Client relationship management, better known as CRM, has been growing as a business practice over the past few years. Small to large companies use them to streamline lead generation, customer service, business development, and other parts of their operations. 

CRM software revenues were at $69 billion in 2020, indicating that more and more businesses are using these tools. If you haven’t implemented a CRM software or system in your business yet, then it’s about time you considered using one. Here are five reasons why small business CRM software is essential. 

1) It Ensures Leads Don’t Fall Through the Cracks

One reason why you should implement a CRM in your business is to take care of your leads better. Companies and sales staff tend to leave money on the table when they fail to follow up on active prospects. Many times, it’s simply because there isn’t a system in place to track and monitor lead activity. 

Sales pipelines are one of the foundational parts of a CRM tool. It helps you visualize your prospects and where they are on their journey. With the right automation setup, you can save time by putting autoresponders and automated messages once a lead takes an action. All in all, a CRM’s sales funnel is there to ensure that you follow up and take care of leads as best you can. Doing so helps you convert more leads into customers and help improve the business’ overall financial success.

2) It Helps Improve Client Experience

Once you close a sale and onboard a customer, the game has just begun. Now, you have to actually perform the service or deliver the product. Small businesses without a CRM tool might find it hard to track and optimize their client service workflow. They do so manually and thus have lapses in their system that might lead to a bad client experience.

CRM tools help provide a better client experience by providing capacities such as client tracking, communications tools, customer feedback management, and so on. All these tools and more can help you provide better service to clients and thus delight them. When you do so, they’ll not only stay with you longer. They could more likely refer you to more of their family members and friends too. 

3) It Streamlines Task Management

When running a small business, operational tasks can pile up fast. As a result, teams get easily overwhelmed with everything they have to do to keep their clients happy. For example, a marketing agency could easily miss out on deadlines simply because the team didn’t manage tasks and projects well. 

CRM tools can also be some of the best online project management tools. They allow you to keep task lists, assign them to team members, and provide feedback and follow-up mechanisms that make task and project management more effective. Moreover, a CRM will provide your sales managers with a more efficient way of monitoring their teams and all the tasks they have to accomplish. The same is true for customer service teams as CRM tools are often also used for aftersales team management.

4) It Helps Improve Customer Lifetime Value

The best CRM for small business help extends a client’s lifetime value with an organization. Studies show that acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing one. So by extending the customer lifetime value, your company saves more money on sales and lead management. 

Growing your small business’ CLV (customer lifetime value) will help provide more longevity. Because your clients will stay loyal to you for a long time, you will have more clients over the long term. 

5) It Improves Sales Team Evaluation

Getting the best CRM for business owners will allow you to manage sales teams better by providing evaluation metrics. CRM tools provide businesses with robust analytics that will be a great basis for sales team performance. You can track the number of leads your sales team gets, the closing rate, the number of outbound and inbound messages, and so much more. 

You also have the option of integrating your CRM tool with a finance system, so you’re able to track sales and give commissions promptly. Check out A2X, one great software that can provide you with a digital finance system to streamline sales operations and other accounting functions.

CRM Adoption 

If you’re wondering if client relationship management is just a fad, consider this— CRM adoption will grow by 12% from now to 2028. Because we will see more and more people continue to use CRM tools, it’s clear that this isn’t just another business fad. 

Accordingly, you should consider getting on the trend. Try getting a cheap CRM for small business use, to begin with. You don’t have to get anything fancy right away. Then with time, you can continue to scale your CRM use and try out other features. 

By using a CRM tool, your small business will get to enjoy all the benefits we talked about in this article and so much more.