Choosing the Best CRM Software for Your Small Business

Over 91 percent of companies with at least 10 employees use CRM software for their business. That’s why whether you’re newly implementing a CRM system, or if your current system needs an update, you’ll need to know what criteria to look for when choosing CRM software.

Keep reading to find the best CRM software for a small business. First, we will cover questions that you should ask before searching for software. And afterward, we’ll dive into features that will make it simple to choose your new software.

What Is CRM Software?

Customer relationship management (CRM) software serves as a platform that connects your departments. This type of management software will give any employees easy access to real-time client data.

Why is this beneficial? It allows your staff to better connect with customers by personalizing experiences based on existing data. Moreover, a CRM business application will prevent miscommunication among your staff. This mistake could otherwise cost companies over $62.4 million per year.

How To Select the Best CRM Software

Now that you better understand what customer relationship software is, you’ll need to know how to choose the best CRM tool. First, we’ll cover a couple of important points to consider.

Identify the Reason You Need This Software

List your business’ sales processes and daily activities. Take notes on your company’s customer interactions. Do you notice any issues that you want to solve?

Whether you find any problems, you will also want to speak to everyone on your team. Figure out what parts of their daily activities suffer from inefficiencies.

Once you determine your business’ problems, think of ways that CRM software could optimize your workflows. Moreover, consider the features that you’d need.

Evaluate the Cost

According to a study done by Nucleus Research, companies average $8.71 per dollar spent on their return on investment. To enjoy the biggest return, only choose the features that you know you will use on your CRM software. Don’t opt for an all-one-solution if you know that the features will produce minimal results.

Review Whether the Software Is Compatible With Your Current Software

One of the most important factors to account for is whether you can integrate your new CRM software with existing applications. If your website uses third-party software like Google Analytics, can the software that you’re interested in support it?

If not, you will want to consider the time and costs that you’ll need to put into buying and installing new applications. Afterward, compare the costs and benefits of the CRM that’s incompatible with your software.

Features To Look For When Choosing the Best CRM Software for a Small Business

Choosing the best CRM software features will make the biggest difference when you’re shopping for new software. While each business has different needs, the following are the most common and important features that small businesses will need.

The Best CRM Marketing Tools

Using CRM software to help your business grow will play as one of the most critical parts of this software, which means that you will need practical marketing tools like:

• Search engine optimization (SEO): provides suggestions on ideal keyword placement and topics
• Landing pages: create pages that customers land on after clicking an ad or call to action (CTA)
• Ads: templates to create ads for social media networks
• Segmenting: helps you prepare marketing campaigns for customer groups based on different categories

Most of these solutions will come with software as a service-based (SaaS) CRM software. Because it’s based on the cloud, employees from any department and anywhere on the globe can access and adjust marketing campaigns.

Reporting and Dashboards

Your CRM needs to report the most information possible to make it so your business can make data-driven decisions. You must ensure that you can integrate data from analytics platforms or spreadsheets. For example, whether you can transfer information to and from third-party software like QuickBooks.

Sales and Lead Management

One of the most important features of this type of software is being able to automatically generate leads from various mediums. Some sources could include leads from social media, your email newsletter list, website visitors, and more.

You will also want to look for software that can automatically follow up with your leads by following tasks and mailing preset emails.

Moreover, if you operate an eCommerce storefront, CRM software should allow you to do the following:

• Store, create, and track invoices
• Sales forecasting: to help you better plan future campaigns
• Competition tracking capabilities
• Personalized email marketing: to make the customer feel included
• Chatbots: a means for customers to receive help without customer service
• Customer journeys: how your customer navigates your website

To further optimize your business’ sales, you’ll want to ensure your software integrates with your eCommerce software. For example, if you use Shopify, check whether the CRM you’re interested in will integrate with the eCommerce website builder.

Built-in Workflows

Most premium customer relationship management software will include built-in workflows and project management. Many CRM providers may not offer the customization that your company needs, though.

Before choosing your software, determine what sort of workflow that you’re looking for. For example, if you prefer a specific approval process or workflow step, ensure that your software includes it.

The best way to determine whether CRM software will meet your criteria is to test it. Most companies should offer demos, free trials, or money-back guarantees on their products so clients can see if they will match their business needs.

Upgrade to the Best CRM System Today

When selecting the best CRM software for a small business, you will need to ensure that it’s compatible with your current software. Moreover, you’ll need to determine what features will best benefit your business and use those criteria to choose your new CRM software.

If you’re looking for CRM software that’ll strengthen customer relationships and increase sales, our Dynamic 365 CRM has everything you need. A couple of noteworthy features that you’ll get include simple software upgrades and seamless integration to various applications. Book a demo today to see what it’s about.