users and assigning them to different departments. You can also authorize your users with roles to grant them permission or restriction in the system. 

Again, the features listed above will vary on the CRM software you choose for your business. That is why it is essential to create a checklist of the things you need before you find a CRM software. 

Benefits of CRM for Small Business

If you own a small business, your end goal is expansion. As you expand, you need the necessary tools to help you stay afloat in your business. A good CRM tool enables small business owners to tackle their operation challenges head on. 

Whether the challenges are about sales decline, or high client attrition. CRM tools can even straighten the misalignment between corporate revenue targets and sales teams commission policies. 

If you are a small business owner, a good CRM tool can positively affect your bottom line. However, here are some of the most obvious positive effects of a good CRM solution software. 

Know Your Customers

You’ll know who is buying from you and how often, and have up-to-date contact details. Since the software enables you to have access to their sales history, you will gain an insight on consumer buying trends. This information, added with the right timing and with the right message, can win clients. 

Put Value on Your Customers and Your Brand

Through the software you can analyze your customers and their buying patterns. This will quantify the exact worth of your customer to your business. This information allows you to identify your most profitable customers and other important sale segments.

Have All your Information in One Place

Most dedicated CRM systems allow you to collate your sales and marketing data with other data, such as customer accounts, stock-keeping and delivery. This feature is great because it encourages accountability. By having the appropriate knowledge about a customer’s dealings within your firm.

Test and Refine your Marketing Strategies

With a CRM system, you will have all the information needed to analyze the success of marketing strategies of your company and refine them, if needed.

Boost customer retention

With all the valid and good customer records, you can now offer a more personal and targeted service. This will surely improve your customer satisfaction levels. Hence, retain good customers for a longer time.

Up-Sell and Cross-Sell Made Easy

With the collected data of buying patterns from your customers, you can identify opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell. This will enable you to maximize the value of every customer on your database.

Increase Your Efficiency and Reduce Costs

Efficiency, that is the most basic function of CRM tools. In order to reduce sales and marketing expenses, you must improve your audience targeting and reduce wastage. You can do this by deleting duplicate processes. Hence, saving more time and money.

Spot Trends and Monitor Changes

Most small businesses often operate on the back foot. This means that business owners only react to changes in the market after an event. With the proper CRM tool, you can spot changing customer needs, behavior, and trends in real time. So you can respond quickly and spot the changes you need to implement in your sales processes. 

How to Build a Strong CRM Strategy for your Business

Having a good CRM tool is just the beginning. You also need to have a solid and sturdy CRM strategy to go along with your business process. What is a CRM strategy and why is it important?

A CRM strategy is basically a practice that focuses on converting your leads or prospects into a customer through personalized sales activities. By doing so, you are retaining your customers through engaging them with personalized communication.

A great CRM strategy is important because it decreases the cost of customer acquisition and increases your customer’s lifetime value. A great customer relationship strategy can give you amazing benefits and will help your business increase profit.

How do you build an effective, sturdy and strong CRM strategy for your business? Here are some of the ways you can build an effective CRM strategy for your business.

Define the vision of your Business

A clear business vision is the first and most essential part of building your CRM strategy. Try to think with your team of what is the end goal of your CRM strategy. These goals enable you to track the progress of your sales teams.

Just make sure that the objective of your CRM strategy coincides with any future business environments without forsaking customer experience and profitability.

Align your CRM strategy with your corporate strategy

The function of corporate strategies is to focus on revenue growth and offering a personal customer experience. You can only achieve this goal by implementing an effective roadmap.

Your corporate strategy and CRM strategy should complement each other. This will be your guide in finding the best and suitable CRM software for your business. In addition to that, the software must also have the functionality to address any of your corporate goals.

If any of these three doesn’t align, your business will struggle to get an increase of user adoption and it will hardly become sustainable.

Check and Analyze Existing Data Wisely

The existing data in your CRM software plays a significant role in your CRM strategy. It is essential that you map your customers’ journey by analyzing their buyer personas. Go deeper into the problems you faced while communicating with customers in the past.

When you check and analyze your existing data, you can segment customer journeys into various groups. By doing so you can identify the unique customer differences and their expectations. Sales teams can then prioritize the groups and initiate  the communication accordingly. 

Plan your content strategy

An effective content plan plays an essential role in building a strong CRM strategy. It’s important for your business to deliver content that has a relevant message to your target audience. Most especially to those who are central in making purchases. Plan how you want to write blogs that may educate your audience and increase the likelihood to convert them into leads, prospects and clients.

In a similar manner, you also need to decide on the channels you will be using to deliver the message. You also need to decide whether you will use social media or send email blasts to your customers as a way to communicate with them. Perhaps you can experiment, to help you figure out which content channel is right for you.

Kickstart communication channels

One of the primary objectives of a CRM strategy is to extend the effectiveness of your customer support channels. Doing so makes it easy for your customers to communicate with the contact manager inside your organization. 

One of the best ways to do this is by having a live chat option on your website. By doing so you are letting customers get solutions for his or her queries quickly. The live chat feature enhances the customer support experience and also helps boost customer conversions and retention. Similarly, you’ll also think about using social media channels to unravel customers’ problems.

Find and leverage the simplest CRM software for your business

Businesses often make mistakes while choosing the proper CRM software. It’s important that you simply benefit research about what CRM software would integrate properly together with your business operations. You’ll also consider learning what CRM software your competitors are using.

If you have considered a couple of CRM solutions, it might be the most ideal to go to their official forums and reviews. Then check the past experiences of other customers. You’ll also get some helpful answers for yourself while exploring community forums.

Why Saphyte is the ideal CRM tool for you

Ease of Use

Saphyte is built on the idea of user adaptation and makes everything convenient for businesses. Every feature that you look for and every detail are categorized into tabs for easier access. Everything is made simple and straightforward from the interface, visuals, set-up, keywords, and sales terms. All of these features are made to make work simple for you and your sales and marketing team.

In addition, Saphyte’s Dashboard is easy to customize. You can eliminate any unnecessary information the moment you open your CRM software by just dragging and dropping widgets. 

Marketing and Sales Features

Marketing automation and sales processes shouldn’t be hard. Saphyte has a list of prominent features to help you gain more ease in doing business. These features include Client Management, Sales Pipelines, Lead Generation tools, Lead Scoring, Campaign Management, and to name a few. 

This CRM feature is designed to give cohesion and centralization of information and data about your current target market. 

Metrics and Reporting

Get the numbers and data you need in real time. Saphyte has an amazing Sales Intelligence and Sales Forecasting feature. This function gives you the numbers you need when you want to refine your marketing strategy.

Campaign Capabilities

This CRM software for small businesses and enterprises also has the capability to make your campaigns easier and more focused. 

Saphyte is with world-class marketing features such as Email Marketing, Campaign Management, Social Media Integration, Form Builders, Product Catalogue Builders, and Email Tracking. Assuring you of a smooth sailing marketing campaign for your business. 

Mobile access

Every business has to have the right to access information, anytime and anywhere. What better way to achieve that than through having a mobile CRM at your fingertips? Saphyte is built with an easy to use, and insightful mobile app for you and your business. Also Saphyte’s mobile version is a free CRM app that you can download in iOS and Android.

Customer Support Availability

You matter the most. As our client, you can expect that our customer support team is available 24/7 for your concerns and queries. Whether it is via email or live chat, the Saphyte customer service team is at your disposal.  

Having a reliable CRM for small business is a great investment for growth. In your growth as a company, choose Saphyte as your preferred CRM solution partner. Contact us now for a free demo or sign up for a one month free plan.