11 reasons small sales teams need CRM
Having started your own sales business or taking a charge over a small sales team, you’ve probably considered a CRM system once or twice. “Everyone in sales is using one of those. But do I actually need it? Will my team benefit from it and sales go smoother? After all, we’re doing just fine with Docs and Excel.” Well, there is a reason, and not one, why “everyone” is using a CRM for sales management. What’s more important, the size of your team has little impact on the usefulness of a system, so a CRM for small sales team might be as effective as for a giant company.
Here are 11 reasons why small sales teams need a CRM system!
1. CRM is your go-to place for everything
Probably the best thing about a CRM system is that, when used correctly, it becomes your main tool of the trade, your central hub for information, your dashboard and your to-do list. Once you and your team start aggregating all your work data and customer information inside a single system, common questions like “Where do I find the information on X?” or “Who was the last one who to Y?” simply disappear.
2. Standardize sales process and share it in the future
Another great thing about using a CRM when building up your sales resources is that the newcomers will be able to get into your company existing workflow and follow it flawlessly.
Reps don’t have to actually remember all types of info they need to get from a customer. Simply by looking at a new record and finding a field like “Team size”, they’ll recall that that’s something they should ask about.
3. Use CRM for planning and time management
When you’re a new company on the market, your resources are fairly limited. Each employee counts and each task needs to be completed ASAP. But such an approach gives way to a workplace chaos and, without a decent organization system in place, you’ll be just wasting time on menial tasks, neglecting what’s important. A CRM for sales team will help you prioritize your tasks, highlight clients that require your attention and will help you analyze your activity and efforts.
4. Communication inside a small team isn’t better than in a big one
You might think that because you’re a small sales team of 2-4 reps, it means that you know who’s doing what and with what results. But, in fact, it’s impossible to keep track of such things even if there’s just two of you in a team. A CRM for small sales team allows you to know if somebody is working with a client and to stay updated as to the state of current affairs without mingling with the workflow of your colleagues.
5. Discover and repeat what works
A CRM for sales will let you learn which of your marketing or sales efforts have actually produced some significant results. Because a CRM system isn’t all just about collecting data, but also analyzing and presenting it in a simple to digest manner. With a quick grouping of your clients by the acquisition channels, you’ll immediately see which marketing channels work best, which gave you more exposure, more customers and which should be closed due to their inefficiency.
Find out how CRM helps to acquire new customers
6. You WILL grow
OK, there’s 100% confidence that you don’t need a CRM for sales. You’re doing just fine with all those spreadsheets. But will this system work once your team grows in size? We’re not talking about adding one new rep either. Once your team grows 2-4 time its size, all your notes and spreadsheets turn into a complete mess and you’ll spend more time explaining to newcomers how your system works and fixing their mistakes instead of actually doing your job. CRM systems scale great, meaning that if it works fine for 2-4 people, it’ll be the same for 10-20 sales reps.
7. Provide a personalized approach
When you’re a small team and dealing with a small volume of leads and clients, you might falsely believe that you remember everything about each of your clients. Surely you’ve spent time communicating with them and learning all about their problems or expectations, but give it a week or two and you’ll vaguely recall if you’ve spoken to such person at all. With a CRM for sales management, you don’t have to keep customer details in mind. As long as you remember at least something about them and enter it into a search bar, you’re ready to speak to all your clients as if they were your best friends since forever.
Check out how to personalise communication with a CRM
8. Better targeting
Personalization and targeting are two important aspects of any mass communication with clients and leads. If we get down to basics, every entry in a CRM record is a distinct parameter that defines your client.
Taking those parameters into consideration and using them as the basis for your newsletter or special offer mailing list is something a CRM system can do in several clicks. You can filter your whole customer database by the most defining qualities and reach out with a resonating message to the right people.
9. You can not rely on people or memory alone
However harsh it might sound, an over-reliance on people alone is something that might backfire later. Your teammates will sooner or later leave, and, unless they diligently pass all they work to the successors, your company will lose client data and the relationships established with them. Another human element is the memory. You can’t expect to remember everything on your task list or all customer details. But once all that data is inside a CRM system, it’s there for good. The data stays with you, it’s always up-to-date and you know where to find it.
10. CRM works with your favorite tools
Even though a CRM should be your central activity hub, it doesn’t mean that you won’t be using other tools and services in your work. A CRM for small sales team can’t replace you everything, but it can play nice with others. For example, NetHunt CRM integrates with your Gmail inbox, so if you spend a decent chunk of your work time in the inbox, you can still fully control the CRM data from inside Gmail. CRM data (raw or segmented) can be exported to other mailing services, you can integrate lead capturing forms with a CRM or connect it to your company’s social media accounts.
11. You can afford a CRM
Previously only major companies could afford a CRM. The implementation and support of a CRM for a sales team has been a significant expenditure, but also a rewarding one. Today, with the popularization of cloud computing and a significant competition on the market, CRM systems have become affordable to the point that it’s no more expensive than your Spotify or Netflix subscription. In fact, if you’re using Excel for customer management, you’ve overpaid for the software that wasn’t even designed for such tasks.
Check out our list of the best sales CRM systems and choose the one your small sales team needs!