What's a CRM & Why Do I need One?
As a solo entrepreneur, it can be tough to keep track of all your customers. You have to juggle sales, marketing, customer service, and more – all on your own! This is where a CRM tool comes in handy.
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In this article, I'll break down everything CRM:
What is a CRM and what does it do for businesses?
How can a CRM help your business grow and succeed?
What are the benefits of using a CRM for your company’s sales and marketing efforts?
How much does a CRM cost, and is it worth the investment?
Are there any free CRM options available that will meet your needs?
How should you go about choosing the right CRM for your business’ specific needs?
1. What is a CRM and what does it do for businesses?
A CRM (customer relationship management) tool helps you manage all your customer data in one place. If you want to learn more about what a CRM is and how to know if you need one, read this blog post here. This can include contact information, purchase history, support tickets, and more.
2. How can a CRM help your business grow and succeed?
You might have heard the saying “if you don’t have sales, you don’t have a business.” I totally agree with this and as you probably know, there are multiple stages of sales within your business. You might not be thinking about that now or haven’t yet identified the “stages” you take leads through to make a sale within your business and that’s OK because I’ll break it down a bit.
A typical sales cycle includes stages like lead generation, qualification, meeting, negotiation, closing, and nurturing.
The sales stages should look different for every business, there isn’t a one size fits all and should be unique to your business and how you take someone from lead to customer. Before setting up a CRM, you’ll want to map out all your stages within your sales cycle.
3. What are the benefits of using a CRM for your company's sales and marketing efforts?
Still not convinced you need a CRM tool? Here are some benefits that might change your mind:
– The most beneficial feature of using a CRM is logging all your interactions with a lead which helps you generate more leads and sales. This improves your nurturing efforts (aka follow-up) & helps you build relationships with your leads/clients with ease. A CRM will show you all the emails sent back/forth, you can log calls and text messages, and you can even capture if they’ve interacted with your social media accounts or website.
– A CRM can save you time by automating repetitive tasks. You can automate follow-ups, email campaigns, data entry, and much much more.
– A CRM can help you improve customer service by keeping track of your customer interactions, customers’ purchase history and ensuring you follow up with customers as efficiently as possible. As already mentioned with lead follow-up, it’s equally important to deliver great customer service and a CRM can help you do that.
– Automatically capture data to measure your lead generation efforts, sales close rates, customer service, and more.
4. How much does a CRM cost, and is it worth the investment?
The cost of a CRM can range from $5 to $100+ per month and regardless of the monthly investment, if it’s addressing all your needs, easy to use, and resulting in efficiencies and profits, it’s always worth the investment.
Here’s where I see people go wrong and when I would say that it’s NOT worth the investment – buying a CRM that is way beyond your needs, big and clunky and unnecessary. These costly CRM’s end up being more of a pain, you’ll find yourself over-processing your business systems and capturing data that’s not being used.
5. Are there any free CRM options available that will meet your needs?
Contrary to what you might think, your CRM tool does not need to have all the bells and whistles. Those big clunky systems like SalesForce for example are best suited for huge organizations. Actually, even those big organizations don’t even use all the features, or don’t really need to.
Your CRM should be affordable (or free!). As a solo entrepreneur, you likely don’t have a huge budget for business expenses. And lastly, it should have all the features you need to manage your customers effectively. Not sure what CRM tool to choose? I’ve compiled a list of the best CRMs for solo entrepreneurs here.
6. How should you go about choosing the right CRM for your business' specific needs?"
Before choosing a CRM, write out everything you’re looking for in a CRM and separate the list into two categories: Required & Nice-To-Have. This will help you easily decide between options based on the features you need.
Decide on two different CRMs (three maximum) to test out. The CRM should be easy to use and understand. You don’t want to spend hours trying to figure out how to use the tool! What’s intuitive to one person, might be confusing as hell to someone else, so you have to test out a few. Here’s the great news, most CRM’s offer a free version or trial period for you to test drive before going all in.
Final Thoughts...
If you’re a solo entrepreneur, I highly recommend investing in a CRM tool. It will save you time, generate more sales, and improve your customer service. Not sure which CRM tool to choose? Check out this list of the best FREE CRMs for solo entrepreneurs!
Are you going to start using a CRM for your business? Let us know in the comments below!
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