Do Small Businesses Really Need CRM?

Originally published October 21, 2019, updated April 06, 2021

Yes, they do.

This feature could be the shortest piece you’ve ever read. However, it won’t. Like any CRM software provider, we believe that businesses of all sizes need CRM; and like all CRM vendors, we’ve been on a mission to inform customer-oriented companies about the necessity of hiring a CRM-system.

Although many young companies realize the importance of CRMs, some of them still don’t. The percentage of CRM non-adopters rises higher when it comes to small- and middle-sized businesses. Around 52% of NetHunt’s active users were firmly stuck to the thought that CRM was a tool for larger teams, enterprise businesses, and Fortune 500 companies.

For the last four years, we have been working with business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales managers who are struggling to expand their businesses and who are neglecting CRM as a business tool.

Did you know that over 90% of newly born startups fail? One of the three most common reasons for failure is focusing on product development instead of customer relationships.

CRM system is the Alpha and Omega of effective relationships with clients. In this article, we’ll explain why CRM is a must-have tool for teams as small as two people, and why starting businesses of all sizes should adopt CRM in the early stages.

When should you start to think about hiring CRM?

Today, many industries are struggling because of fierce market competition. An exceptional customer experience is no longer a competitive business advantage. Such things as user-oriented products, effective communication, and immediate support are now essential.

Customers want to be the main focus and feel their importance. Starting with the first interaction with the brand and every detail onwards, we all expect to be heard, respected and satisfied. Agreed?

If your small business doesn’t make your customers feel that way, well, get ready for the worst. Most likely, your clients will prefer your rivals who establish better customer connections.

What about CRMs? In 2018, 91% of companies with over 11 employees trusted their customer relationships to CRMs. 50% of enterprises with less than 10 employees also adopted CRM to manage leads.

CRMs help keep your customers contented and satisfied within the first minutes. CRM has your back in everything connected to your leads, potential clients, and active customers seven days per week.

This is why it’s essential to integrate a proper CRM into your business before the product release. Especially if you expect your customers to come through the registration form placed on the website or social media.

CRM doesn’t leave the chance for a new lead to be missed or ignored. With the CRM-system integrated into your sales process, newly registered people will automatically appear in your CRM. The data about your potential customers will live in your CRM as long as you run your business.

Early CRM integration will become a competitive advantage for your brand as well as save a lot of your time later on.

Which industries adopt CRMs?

CRM is a cross-industry software. In 2018, overall CRM usage increased from 56% to 74%, meaning more and more companies are starting to understand the value of CRMs.

As a highly customizable software, CRMs may be adjusted to any small business. From e-commerce to online education to transport services — it’s hard to name even one industry that can’t benefit from CRM integration. Thereby, all customer-oriented small businesses need CRM to store, manage, and organize data.

Since 2010 the CRM industry has increased its assets by 600%. By 2025, it’s expected to reach an astounding $80 billion in revenue. These numbers make the CRM market the fastest growing software market in the world, and for good reasons. These statistics also prove the fact that CRMs are much-needed by companies in numerous industries.

Before starting to work with a CRM-system, think of its structure. What pipelines would you like to have? What information should always be at your fingertips? Which daily activities would you prefer to automate? CRM simplifies everyday work in many different ways.

Read more: Which Companies Need a CRM?

9 Reasons Why Every Small Business Needs CRM

Now let’s get straight to the point. There is plenty of chatter about how CRMs can help small businesses thrive. To save your time, we processed all the arguments and pointed out nine quick (and most persuading) reasons why your small business has to hire CRM from the early days.

Gather and organize customer data

Right after integration, CRM becomes a place to gather, segment, and manage your leads. CRM stores data about your customers and brings it to the surface. As a result, you won’t spend time looking for the context of any previous conversations: everything is displayed in your email inbox right in front of your eyes.

If your work is concentrated on Gmail, CRM for Gmail will serve your business in the best possible way. For example, NetHunt CRM is a Gmail CRM. This’s why the Gmail account integration and the uploading of your customer’s data won’t take longer than a couple of minutes.

NetHunt CRM doesn’t limit you to the amount of information that you can store in your CRM. You can also share all the details with your team to help everyone be on the same page.

Run well-managed email marketing

In the days of a dominating digital market, many of us believe that the glory day of email marketing is far behind. However, massive mailouts with well-crafted personalized emails may still surprise you with performance.

The numbers don’t lie: email marketing can bring 4400% ROI driving $44 of revenue per every $1 spent. According to Hubspot, 93% of B2B marketers appeal to emails to share content, and 59% of them say that emails are their biggest ROI-drivers. So most likely, email marketing isn’t dead yet.

