What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the process of managing interactions with existing, past and potential customers. Using data analysis about customers’ history with the company, CRM helps organisations to improve business relationships with customers by focusing on customer retention and growth.

When people talk about CRM, they are usually referring to a CRM system - a tool used for contact management, sales management, productivity, and more. A CRM tool (or CRM software) helps you to streamline CRM processes in order to build customer relationships, increase sales, improve customer service, and increase profitability.

CRM software functions by recording customer contact information, such as email, contact number, social media profile and more. Depending on the type of customers you’re working with, it can also collect information such as recent news about the company’s activity as well as communication preferences. This can be important in order to tailor communications and interactions with the customer.

Over time, the accumulation of this data allows you to perform analysis and observe trends across your customer base in order to understand not only your overall customer composition, but also each individual customer’s lifecycle. Customer relationship management helps to provide a 360° view of your customers’ needs, preferences and behaviours.

Great customer service is an important growth driver for many small and medium-sized businesses, but dedicated CRMs are often too complex and expensive to implement.

That’s why we built the Email for Trello Power-Up! It turns any Trello board into a shared inbox and Kanban-style customer service platform. And, if your business already uses Trello for project management, it means you’re getting more value out of that investment.

Which business teams need CRM?

CRM has traditionally been used as a sales and marketing tool, but it can also be equally applicable in other areas, such as customer service, HR, supply-chain and partner management. But what size businesses need or should use CRM?

CRM is not only for large-scale organisations. Small or medium-sized businesses can also find this software advantageous. The key to transforming your small business into a vibrant and rapidly growing one, might just be CRM software.

In the early stages of an organisation’s growth, one of the most valuable assets available is your little black book of contacts. These include prospects that are yet to be tapped and converted, alongside existing customers who can give you a steady stream of repeat business. CRM software enables true customer management at this stage, beyond just storing your contact information like a business cardholder or digital phonebook would do. CRM software helps you to understand exactly where you are with your customers, how to keep them happy and what obstacles you may face in order to close deals.

CRM software delivers speed and scalability, which is precisely what a fast-growing team needs. Moreover, it also streamlines resources in terms of manpower and time required to close leads, and ensures continuous engagement with your customers. This comes in several forms, from the ability to see a record of all of their previous interactions with you, to qualifying your leads and prompting you when contact becomes sparse so customers don’t fall through the cracks. A CRM tool can also help you learn from every outcome so you can improve your sales strategies. It is precisely a small business that requires such functions of a CRM software.

CRM for small businesses

As a small business, in order to grow, you need to invest in the areas that deliver the biggest dividends. That is why more and more businesses are implementing a small business CRM, or customer management software for small businesses. Small businesses don’t need complicated systems with fancy charts, and functions that they won’t realistically ever use.

The focus for customer management software for small businesses should be on:

• An easy to manage system that encourages organisation.

• A simple view of customers with quick access to contact details.

• An effective way to communicate with customers, or at least track communications.

As your organisation grows, you will need to share your CRM data with colleagues, collaborate on sales initiatives, and access the latest information while you're on the move from a tablet, smartphone or other mobile device. Some CRM software allows you to engage with customers from within an app, which is perfect for working on-the-go.

Benefits of CRM software for Small Business

There are endless ways in which the benefits of CRM software can transform operations for small businesses. Here are some of the key benefits we’ve found:

1. Helps your business: Boost Sales and Nurtures Leads

CRM software can help streamline sales and boost your revenue at all stages of the customer journey. From lead nurturing and closing leads to retaining those leads, a CRM does not just mean your business can track more customer data; it means you can focus on your most valuable, or potentially valuable customers.

The lead nurturing process can be tedious and time consuming, often stretching over long periods of time. CRM software automates the process, and allows for continuous engagement and increasingly tailored engagement, until they are ready to buy. CRM also allows your team to pinpoint focus on only the most beneficial leads or the most enthusiastic customers. This gives them a significant advantage, turning promotion efforts and calls into a targeted process, rather than a blanket statement. The efficiency this can bring for the sales team of a small business can be vital as working hours are often the most valuable resource in a small company.

Not only does CRM software allow for more targeted sales efforts, it allows for more timely ones too. Time after lead generation is vital. Lost time can allow for a customer to gravitate towards a competitor's offering, or simply lose interest. An online CRM allows you to keep track of individual customer journeys, alerting you to those customers who need attention from your team at the vital point of a sale, rather than allowing them to slip through the net. CRM is vital in not only taking advantage of your customer journey, but also understanding it in the first place.

CRM software also enables businesses to organise and categorise leads and customers to understand how the consumer market interacts with the product or service. Identifying which lead sources drive the most sales allows you to better focus your attention and allocate your resources, in order to expand key areas driving business growth.

2. Helps your customers: Understand their needs and wants

Businesses survive and thrive by understanding their customers’ needs, pain points and preferences. It’s critical to identify a gap in the market which they can then provide for. But how do we jump into our customers’ brains to find this out?

CRM software stores information about your clients so that you can analyse the data and gain valuable insights. This will help to inform a customer-centric business strategy and more effective communication. Moreover, the information is more easily accessible, and in more digestible formats, which will help you and your team track, assess and identify opportunities in just a few clicks of a button.

You can also use CRM software to improve your marketing strategy by tweaking email marketing and campaigns, website designs and sales approaches. As you accumulate more accurate information into the behaviours and preferences of your clients, you can tailor your messaging or messaging platform so that they are more closely aligned with their preferences and expectations. Personalisation is always a key area of differentiation, that allows businesses to form meaningful connections with customers, boosting brand loyalty and potentially new revenue streams through customer referrals.

3. Helps your team: Improve individual and team workflow

CRM software automates a ton of manual processes that kill productivity - tasks that are often required if you are manually tracking the customer journey. Whether it's automating follow-up on a new lead or delivering a consistent new customer onboarding process, CRM software helps to remove bottlenecks and significantly reduces the time spent on a task without compromising on quality.

Collaborating with your team is also made easier with a shared platform where you can track progress on individual clients and cases. Assigning tasks to teammates is simple, no need to worry about updating local spreadsheets, sending them, digging for old email threads and more. With instant access to detailed information about each and every customer, any team member can easily take over when someone is absent.

CRM software can do most of the heavy lifting for you, allowing you and your team to work on more impactful tasks whilst continuously delivering high level service.

Conclusion

Now that you’re convinced of the benefits of CRM software for small businesses, how do you go about selecting the right one? What is the best affordable CRM system? The least inexpensive CRM software? With so many options on the market, it can be difficult to understand all their features, pricing tiers, and ultimately make a decision.

We’re big fans of Trello for keeping track of tasks and collaborating with team members. We use Trello in almost every area of our business. We love Trello so much, that we build a Power-Up for Trello to let people send and receive emails right from within Trello. And with email being organised in Trello, it becomes the perfect CRM system for a small business. You can visualise your customers and deals as cards in Trello. And get the whole team involved in processing and responding to email, and collaborating on the work to be done. Managing your CRM in Trello a super affordable way to get a simple start with CRM.