What Is A CRM? How Does CRM Helps In Business Marketing & Sales Growth?

 

Customer Relationship Management or CRM is software that helps in managing your brand's engagement with your current and future customers.

CRM software allows you to build, organize and present a database of your customer information which you and your team can update as and when new information is discovered. It's a central repository of all your customer and prospect data which enables your team to be organized and more productive. It also facilitates better collaboration among teams and gives management deeper insights into individual performance and overall business growth.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an upright concept or strategy to solidify relations with customers and at the same time reduce cost and enhance productivity and profitability in business. An ideal CRM system is a centralized collection of all data sources under an organization and provides an atomistic real-time vision of customer information. A CRM system is vast and significant, but it can be implemented for small businesses, as well as large enterprises also as the main goal is to assist the customers efficiently.

How does CRM Help In The Growth of Any Business? 

Client Relationship Management System can save time, money, and resources, as well as end customer losses. Customer Relationship Management software is designed to automatically collect important data across multiple channels and compile it in an easy-to-use database. Whether your management, marketing, customer service, or tech support teams need to view it, all your customer data is easy to find, up-to-date, and accurate. When your customer data is updated in real-time and kept in one central location, it facilitates collaboration across teams, improving response time, organization, and overall productivity.

A CRM system is not only used to deal with the existing customers but is also useful in acquiring new customers. The process first starts with identifying a customer and maintaining all the corresponding details into the CRM system which is also called an ‘Opportunity of Business’. The Sales and Field representatives then try getting business out of these customers by sophistically following up with them and converting them into a winning deal. 

Customer Relationship Management strategies have given a new outlook to all the suppliers and customers to keep the business going under an estimable relationship by fulfilling mutual needs of buying and selling.

What Are The Benefits Of Using CRM Software?

There are many benefits of CRM or Customer Relationship Management software. They include automation of the upstream and the downstream sales and marketing processes. 

Further, by implementing a CRM solution, businesses can integrate their routine and administrative tasks associated with cold calling, customer management, and pre-sales as well as after-sales follow-up by ensuring that the CRM software takes care of these aspects. 

In other words, businesses can benefit from the linking of sales and marketing activities, which would considerably reduce the amount of manual labor and manual processes needed otherwise.

Here are some amazing features of CRM software:-

Customers Needs

An organization can never assume what actually a customer needs. Hence it is extremely important to interview a customer about all the likes and dislikes so that the actual needs can be ascertained and prioritized. Without modulating the actual needs it is arduous to serve the customer effectively and maintain a long-term deal.

Customers Response

Customer response is the reaction by the organization to the queries and activities of the customer. Dealing with these queries intelligently is very important as small misunderstandings could convey unalike perceptions. Success totally depends on understanding and interpreting these queries and then working out to provide the best solution. During this situation, if the supplier wins to satisfy the customer by properly answering his queries, he succeeds in explicating a professional and emotional relationship with him.

Customer Satisfaction 

Customer satisfaction is the measure of how the needs and responses are collaborated and delivered to excel customer expectations. In today’s competitive business marketplace, customer satisfaction is an important performance exponent and basic differentiator of business strategies. Hence, the more is customer satisfaction; the more is the business and the bonding with customers.

Customer Retention

Customer retention is a strategic process to keep or retain the existing customers and not let them diverge or defect to other suppliers or organizations for business. Usually, a loyal customer is tended towards sticking to a particular brand or product as far as his basic needs continue to be properly fulfilled. He does not opt for taking a risk in going for a new product. The more is the possibility to retain customers the more is the probability of net growth of the business.

Customer Service

In an organization, Customer Service is the process of delivering information and services regarding all the products and brands. Customer satisfaction depends on the quality of service provided to him by the supplier. The organization has not only to elaborate and clarify the details of the services to be provided to the customer but also to abide by the conditions as well. If the quality and trend of service go beyond customers’ expectations, the organization is supposed to have good business with customers.

How Does CRM Works?

CRM software uses an integrated approach to store customer information. An all-in-one CRM has sales, marketing, and service automation rolled into one. It automates interactions, provides business intelligence, and empowers sales reps to make the sales process smoother. A CRM analyzes the data and opportunities of your sales force and helps them deliver stellar customer service.

