As a startup owner, you probably struggle with getting stuff sorted. Maybe there’s something stopping leads from converting as customers; maybe you face problems with organizing and managing all that client data. You might even be alone, as a solopreneur, juggling all your business balls at the same time. That’s understandable.
Alas, there is a solution.
A startup CRM keeps all the important things together, centralising and visualising important data. Without a CRM for startup, you’re giving the competition a head-start, you’re lowering your startup’s ceiling for potential, and you’re probably losing out on revenue. In this article, we’ll dive deep into why you need a startup CRM and how to choose the best system for your needs.
What is CRM for startup?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It’s software that keeps all the important information on your clients in one place so you can easily store, manage, and utilise it whenever you need.
CRM for saas startups organises your business by centralising and visualising important data, bringing all your teams together under the same tab to standardise sales processes. From there, CRM automates processes for lead generation, lead enrichment, and nurturing activities.
Armed with the data resources and streamlined processes that CRM provides, your startup can finally grow.
In a nutshell, CRM helps startups...
- Access customer context at all times.
- Get more leads.
- Easily turn leads into customers.
- Create and manage a sales pipeline.
- Automate manual sales processes.
- Retain existing clients.
- Gain insight into performance with sales reports.
- Organize data and sales activities.
Read our detailed guide about what a CRM is.
Why should I implement CRM for startup?
According to Salesforce, sales teams who use a CRM reported increased productivity by 34%. Let’s discuss exactly why you need a CRM system as part of your sales and marketing strategy. This will help you understand what problems CRM solves.
CRM for startup generates new leads
Finding customers is one of the biggest hurdles of startup business, , especially if you just started your LLC.
Lead generation is the process of finding potential customers for your company. They can come from any source, both inbound and outbound.
Inbound leads are generated through web forms, inbound emails, and other places where a lead might reach out to you. Outbound lead generation is the opposite, where sales reps reach out to potential leads through cold-calling and cold emailing.
CRM automates both inbound and outbound lead generation by scraping data from different sources and popping it in your CRM system, ready to be utilised.
- Web form lead generation.
- Bulk email features.
- Chat platform integrations.
- CRM for LinkedIn lead generation.
- Telephone features such as call logging.
CRM for startup organises and optimises
Data organisation is the systematisation and storage of incoming information your startup deals with.
Data structure is crucial for business, especially when you’re at the very beginning of your startup journey. With everything in its proper place; with all the data points your business needs to make personal, specific offers to different cohorts of customers - there is a greater chance of future conversion.
With clean, structured data at the heart of a startup business, you can standardise and optimise sales processes and make things easier...
- Segment your customer base by demographic and behavioural attributes.
- Maintain a uniform sales process across all your leads.
- Spot where leads get stuck in the pipeline.
- Get better reporting and forecasting of business health.
George Rowlands
CRM for startup automates processes
Sales automation is the process of delegating manual sales tasks to dedicated sales automation technology. Mundane, repetitive tasks shouldn’t take sales team time. Dedicated software takes care of them more accurately, timely, and quickly than a human ever could.
Finally, sales automation helps you ensure no human error stops you from getting expected revenues, since no leads get forgotten about.
The picture above shows NetHunt CRM’s workflow builder, where automation sequences are built within NetHunt CRM. It’s a simple automation sequence builder for everybody, whether full-time developer or somebody with no coding experience. Here is the automation of a simple onboarding sequence...
1️⃣ A lead joins the pipeline.
2️⃣ The path splits into two.
3️⃣ Path A sends our new lead a ‘welcome’ email immediately. After which, we wait for three days and then send another email to invite the recipient to the demo product.
4️⃣ Path B is our control path, intercepting the workflow when we receive a reply and creating a task for a sales representative to follow up manually.
A CRM system helps you automate loads of business processes, such as…
- Lead generation; both inbound and outbound.
- Email sequence lead nurturing.
- Moving a lead to the next stage in your sales pipeline.
