As a startup, perhaps the most important question you need to ask yourself is whether you intend on staying. The primary objective of any startup is to grow and develop, and in order to fulfill this, you definitely need an effective CRM solution.
Startups often consider Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to be essential for the success of medium or large size businesses. However, what you will find out, by the end of this article, is that isn’t true. CRM is equally important for startups as well, even before they go live.
(Read the benefits of SugarCRM for Small Businesses)
Let’s take a brief look at some of the key benefits that startups can achieve using a viable CRM:
CRM Helps Startups Get Organized
Startups often get confused when there is an inflow of data. Without CRM, they may overlook relevant information. Startups that have CRM tend to have all their data organized, resulting in improvement in how they interact with their customers, since they can get a visual overview of the required data. CRM, also, helps startups increase efficiency in Marketing and Sales by making them more optimized.
Get More Customers and Keep Them
Customers are the lifeblood for the growth of any startup. Nowadays, impeccable customer experience has become the heart of winning new customers and retaining old ones. And what can be more helpful than a CRM in this regard? CRM helps keep track of all customer deals, purchases and conversation history, hence, ensuring everyone in your startup has the most recent and relevant information about your customers at their fingertips. This enables the people in the Sales department to provide the best customer experience possible. CRM can, also, help in finding customers and engaging with them. This is done through CRM Integration with social media, since a lot of potential customers are regular users of social media. With the advent of Social CRM, reaching out to potential customers can really provide a boost for startups. Once customers are found, most efforts should be geared towards delighting the customers by giving them exceptional service. So, social CRM is an investment worth making.
A startup must, in its inception, start functioning in an efficient and streamlined manner. Why? Because startups especially cannot afford to let clients walk away for better customer service. A CRM lets them find and retain existing customers, delight them, gradually enabling the startup in achieving a competitive edge.
CRM Manages Contacts Well
Once the customers have been found, startups can now use CRM for managing them. In fact, CRM can be used to manage all the contacts that a startup may have. Contact fragmentation, which is completely unproductive, can be avoided by startups who use a CRM. A single outlook about a contact can be created by taking into account everything important about them, using CRM.
Moreover a good CRM helps make every employee a customer relationship expert by streamlining the customer management process.
Administration of Funds Gets Optimized
Startups often go through numerous cycles of funding and, in order to be able to continue operations, they need to manage their funds. A CRM system can be formulated to keep track of all the opportunities related to funds coming into and going out the door.
Startups need to have an efficient mechanism for gathering and managing funds. Meaningful relationships are at the heart of the fundraising process. CRM solutions help you identify, cultivate and manage these important relationships, allowing you to improve donor/investor retention. Moreover, they give you the opportunity to execute and coordinate multichannel fundraising campaigns by allowing you to proactively and strategically manage them as a whole, rather than as individual channels.
In addition to this, CRM has the capability to integrate with the best possible accounting platforms including QuickBooks and Xero.
Just Spreadsheets Won’t Cut It
Perhaps, until now you’ve been fine handling customer data using notepads and spreadsheets. However, it won’t be possible to track and sustain your business and the ever-expanding client base indefinitely. A CRM solution automates, while also enabling, social data information, email, and Telephony Integration, so you can give your customers the undivided attention that they deserve.
Collaboration Just Got Easier
As your startup grows, you will have people working in different teams and, perhaps, stationed at different locations. You and your employees need to have an efficient and effective means of sharing and accessing data. A Cloud CRM is the best way to achieve this as it grants you access to the latest information at the click of a button regardless of where you are, and from any mobile device.
The Bottom Line!
To get you in the game and help you stay at the top of it, a CRM will, with the help of CRM Analytics tools, assist you in quickly organizing and analyzing your data, identifying and maintaining your ideal customer base while aiding you in gathering funds to promote and develop your product. Moreover, it will help you identify potential areas of growth that are crucial for the development of your startup.
Rolustech is a SugarCRM and Salesforce Certified Partner. We have rendered services to more than 700 satisfied clients globally and helped them with CRM Implementation, Integration, Customization, Maintenance and Support. Contact us today for your FREE Consultation Session!
