At a time when small businesses are struggling to grow, to stay in the race, they need to invest in the right area, be it signing the right deals, recruiting the right resources, or getting more customers. And thus the businesses are searching for the best CRM software for their small business.
Now, the challenging part for small businesses is to decide, which CRM software would be best suited for their business. What are the features that they should look out for? How would it benefit their business? Would the CRM Software address their pain points?
In this blog, we come up with 10 features you must look out for when buying a CRM Software.
CONTACT MANAGEMENT
All CRMs need to have a database where they store the customer, name, address, social media integrations, etc. The key factor that makes the CRM Software stand out is how easy it is to find a contact, the usability, and the layout. This happens with the help of contact management. Are you able to store all the relevant information about the contact and edit it as and when required?
PIPELINE MANAGEMENT
How well can you visualize your pipeline? You must be able to view all the deals, tasks, projects that you are presently working on or completed. You should be able to filter out the data with ease and take smart decisions. Whether your deal has 4 stages or 10 stages, you should be able to easily move the deal from one stage to another. And thus pipeline management is an important part of CRM.
SALES FORECASTING
Sales Forecasting helps the sales team as well as the managers to determine whether the targets are being achieved as per the plan. The team can look into the trends and make smart decisions accordingly. The sales managers can also plan as to how many resources they need to deploy. This allows for effective planning for small businesses
EMAIL INTEGRATION
A good CRM Software manages all the data in one place and eases up the work. And we know how crucial emails are to track the last discussions with prospects. Thus, email integration helps businesses to sync their Gmail or other accounts to CRM and thus maintain their chats, and communication details at the same place.
The “Smart Email” Feature of TeamWave CRM helps the businesses to decide as to which emails need to be synced to TeamWave Mail and which are not needed. Also, the businesses can check their earlier conversations related to a particular deal or with a specific contact just with one click.
TASK MANAGEMENT
When handling many deals, it becomes tough to remember the crucial points concerning just one deal. There are chances one might miss the deadlines for a particular task. And to prevent this one needs to know which activities are associated with a particular deal. A good CRM would help a Sales Person to reduce the toggle time and make the follow-up process more efficient with the help of task management.
CRM CUSTOMIZATIONS
Different businesses have different needs. And how flexible is a CRM Software for a business? Are you able to determine who can view deal information? Can you create custom filters to view the data that’s crucial for your business? Are you able to add data that is relevant for your deals and tasks?
The key consideration should be, how well can the CRM Software be fine-tuned to make a better fit for your business.
REPORTING
Reporting is a crucial part of any business. Especially small businesses can get insights about their customer’s behavioral patterns, products, and industry trends. The reports should be easy to analyze, should provide in-depth details, and also should focus on real-time data so that the team can make a more accurate analysis.
TEAM MANAGEMENT
When handling a small team it’s easy, but when the number of decision-makers increases it becomes tougher to keep the team and the clients on the same page. How easily can the senior managers delegate the tasks to the team? How easy is it to communicate and collaborate with other tea members for the deal? Effective team management is key to closing more deals.
MOBILE-FRIENDLY
The CRM needs to be mobile friendly so that the businesses can check the details on the go and keep themselves updated about all the deals, tasks, etc. This is a crucial feature if the team is working remotely.
PRODUCT/ SERVICES MANAGEMENT
As businesses have large variations in their products or the services they provide, the need arises to streamline the data associated with the products or services in one place.
TeamWave has come up with a new PRODUCTS FEATURE that saves the time of the sales crew by automating processes and helping them focus on their deals better. The main benefits of this new feature are:
Keep a track of what you sell
Now save all the inventory/ service details at one place. Once products are added, it is easy for the team to generate sales quotes, orders, deals, and also create invoices just with a few clicks. Once the product is created, one can attach it to other deals just with a click.
Automate the process and club many product variations under one umbrella
One product can have many variations – different model names, different color variations, different model specifications. So now we allow the businesses to combine all the variations and mention it under a single listing. Also, it saves time as one can create variations just with a click and edit the details as per your requirement.
Think global & maximize profits
Selling globally? The main challenge is to price the product in such a way so that the businesses can maximize profits in that particular location. Now the team can decide how to price the product in a particular location with the help of cost per unit and direct cost. And one can calculate the number of units that need to be sold to gain profits.
Keep track of best sellers with our reports
A business would want to keep track of which are the best sellers and which are the non-performers and our Product Reports Feature does just that. The analysis team can check as to how the products, as well as the sales executives, are performing with the help of our Reports Feature. This also helps to determine the revenue-generating products for one’s business.
Forecast future sales with ease
Forecast future sales and revenue by analyzing if the results have been at par with the team’s efforts. If a particular product is performing really well then one can invest more in manufacturing or marketing that product. This will also help to determine the products that are not cash-cows and might be the reason for losses.
Customize it as per the business requirements
Availability of many custom fields to fine-tune and add the relevant details needed for a particular business.
Curious to learn more about this feature? Click here right away.
FINAL THOUGHTS
These are a few of the important features that one must look into when planning to buy a CRM Software. Different CRM Softwares would be suited for different business scenarios and thus the decision-makers should looking into the pros and cons
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