CRM helps you run email marketing activities in a few ways:

Gather and segment emails to organize targeted mail merge.
Send personalized emails to hundreds of people at a time.
Save email templates and share them with your team.
Measure the performance of email campaigns.
Keep your emails away from recipients’ spam folders, etc.Before setting up your email marketing campaign, make sure that you receive stats on every important metric to be measured.

Process every incoming lead

CRM-systems work without days off to ensure you never miss a single lead. When connecting your CRM with services like Zapier, you guarantee that all registrations from your website end up in your CRM database. All new leads can be gathered in a separate CRM pipeline. In this case, you will always be aware of the number of people registered, and the number of leads that have to be processed.

Small teams that are overloaded with work are at higher risk of losing clients. Program your CRM to create separate customer profiles and upload customer information to the CRM automatically. Afterward, stick leads to appropriate managers (or yourself) and make sure that all your future customers receive enough attention and the best service.

Ensure coordinated teamwork

A lot of business owners mistakenly consider that CRM is a tool for sales teams only. However,

CRMs can be easily integrated into the work of marketing, support, HR, or even finance departments. When it comes to customer relationships, CRM helps different teams to act as an organism.

In the relationship between your brand and customers, there are different touchpoints. Your customers may receive ‘Special Offer’ emails from the marketing team and then ask for more details from their sales manager. In the case of some tech issues, the customer support team will take on assisting. CRM will record and display all this history to make sure that customer experience with the brand is consistent.

All in all, CRM aligns the work of all company departments. It brings all the team to the same page even when most of the employees work remotely.

Get multifunctional software for an affordable price

The pain for CRM vendors is a blessing for CRM users. An oversaturated CRM market makes CRM providers put more attractive price tags on their products to win over the competition. They also start including more and more useful features under the hood of their CRMs.

As a result, today, many CRMs for small businesses developed into productivity tools. They allow you to not only improve your professional performance but also identify and fix gaps in sales strategies.

CRMs are able to replace you in dozens of routine tasks; like sending timely follow-ups or adding customer details into the system. Meanwhile, you may focus on tasks with higher priority.

Check out key features and monthly prices for 11 Best CRM Software for Small Businesses & Startups of 2019.

Guarantee first-class communication with customers

Effective communication with customers is a powerful thing as it draws loyalty. Users may forgive product bugs, but the delayed response may spoil even the most heartfelt relationships.

Urgent work, busy hands, business trips, and vacations — there are plenty of reasons for late responses to customers’ requests. Small teams suffer the most with all this overloaded work.

Of course, CRM is ready to come to the rescue. Use your CRM account to mark your customers with different tags. Those who need urgent assistance will appear on the top of your inbox. When synchronized with your calendar, CRM won’t let you forget about e-meetings or Hangout calls. Most importantly, CRM will remind you about emails left without attention.

Personalized emails from software providers delight users, and with CRM, you make your scheduled mailouts look personal to every customer.

Increase sales performance

Businesses that incorporated CRM into their work, report a 34% increase in sales productivity (Salesforce).

CRM automatically fills customer profiles with data, schedules mailouts, and frees you from babysitting your inbox. It keeps your agenda in order and has its eyes on your calendar. Large mailouts and email templates save your time because instead of one email, you send hundreds in minutes. In a nutshell, CRM clears your schedule for more important activities, like understanding your customers’ needs or sales.

When downloaded to your smartphone, CRM-system lets you work on the go. It brings the customer database to your mobile device, giving you the highlights of any previous conversations. Hence, you’re always prepared to close the deal.

Improve sales strategy

Another excellent feature of CRM is a high customizability. Think of CRM as plasticine, that can be adjusted to your business and sales strategy. Make its pipelines resemble your sales funnel, and move your customers through it.

CRM visualizes your sales process highlighting the points from where leads often quit. For example, after looking at the CRM dashboard you can understand that 20% of your clients stop replying to emails after the fourth contact with the sales manager. What if you include ‘Customers-only Special Offer’ in your third email? Of course, it’s just a suggestion. But discovering reasons for losing clients will help you rethink your sales methods and improve conversion rates.

CRM is just a blast! :)

You will understand this only after incorporating CRM into your business. Whether your team consists of twenty people or just two people, CRM will fuel your work in many ways.

All in all, CRM is a must-have tool for all small businesses despite their young age or team size. CRM provides everything that brands need to put customer relationships on the right track.

A proper CRM-system helps teams always stay up-to-date on customer needs, and build effective relationships with clients.

Are you looking for CRM to enhance your small business? Sign up here and reap all the benefits that CRMs have to offer with NetHunt CRM.

Thank you for making it till the end 💙

Table of Contents