Starting a business, then scaling up and going for growth is like running a marathon. It takes time, endurance and willpower. We’ve been there and we feel your pain. You give blood, sweat and tears to reach each milestone, digging deep and pushing forward, facing challenges at every turn. You’ve proved you have tenacity, ambition and vision in droves, but is it enough to drive you to the next level? What does it take to scale up successfully?
To reach that next level you need the right people and processes in place of course, but you also need the best CRM tools at your disposal; tools that make your life easier by delivering a better service to your customers and maximising business opportunities. We believe a good CRM should be the beating heart of your growing company and a growth enabler.
If you know that your current CRM is holding you back, or if you don’t have a CRM and you admit it’s time to ditch the spreadsheet keep reading. Let’s look at CRM for a growing business.
Popular CRM choices
Like many small businesses, you may be using an ‘off-the-shelf’ CRM, like HubSpot, Monday.com, Zoho or Act. They can be a smart choice when you’re starting out, as they’re quick to deploy, tend to have high-quality support and offer users a simple interface. No tech skills or hosting are required.
An off-the-shelf CRM will manage data efficiently, nurture prospects and leads, offer a level of system integration and may even have impressive marketing automation features. But when you’re growing and your needs are changing, some ‘out-of-box’ systems can struggle to keep pace and lack flexibility. And we mean true flexibility in terms of adapting to your internal business processes and data handling mechanisms, rather than the ability to add on additional features.
If you’re still at the spreadsheet stage, then prepare to have your mind blown by what a good CRM is capable of delivering for your business.
Your growing data needs
Attracting more customers means an increase in data, which creates more challenges.
This greater complexity means managing and using data effectively becomes even more important. Especially if you are focused on improving your customer communication and you’re eager to leverage data insight for further improvements to your business.
The ideal CRM will give you visibility of the customer from every angle, so you know where and how to reach them. This full view of the customer’s journey is a powerful feature, enabling your business to maximise opportunities by delivering the best possible customer experience through personalisation and superior customer service.
A revenue-generating CRM should help you generate marketing, sales, and customer reporting, so you can monitor activities, identify problems and behavioural patterns, and see your return on investment. A growth-focused CRM should also allow you to perform customer segmentation, identify the customer profiles that offer sales opportunities and personalise the buyer experience.
The right CRM saves huge amounts of admin time and reduces manual data entry. It allows you to track sales activities, manage your teams, and improve customer support to reduce churn.
So, if this is what good looks like, how do we know when it’s not doing its job?
When a CRM system is not doing its job
If your CRM doesn’t integrate with your other systems, it won’t be able to keep up with your business as it grows. When actions are not logged automatically, efficiency slows. Having everything in a central hub saves time and makes customer data processing a breeze. Making your employees lives that bit easier. If your employees complain about the longwinded navigation and processes in your current CRM, you could make some large gains in time and efficiency.
If you are frustrated by the lack of reporting and insight into your commercial operations, then it’s a sign that a better sales CRM solution is required. If you are unable to gain sight of your sales team’s activity, unable to quantify the size of your prospect pot and have little knowledge of the current state of your leads. Then your business will be losing out on business opportunities.
And when it comes to marketing CRM, true marketing automation features can be limited on many CRMs, which simply offer email marketing and lead tracking. Falling short on form creation, landing page building, email marketing, lead scoring, social media marketing tools and events modules. The marketing automation offering in CRM systems can vary wildly, so it’s worth exploring this in detail.
Or if the marketing automation features work well, many small businesses still feel that the package-based subscription either restricts access to the best features or gives them more than they need. These packaged products designed with a ‘fits-all’ approach can be deployed quickly, which is great, but it is a trade-off in terms of true scalability and flexibility for the user.
What does a good CRM for a growing business look like?
Let’s summarise the features you should pop on your CRM shopping list for your growing company:
Scalability is most often offered by a custom-built solution that can easily grow with an ambitious business. Need added features? More users? Further training for new modules? None of this is a problem with a Microsoft Power Apps CRM solution. (For those unfamiliar with Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM is built on the broader Power Apps platform!)
Flexibility is critical to supporting growth. No one wants to have to switch their CRM system every couple of years, it’s costly and time-consuming. By choosing a flexible system that can be easily adapted to your changing needs, you’re future-proofing your business and can operate in a more agile manner.
Mobile app. For business on the go and sales teams on the road, mobile apps are a winning feature. Think about whether easy access anywhere is critical to your business.
Integration and not only with Google. Gmail and Gsuite may be handy, but we recommend Microsoft integration. Imagine emails, calls, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive all working seamlessly together.
Marketing automation, OK, you may not need it yet, but remember marketing automation is not just having access to an email builder add-on, it is so much more. Look for landing pages, code tracking, events integration, questionnaires and lead scoring.
Could Dynamics 365 (Power Apps) be the answer?
Hands up, we’re CRM geeks and we’ve been fans of Dynamics 365 (Also sometimes referred to as Power Apps) for many years. Thanks to our 30 years of CRM project management and data migration experience, we know the CRM market inside out and we still feel that when it comes to growing businesses, Microsoft offers endless possibilities and unrivalled flexibility.
On the face of it, Dynamics 365 can seem complex. However, it really is not. Not when you have a professional and knowledgeable partner on hand. We are masters of creating powerful, yet simple CRM systems for our clients and when they need more sophistication and complexity, we can deliver that too. We build CRM systems that grow as you grow.
Added value
Many business owners are unaware of the countless additional free features that come with Microsoft Dynamics. Unlike off-the-shelf CRMs, which often charge more to unlock extra features, Microsoft’s add-ons are sitting there, ready to be added and used. You just need to know about them! And that’s when having a CRM Partner who is invested in your success pays off, as they’ll be banging at your door to tell you about the latest upgrades and free features.
Scalability and agility
One of the key benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the agility that will help your ambitious business grow. If your CRM can adapt to the changing landscape, competitor activity and consumer needs, the sky’s the limit.
Marketing automation
Without a doubt, Click marketing automation software offers one of the most powerful and smartest marketing automation tools available on the market. Built specifically and only for Dynamics 365, the system sits right within your Microsoft ecosystem offering unrivalled features and tools that will transform your digital marketing.
Managed service
Your business is expanding. It’s growing in complexity and requires more than a calm and organized mind to keep everything in place. You need to know that you are in safe hands when it comes to your data management, after all, it is one of your most valuable assets. We are those safe hands! Team Rocket CRM is right here by your side, with expert human support whenever you need it.
We have helped hundreds of businesses scale up through modern and flexible IT infrastructure. With so many CRMs on the market, we encourage you to look for flexibility, scalability and integration. If you need further help identifying and choosing the best CRM for a growing business please call us.
ABOUT ROCKET CRM
Rocket CRM is a Microsoft Dynamics 365, and a platinum Click accredited partner, helping small to medium-sized businesses and charities harness the power of scalable CRM technology. Our mission is to make powerful CRM software simple with custom-built, user-focused solutions.
Website: rocketcrm.co.uk
Podcast: RocketPod
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