As a startup founder, you would know how important customer relationships are. Today, there is a lot of competition in the online world. Having a unique idea, product, or value proposition is rarely possible.
So how do you stand out? By building strong, ever-lasting customer relationships. As your customer base increases, manually managing customer relationships might lead to a lot of goof ups. This is where a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool comes in.
If you are wondering if you need CRM for your startup business, or how you pick one, then this brief guide is designed just for you. Let’s learn more about how you can start using a CRM to secure a scalable and profitable future for your business.
What is a CRM System?
A customer relationship management or CRM system helps you to manage all the interactions with your existing and potential customers. Simply said, it is a system for managing your customers.
Why is CRM Important for your Startup Business?
As your company size grows, and as you expand the mediums of marketing, managing all customer data manually can be extremely challenging. You might lose track of things and this can lead to an increased customer churn and a bad reputation for your business.
This is why, investing in a good, robust CRM tool right from the start is a very important step that all startup founders must take. A powerful cloud CRM platform such as SuperOffice can completely change your marketing and sales games.
Right from managing customer details, collaborations between different teams, lead management, personalizing your messaging, designing opt-in forms, to live chat options, SuperOffice can be an extremely useful one-stop-shop for all your customer database needs.
SuperOffice also comes with other powerful features such as monitoring sales activities, account management, email marketing, and integrating with other applications.
Here is how a CRM tool like SuperOffice can be of help for your startup business:
- Keep track of all customer and prospect interactions at a central place so that it can be retrieved when needed with the single click of a button.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with your customers by keeping track of all the required data.
- Streamline your sales operations, and improve the alignment between your sales and marketing teams.
- Convert more leads into loyal customers by tracking lead generation data and enabling your sales team to close more deals.
- Improve the productivity of your sales team, leading to an increase in revenue. Increase the number of upsells and cross-sells, ultimately leading to increased customer retention.
- Scale your business hassle-free without having to worry about things getting out of hand.
How to Pick the Right CRM for your Business?
Now that you know how transformational a CRM tool can be for your startup business, let’s look at some tips on how you can choose the right CRM tool for your business.
1. Define your Startup Business Goals
You can start by defining the goals that you want to achieve for your startup and thinking about how having a CRM can help you achieve it. Your goals can be increasing customer retention rate, improvement in lead generation and conversions, increase in sales, and similar more.
Defining goals will come in handy when you are trying to pick the perfect CRM tool that fits your exact needs and requirements. This way, you’ll be securing the future of your business with a wise investment decision.
2. Decide on the Features that you Need
Next, decide on all the must-have features for your CRM tool. These may be related to third party integrations, comprehensive training, or flexibility. You can also come up with a list of good-to-have features that can be useful for achieving your goals.
Think about the number of users you need, your budget, types of customer data that you want to manage, CRM training efforts, and metrics before picking the CRM of your choice.
3. Pick a CRM that Integrates with Other Applications
Your CRM tool will be the central hub for gathering all customer-related data. Hence, integration with your existing applications is a must. So, look for CRMs that integrate with your existing apps and the ones that you might use in the future.
These could include productivity apps, email marketing apps, business intelligence apps, gamification apps, and similar ones.
4. Ensure that it is Scalable
Having an optimistic future in mind and planning for scalability can never go wrong. Your startup might grow rapidly in the coming years and you should ensure that the CRM you pick is scalable and flexible.
You can switch and migrate to other CRMs if need be, but planning way ahead is the wisest thing to do.
5. Training and Support
Training is an essential part to ensure that you and your team get the most use out of the CRM you opt for. So research about the kind of training material offered by the CRM company.
How is their onboarding process? Is the training material sufficient? How long would it take to complete the training process? Thinking and planning for these things will also help you pick the right CRM for small business or your startup.
6. Go Through the Reviews and Customer Testimonials
If you are still unsure about your decision, research the reviews and testimonials of the CRM systems. Are there any customer success stories or case studies? What tangible benefits have their customers achieved by using the CRM system?
Finding answers to these questions will help you pick the best CRM system that will prove to be the most profitable for your startup.
Final Thoughts
To conclude, we can say that the decision to invest in a powerful CRM can prove to be the path towards your startup business’s success.
So, start doing your research. Understand your goals and business needs. And, pick a CRM that perfectly aligns with the future vision you have for your company.
About The Author –
Pratik Dholakiya is the founder of Growfusely, a content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO. He regularly speaks at various conferences about SEO, Content Marketing, and Entrepreneurship. Pratik has spoken at the 80th Annual Conference of the Florida Public Relations Association, Accounting and Finance Show, Singapore, NextBigWhat’s UnPluggd, IIT-Bombay, SMX Israel, SEMrush Meetup, MICA, IIT-Roorkee, and other major events. As a passionate SEO and content marketer, he shares his thoughts and knowledge in publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur Ma
