At some point in the life of a young business, every CEO has to ask himself the important question: when is the best time to deploy a sales tools for business to help grow my business and better manage my prospects?
There is a lot to think about, and clearly deploying certain sales tools for business doesn’t come into mind at first. Many small business owners don’t think it’s necessary to have a sales software in place straight from the beginning as there won’t be a lot of leads or customers. However, the good old Spreadsheet might look efficient at first glance, but the more it’s been used and the bigger the business gets, a proper tool to manage the business is needed.
If the thought of getting a CRM or an equivalent sales tool in place does come to mind, business owners are often put off by the variety of complex tools the market has to offer. After trying out a few and realizing this is nothing for a business that hasn’t even got any proper sales yet, and takes way too much time and requires information that you can’t provide at this stage, they are discouraged and go back to Google Spreadsheets and Excel Workbooks. Besides the high monthly costs for such tools, which most start-ups can’t even afford with their budget, it’s quickly forgotten and postponed to a later stage of the business.
It is so important though, especially at the beginning, to organize your business in a very efficient way. If there is not a lot of data to put in yet, this is fine but instead of relying on paper and spreadsheet which can get lost easily and don’t allow you to work properly, it is vital to have all your interaction with prospects synchronized with your lead management software.
Even if you only have a few prospects yet, it is better to start organizing them at an early stage, so once they grow you already have all their customer history easily accessible and you don’t have to look through all your notes to find the last correspondence. When you then go out and meet your potential clients, you don’t have to risk forgetting the meeting, as it will be synchronized with your calendar and reminds you afterwards of the next step you have to do in order to successfully close the deal and win the customer. Keeping all your data in one place is crucial to any business as it lowers the risk of losing track of your customers and also helps your team to better collaborate as everyone has access to the data if needed, and can help each other out with feedback and advice.
It also saves you a lot of time and nerves, if you can log on to your sales software and rest assured everything you need is saved in one place. All your invoices, presentations, proposals are attached to your leads as well as your last email exchange with your prospect. For a manager’s point of view, it takes away all the stress as he can easily see how many leads are in the pipeline, how many deals are expected to be closed soon and how much worth they are. It helps to assess your business and get a clear overview of where exactly you are at your early stage. That way and based on your performance, you can then change certain marketing and sales strategies and confidently reach out to a broader audience and convert more leads into customers.
When you start your own business, it takes time to adapt to the market and get used to how things work. It can be a very hard and stressful time but fortunately there are some tools out there, which help you take away all the stress and let you focus on what you do best: win the leads and grow your business.
We at You Don’t Need a CRM understand your concerns, in fact we have been there too. Keeping all your customer interactions on post it’s or spreadsheets might work for the first couple of weeks, but soon gets too confusing and messy, especially when you need to report back to a customer and can’t find the corresponding note you wrote down. This is why it is so important to have a simple and trustworthy tool in place right from the start where you can keep all your customer information in one place and never run into the risk of losing an important bit of information.
You Don’t Need a CRM serves as the perfect pre-CRM tool, for small companies who don’t need the complexity of a pricey traditional CRM tool, yet still are looking for an easy to use tool to better manage their sales and close more deals.
It comes with features such as an online prospecting list which you can use for your cold calling activities. Once you have your suspects on the phone, you just work your way through the list, fill out some missing bits of information and when they do show interest in the product or service you’re offering, you simply convert the row of your spreadsheet into a lead with just one click and can start working on it straight away. Once a Lead, you can change the status depending on the stage you’re at, create To-Do’s with reminders so you don’t forget about them, schedule follow ups and push the lead through your sales pipeline until he turns into a customer.
We would really recommend for any small business or any founder who is thinking of setting up their own company, to not ignore the importance of having sales tools for buisness in place once you start up and to take some time to think about how much time and money you can save if you do it right from the beginning.
If you have any questions to the above or want to discuss more, feel free to contact us at contact@youdontneedacrm.com and we will be happy to advice more.
The You Don’t Need a CRM! Team.
