[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In this Surge Session, we talk about how to choose the right CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software to use for your business and what to look for in a CRM. We look at the top CRM vendors and give tips on how to use it to improve your sales cycle. Our CEO Duran Inci is joined by our Director of Marketing, Joseph Hassun.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Why do Small and Medium Sized Businesses Need a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platform?” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]
We wanted to do a short session on CRMs because we’ve had a lot of conversations with prospects and clients in the past few months regarding this subject. It’s just shocking how many businesses there are generating millions of dollars that still operate with Excel sheets and email and they still don’t have a project management system.
We’ve spoken to architecture firms that have over 20 employees and everything that they are doing, from sales all the way to execution, is on Excel on email.
We get this question a lot: which CRM should I use to communicate with my clients and to also handle my sales processes so I can be more efficient? So we will be talking about that as well in this session.
Looking at CRMs from a customer standpoint, why should small or medium sized businesses be using a CRM? It helps to streamline workflows, amongst multiple things. But it really helps consolidate a lot of the leads that you’re getting in and helps you move them through the pipeline.
Every single business is different. So you have businesses that sell products. You have businesses that sell services. You have businesses that do B2B, B2C, and B2G, which is business to government. But regardless of your operation, you are going to need a CRM. You are going to need to communicate with your customers, communicate with your prospects, and handle your sales processes as well as your execution processes. [/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”How to Use a CRM Software to Improve Your Sales Funnel” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]
If you are a service-based business and you have a sales cycle, you have to bring in people at the prospect level or even at the lead level. Then you have to nurture them through the system so that you can calculate what you have in your pipeline out there in terms of dollar amounts.
You have to know how many leads are coming in, how many leads are turning into prospects, how many prospects are turning into quotes, as well as how many quotes are turning into sales, and this is what we call a sales funnel.
Why is this sales funnel so important for you to have statistics on? You need these statistics so you can see where the largest drop off points are throughout the sales funnel.
You’re obviously gonna have a lot of prospects coming in. But then each step on the way down, it is going to be a smaller and smaller percentage. What this funnel allows you to do is it allows you to see where the largest drop off is so you can pinpoint where an issue might be.
The issue might be a salesman isn’t doing their job correctly or they are trying to oversell. Maybe they are trying to push these consumers down the funnel a bit too fast. So this funnel just allows you to see and pinpoint where the issue is so you can fix it.
If you have multiple salespeople and have these funnels set up right, you can basically set quotas and find out where the drop off points are. It allows you to have better visibility into your sales process. Few people understand the importance of this concept.
Business owners are usually stuck and they’re focused on trying to provide the best service or provide the best product. However, a business runs on cash. It runs on money. Of course, you need to be customer-centric, you have to pay attention to your customers. But you have to have a very strong incoming sales pipeline.
If you are just looking at a CRM from a sales standpoint, we have some suggestions for you. First of all, if you have a Wix site or if you have one of these websites that are very fast to build but don’t really give you much visibility, we recommend you switch to WordPress. That switch is not expensive. You could keep your design the same and you could do that switch maximum for a couple of thousand dollars. It will be worth it for you. Make sure to work with a professional who can actually set up that structure for you in terms of Google friendliness and everything.
Then, once you are on WordPress, you need to add forms on there. You could use Gravity Forms for getting your leads or you could use a tool like Wufoo. Make sure not to ask for too much information.
You need to have a system that gets the form from your website, or contact from your website, into your CRM. If you are getting these from an email and you want to push it into your CRM, you could do so using a tool like Zapier, which is not expensive.
To summarize, you do the forms with Wufoo or Gravity Forms, your website is on WordPress, and the form pushes the lead into your CRM. [/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”What is the Best CRM Tool for Small, Medium, and Large Businesses?” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]
In terms of what CRM you should use for sales purposes depends on how big your operation is. If you have less than four or five salespeople and you do not really have any high ticket items, (anything above $50,000), you can use a CRM like Nutshell.
We like Nutshell because it’s web-based. It’s very cheap and it gives you visibility, forecasting, and integration into your email. It also gives you the funnel, so you can see the drop off points and where they are. It integrates with Zapier as well so you could pull from your emails or pull from your website.
If you have more than four or five salespeople and you have a more complex sales cycle, we would recommend something more professional like Salesforce. Salesforce is very easy to use, it’s not difficult at all. However, we do not believe that it’s as user-friendly as Nutshell because Salesforce is an enterprise solution. There are companies using it with hundreds of salespeople.
Now, a lot of people ask us about HubSpot because it has been really popular recently. HubSpot has the capability to have all these tools in one place. So for some businesses, it’s very appealing. However, we see HubSpot as a jack of all trades but a master of none. It has everything from SEO tools, website tools, email tools, email automation, all the way to their CRM that grabs these leads and then shows you analytics as well.
So HubSpot is appealing to some businesses that don’t need to have an integration with an outside CRM with their website and their email service as well. But again, if you go with a designated email provider, a designated automation service, a designated CMS like WordPress, you are definitely going to get more for your money.
There are tens of thousands of businesses using HubSpot. We have clients on HubSpot. We work with HubSpot. But we believe that HubSpot is trying to do too much. It has value for certain businesses because they want everything in the same place.
But technology has improved. It’s not as difficult to integrate these tools as it used to be. So because of the technological improvements, because of things like Zapier and API, you don’t really need all in one systems anymore. [/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Our Favorite CRM: Zoho” use_theme_fonts=”yes”][vc_column_text]
So let’s talk about Zoho, because Zoho is another provider that we like. The reason that we like Zoho is they give really unique functionalities for custom quoting systems. They have really good integrations. It’s very easy to integrate it with your current site and to have all the data that you need come over. They handle the salespeople side of things really well and their CRM has improved a lot.
The follow-ups of Zoho and the notification systems of Zoho are great as well. They also have a ton of settings. It might be a little overwhelming to set it up at first, but it’s actually really functional and really usable.
There are hundreds of CRMs out there. What we would definitely recommend is a cloud-based system. Do not pay for a license. Even if you are at the enterprise level, do not pay for a license.
You cannot afford to not have a CRM anymore. If you don’t, you will lose your competitive edge. A younger guy who likes these systems will come, will be a competitor of yours, and will beat you. That’s happened over and over in history. So do not let this go. You absolutely need a CRM. If you have more than three employees, you need a CRM.
Have any questions regarding CRMs or any topic we have previously covered? Want more information on selecting the right CRM for your business?
Contact us. We’re here to help.
SPEAK TO AN eCommerce EXPERT[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