The customer-facing functions of a business can become simpler and easier with the adoption of CRM. Making a business successful and keeping it running can be an arduous task. When all happen simultaneously and you have to handle chunks of data in form of campaigns, meetings, appointments, etc. you find a need to adopt a powerful app in place of many individual apps. An all-in-one CRM unites all the functions on a single platform.

What Are The Best CRM Softwares For Small Businesses?

CRM #1. Pipedrive: The Easiest CRM To Use.

If you want to sell more, Pipedrive is the CRM you’ve been looking for. According to their site, they help teams sell an average of 28 percent more. The entire platform is focused on increasing sales and Pipedrive integrates with a ton of other tools. It’s a great way to take your automation process up to the next level. 

It’s also one of the more affordable options on this list, starting at just $12.50 per month per user for their Essential plan. Even at the Enterprise level, it’s still pretty affordable at just $99 per user per month. They also offer a free trial, so you can try it out before purchasing a subscription.

CRM #2. HubSpot: The Best for Scaling Quickly.

HubSpot CRM is a great option for small businesses that are on the fence about whether or not they need dedicated CRM software. 

First of all, their freemium plan is bananas in terms of how much they give you. You get chatbots, sales pipelines, and literally dozens of other features you would normally have to pay for. 

On top of that, you get unlimited users and it’s free forever, so you don’t have to worry about how many contacts you make while you’re trying to grow.

CRM #3. Salesflare: The Best Automated Customer Information Collection.

Salesflare is a great example—they make a CRM tailor-made for smaller B2B sales teams that is laser-focused on lead management tools. 

You’ll hear “simple but powerful” thrown around a lot with many software solutions, but it really does fit Salesflare.

The software will gather customer details from their social profiles, email signatures, and the web at large. Plus, it will automatically suggest contacts it recognizes as associated with a person or organization you add to your accounts.

CRM #4. Less Annoying CRM: The Most Affordable Solution for Sales and Marketing.

Less Annoying CRM has one goal and I bet you can guess what it is. It’s a simple platform with transparent, affordable pricing. 

They know that small businesses need a CRM solution but can’t spend all of their money or time on software.

This is a low-cost, high-performance tool for managing and organizing all of a company’s contacts in a single platform. Users sign into their LACRM workspace and are instantly brought up to speed about all their most important customer relationships. 

There is an agenda of their events for the day, a prioritized task list, a pipeline report, and an activity report. Individuals can see the status of all their activities and leaders will also be able to see the activity status of anyone they manage.

CRM #5. Nutshell: The Best for B2B Sales Teams.

Nutshell offers a nice balance of user-friendliness and sophistication that works extremely well for B2B sales teams. Reps get the information, support, and collaborative tools they need to start selling smarter, even over a long sales cycle. 

B2B deals take time and engagement with various stakeholders throughout the process. Keeping track of everything that’s involved across multiple deals is hard.

Nutshell keeps important people and conversations from falling through the cracks. Their CRM interface is really welcoming (your reps will actually want to use it) and their mobile app is just as good.


With CRM software for small businesses, these softwares are even more important. Here’s why:

Ease-of-use: Everyone using the CRMs needs to make sure the information inserted is accurate or the platform will be useless. Avoid an elaborate onboarding process for every hire by finding something that’s easy enough for non-techies to use and troubleshoot issues on their own.

Integrations: A CRM has to tie into the tools you are already using. Direct integrations are great because DIY and API integrations can easily break at scale. Centralizing the tools a small business uses is better than adding to the stack.

Channels: A CRM has to collect customer information no matter where it’s coming from—talk, text, chat, social, and so on. If it can only connect with a limited number of the channels you use, information will be incomplete, and customer experience fragmented.

Price: If growth is the goal, the platform you choose should fit your budget moving forward. Cost may vary based on numbers of users, contacts, emails, etc. Budget this out to avoid hitting annoying limits or having to switch CRMs. No small business wants to spend resources migrating their customer data while they’re trying to grow.

Try any CRM Just to get more clarity about how it works. It basically going to make your operational work and marketing effort automated and easy. 

CRM software is a great tool if one knows how to use it properly. 


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