Why Small Business CRM Systems Matter

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) helps businesses organize and manage customer data. Within a CRM system, a small business can manage their sales, communicate with their team members, integrate social media accounts, and provide insights on data involving customer relationships. A CRM system also allows businesses to update important information like contact details or track interactions with customers. In general, businesses generate a ton of data that needs to be collected, stored, and analyzed. Just because a business is small, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a huge amount of information generated daily. This is all made much more manageable through CRM. 

Without an effective CRM system in place, important information is lost in the hustle and bustle of the workday. Information and data is important to recognize trends, fix potential problems, and improve components of your business. Every time you respond to an email, generate a new lead, send a potential customer a proposal, or answer a phone call, valuable data is wasted if it isn’t being collected. It is just too difficult to track all of this information in a spreadsheet. Therefore, CRM systems also bring a level of security to your clients and your business. For example, if you have a disgruntled employee on your hands, you won’t need to worry about them walking off with your leads, customer information, social media account passwords, or anything else that should remain confidential. 

Man and woman looking at laptop doing business

Key Features of Small Business CRM

The following are the main features that a small business CRM system should have. 

Dashboard Analytics 

When logging in to your CRM system, you will likely be directed to a dashboard. This dashboard contains pertinent information about your business. For example, you might have data involving webpage visits, social media updates, or messages from your clients. The great thing about your CRM dashboard is that it is customizable based on what is most important to your business.

Content & File Sharing 

With content and file sharing, your team members and clients can instantly share files within your CRM system. This is the most efficient way to share and store files as it will be easily accessible in a central location for all relevant collaborators. 

Email Integration

With a CRM, not only can emails be created and managed in a singular location, important features, such as calendars and contacts, can be shared among all team members instantly. Without an effective CRM system, you may need to log in and out of several different email accounts in order to do what a CRM system could do all at once. 

Sales Forecasting

A sales manager is able to take reports generated within a CRM system and observe whether or not sales goals are being met, more accurately qualify leads, and motivate team members. 

Event Triggers

Within an efficient CRM system, you should be able to get notified when an ‘event’ occurs. In marketing, an event is any action done by a customer or potential customer. It is up to you what events are important and why. For example, if you want to know when a viewer clicks on a specific tab on your website, a CRM system will notify you when this happens. If you want to know the moment a potential customer opens your email proposal, you can trigger that event in a CRM system.

Funnel Creation

In marketing, a funnel is a series of events that you put in place to get a desired action out of a customer or potential customer. For example, you may create a funnel with the desired result of a customer subscribing to your email newsletters. You can manage and analyze these funnels in an efficient CRM system.

Lead Management

A CRM system will allow you to analyze and track activities within your pipeline. In marketing, a pipeline is the steps or stages that your sales representative goes through in order to convert leads into sales. More simply, a pipeline is the sum of all sales funnels.

Learn More about Small Business CRM

Have more questions about how CRM can help you run your small business more effectively? If you are tired of losing leads, not being able to keep up with your clients, or just done with tedious content sharing and messaging integration systems, give Blue Ridge Media Company a call at (888) 970-3407. Also, visit our website to learn more about the other digital marketing services we offer.