How does a CRM add value to your small business?
A lot of folks on Quora had the question of how a CRM could add value to their small business. Decided to write it out as a long answer and publish it here as well. Used references of Freshsales — Sales CRM to show how a CRM could make a difference.
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I am jotting down some pain points which small businesses face when not having a CRM software and also mentioning the importance of how a CRM software would add value.
Managing Contacts on Excel becomes cumbersome:
In the early days of a small business, it might make sense to manage your contact on an Excel Sheet or Google Sheets but after a point of time, it becomes really cumbersome. It becomes really hard to keep track of changes being made especially when multiple people are involved in the sales process.
With a CRM software, leads and contacts can be managed with the help of a comprehensive lead management and contact management feature and perform filers, bulk actions, and have insights in a single view. CRM also helps in getting complete details about your customers — conversations, deals (open, won or lost), touch points with your company, and the tasks & appointments scheduled with them.

Juggling between multiple tools:
One of the biggest productivity killers for small businesses is juggling between multiple tools. From a Google Sheet or Excel Sheet, you make a list of contacts you want to reach out today. Then, you go over to Gmail and send them an email. With the help of Banana Tag or Yesware, you track the click rate and open rate. Now, when you know your contact has clicked on the link, you might want to call them and try taking the conversation forward. Once you are done with the call, you head back to the Excel Sheet and add notes to each contact.
With a CRM software, where you have Email and Phone integrated all of this happens within a single window without any hassle. Select the contacts you wish to send an Email to, and send the email from within the CRM software. Open and Clicks for each email appear within the CRM.

Now, click on the contact’s phone number within the CRM’s in-built Phone and make a call. Call Logging and Call Recording happens for your team to look back at the conversations for context. All of this gets updated in the Contact’s Page too.

Spending several man-hours on manual data entry:
A lot of the time gets spent in updating information about the contact in the Excel Sheets to enrich the data available. All of us would agree that this is one of the most time consuming tasks in the day of a sales team member. Instead of actually sending the emails or making the phone calls, they spend time on adding and editing information manually to each contact.
With a CRM software, Auto Profile Enrichment happens adding the prospect’s photo, social profile information, company information (such as employee count, address, phone number and more), giving you ample data to stand out and still have time to sell. In addition to this, automatic logging of phone and email conversations eliminates the need for manual data entry after every conversation.

Losing track of deals and their status:
Small Businesses try tracking deals and their status with the help of an Excel Sheet. When having multiple people making edits, it becomes cumbersome and inconsistent. Obtaining insights and reports out of the deal status also ends up becoming a manual process.
With a CRM software, Deal Management Pipeline helps get a complete visibility of your deals across stages. Quickly see how many deals are in each stage, sort and filter by their expected close date, and make smart decisions to guide actions and help move them up the sales ladder.

Accessing Contacts or Deals on the go:
One of the biggest challenges of handling Sales Process without a CRM for a small business is managing contacts and deals on the go. When you are out on a sales meeting, imagine having to get back to the Google Sheet to update fields and make notes. Adding notes, appointments and tracking deals becomes super difficult when you are on the go.
With a CRM software, an Android/Apple Mobile Application can really come in handy to handle and also perform more sales on the go. Mobile CRM helps provide a 360* view of the customer, change customer deal status, and also allowing you to jot down notes and add appointments.

If you liked my answer and the features mentioned here, I recommend you to check out Freshsales | Sales CRM Software and Contact Management Software for Small Business — Integrated Email and Phone, User behaviour tracking, Lead scoring and more, in one hassle-free CRM package.
This post was originally written for a Quora question: How does a CRM add value to your small business?
