4 Keys to Selecting a Small Business CRM

Starting a small business comes with many challenges and chief among them is selecting the right mix of technologies to automate your business. A small business of 2011 and beyond must build a foundation of automation technology that can reduce up front investments in the early days and lower on-going costs. Of course, automation technology can also facilitate more rapid and expansion as your business grows.

Small businesses often minimize the importance of advanced CRM features. It’s tempting to select very basic, simple and inexpensive CRM solutions for your small business. It can often be overwhelming to envision taking advantage of advanced CRM features when just getting customer information organized is a more immediate challenge.

However, when a small business selects a technology for automation of key business processes, it is selecting a partner in it’s future growth. A young child takes tentative first steps over the course of weeks or months and will inevitably grow to walk, run and climb and require more advanced play toys and more sturdy shoes. Your small business is no different. Unfortunately, changing CRM technology is not as easy as changing your toddler’s shoes.

Often, a switch in CRM solutions can require complete re-engineering of your business processes while living with a simplistic sales automation solution can limit your business’ growth.

Here are four things you should expect of your small business CRM solution, even if you don’t expect to utilize all these features on day one. Just like the example of the young toddler, you must walk before you run but, you should not make short term technology decisions that will leave your small business hobbled when it is otherwise ready to sprint to success.

Document Automation

Regardless of your industry, you’ll need to communicate with customers. You’ll be sending emails, letters or both. Most small businesses don’t have dedicated administrative or clerical help so, reducing the time required to create common communications to send to customers is an investment in maximizing return on your key team members’ time. Your chosen CRM solution should make creating a proposal, follow up letter or simple email invitation fast and easy.

In addition, a centralized repository of all these customer communications is essential. Rather than spend valuable time printing, filing, copying and Fedexing key proposals, contracts, etc., be sure you can attach these documents to your customer’s record so that the members of your team can access, edit and send these documents quickly and easily.

Process Automation

One of the scarcest resources in a small business is process. The paradox is that in a small business, with everyone wearing so many different hats, busy employees can easily lose track of next steps with a given customer or just get busy and forget to follow through for too long. Every small business owner knows that professional customer follow up can strengthen relationships, build trust and speed up sales cycles. If you decide that every time you make a presentation to a customer, you want to send a thank you note, then send an email with links to a few resources for the client, then call 7 days later, then your CRM should make it easy for you to remember each of these steps and execute them quickly. Ideally, your CRM will actually automate the sending of letters, notes and emails and alert you when its time for you to make a call or take other action.

While the processes you automate in the early days may be basic and simple, they will serve as a starting point from which you can tweak process to improve results, add nuances to capitalize on new opportunities and measure the flow of customers through your sales pipeline so you can optimize marketing and sales strategies.

Email Marketing

It’s the 21st century and things like e-newsletters are expected by your customers. In addition, with limited staff available to maintain contact with prospective customers, a simple series of emails can help you stay engaged with leads, prospects and customers while preserving valuable sales time for the hottest and most valuable prospects and customers.

One of the most essential challenges of a small business is informing the marketplace about the unique value proposition of your business. Busy executives will always have limited attention to devote to learning about your business. In addition, your small business will likely make frequent changes to its offerings and messaging strategies. Email marketing can be an efficient means of painting a more complete picture of your business for busy customers and testing new strategies and tactics.

Customization and Support

Most small businesses have limited resources in all areas and IT is typically at the top of that list. Tailoring your CRM system to fit your business is crucial to keeping the system simple and easy to learn and use for your team. However, you probably can’t afford to invest days or weeks, and much less thousands of dollars, in difficult learning curves or outside consultants to set up and customize the system to your unique business.

Choosing a CRM solution for your small business that makes customization easy for a non-IT professional is important but, so is know that you can get the help you need, when you need it, without busting the budget.

Many CRM vendors offer very limited email only customer support or only 48 hour response times to support requests. These limitations can prevent you from integrating the CRM into your most important business processes due your limited resources, frequent changes and adjustments in processes and the difficulty of modifying the CRM.

Selecting a CRM vendor that is easy for you to communicate with and addresses your needs quickly is essential. With all the responsibilities and priorities piling up on most small business executives, waiting two days for answers just isn’t a workable option.

These key elements of your small business CRM decision are important to consider, as well as many other specific features and capabilities that may be crucial for your business. That’s why we’ve put together your Small Business CRM Comparison Guide.

You can download it FREE here.

It’s easy to print out and check off the capabilities of each CRM vendor you consider.