Small businesses are always crucial for the market. And one tool that plays an important role in their growth is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management). But for startups or a small business… choosing the ideal CRM out of the numerous options available in the market can be quite a task!

Why Do Small Businesses Need CRM?

During the initial days, it’s easy for a startup or a small business to manage all your work with age-old methods like spreadsheets, notes etc. All the customers will be at the back of your mind. However, as your business grows or your team expands… keeping everything streamlined will be a tough job.

That’s when you need a platform to maintain all your customer information in one place. Something like a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool. Contrary to popular belief, an ideal CRM for Startups or Small Businesses can be very cost-effective, easy to get started with & have features tailor-made for small businesses.

Things to Look for in a CRM Software

1. Pricing

For a small business, everything boils down to affordability. Matter of fact, more than 40% of startup & small business owners agree that higher costs of CRMs are the major bottleneck in them joining in. Before you get down to the finer details, just analyze whether the CRM in focus offers seamless integrations with the bunch of other apps you might be using.

Once that area is taken care of, the second most important thing is to make sure there are no hidden costs on top of the plans marketed. Or whether there’s any cost behind training, installation or on-boarding etc. Every penny counts for a startup!

When everything looks green, the next step is to calculate the long-term costs & ROI out of using that CRM tool.

2. Platform

One of the most important factors is how you wish to access the CRM; Cloud or Self-hosted. For small businesses & startups, cloud is the ideal option as it’s easier to get started with & doesn’t require any technical resources or infrastructure. Another big advantage is that you can access all your data anywhere you go, as everything remains on the cloud.

3. Ease-of-Use

This is BIG! More than 25% of new CRM users agree that adopting to a CRM is very challenging. Hence, always look for a CRM that’s flexible enough to accommodate your current workflow. Make sure it also offers seamless data import/export, onboarding, & is very easy to get started with.

Considering just any of the complex CRM tools available in the market can lead to a disaster at later stages. Keep your employees in mind & choose a CRM that’s easy enough for everyone in your team to use.

Most CRMs offer FREE Trials for all the new users. That’s an ideal way to judge whether the CRM fits into your style of work. Take a 30 Days FREE Trial today!

4. Customization

Every business is unique, with its own unique sales process. Hence, to get the most out of your CRM… you will need to make certain changes in the CRM to suit your exact needs.

Make sure the CRM you’re considering, is flexible enough to accommodate customizations at every level. Things like reports, forms, custom fields, pipeline stages, task types have to be exactly the way your team is always used to. It may incur some cost at certain CRMs but totally worth it.

If you’re really looking to saving those bucks, look for a CRM that’s somewhere in between your customized version & the readily available one.

5. Scalability

What has started small, may well explode in the future as you expand your business into newer categories & territories. As your sales team grows multiple folds, you may require so much more from your CRM. Make sure, the CRM in consideration is capable enough to scale anytime on-demand.

In short, your CRM should be able to grow along with your business. The advantage of Cloud CRMs in such cases is that it allows you to upgrade at the click of a few buttons.

6. Support

A recent survey states that more than 40% of the existing CRM users switch to another CRM because of bad post-sales support. You wouldn’t like to be in such a situation where you’ve made all the efforts of signing up for a CRM, feeding in all your data, making your team comfortable with it… only to suffer from bad customer support & having to go through everything all over again.

Make sure the customer support of a CRM is top-notch. The response time has to be minimal & your requests/queries are heard instantly.

Looking for a CRM for small business or startup? Give Wakeupsales CRM a try! It’s super easy to get started with, easy-to-the-pockets can be customized end-to-end & offers best in class customer support.