- Setting alerts and staying in the loop for when something happens.
- Automating data entry; both importing and scraping.
Not convinced? Read our article Which small business problems a CRM can solve for more on the topic.
How to choose the best CRM for a startup
As a startup entrepreneur, days often feel like you don't know where to start.
The same is true when choosing a CRM system. The market is big and getting bigger, and there are a bunch of systems out there to choose from with different features and price plans; advantages and disadvantages. This section is a step-by-step guide to choosing the best startup CRM for your startup business.
We'll tell you where to start and finish.
Know your goals as a startup
Even before you think about the features of your future CRM system, you need to understand what you would like to achieve with CRM implementation. Think about the problems your startup has at that moment and select the goals that can be achieved using CRM. Create a list of questions and answer them with your business partners.
- Where is my business at the moment clients-wise, sales-wise, revenue-wise?
- What are my goals for the next five years?
- Which marketing channels will we pursue?
- Are we a service-based subscription or a one-time product?
- What changes need to happen so that I can achieve my goals?
Define which CRM features you need
Answers to these questions help define which CRM system you need… Will it be a CRM with email marketing functionality or one with an ad server integration? Do you need extensive reporting? What about sales automation? Only you, as a startup business leader, can know what your business needs to overcome imminent hurdles in its startup journey.
Create a list of features you would like to see in your future CRM. Ask your colleagues for help and opinion as they will use the CRM alongside you.
Here is what the potential features might be...
- Sales pipeline creation
- Lead generation
- Reporting and analytics
- Bulk emails and trigger campaigns creation
- Task management
- Social media integration
Study the reviews
Even the best-marketed CRM probably won’t fulfill your startup needs to the fullest.
Go to Capterra, G2Crowd and find the reviews for CRM. You can select all CRMs or filter them by features, pricing options, user, and deployment. CRM giants such as Salesforce and HubSpot usually lack flexibility and are not tailored for startup businesses. It’s also hard to take them personally, being such large corporations.
Take a closer look at CRMs for startups and small businesses that have functionality and a great support team like NetHunt CRM for Gmail.
Did you know?
NetHunt won a bunch of awards from G2 in Summer 2020. We won The Easiest Setup Badge, The Best Support Badge, The High Performer Badge, The Easiest to Use Badge, and many more! It’s always nice to see that your work is appreciated.
Choose the best CRM plan
Start with a Gmail-integrated CRM — it’s the best option for startups with G Suite in their stack. To startups with fewer employees, a feature-packed CRM can be very frustrating; they’ll need more time for onboarding and integration.
Wider CRM functionality is necessary for larger startups and companies to efficiently manage incoming leads, monitor packed sales pipelines, and create custom reports within their Gmail interface.
NetHunt CRM has a special, year-long plan for startups. The first three months are free, and the nine following months are $15 per user. Our Customer Success team will help you onboard and set NetHunt CRM up to meet your needs and make sure that you're making the most use out of your NetHunt CRM subscription.
Maybe we’re bias, but we like to think that's a very good discount for when you’re just starting!
How NetHunt CRM helps your startup grow
If you’re in search of a CRM system to suit your needs as a startup, pay attention to NetHunt CRM. It’s a Gmail-based CRM software created with startups and small businesses in mind. Let’s take a look at how NetHunt CRM can help you grow your business.
- No more manual data entry. With NetHunt CRM, automatically create a database with all your leads and clients’ information.
- Find leads everywhere. NetHunt CRM lets you find leads on LinkedIn with its special web extension. Web forms, email features, and chat integrations find leads too.
- Segment customers and satisfy their needs. Instead of a one-size-fits-all email campaign, you can segment your audience by demographics, psychographics, engagement, and even buyer journey to send them personalised emails and offers.
- Create a sales pipeline. NetHunt CRM lets you easily create a sales pipeline and see what stage most of your deals are at.
- Set tasks for your team. NetHunt CRM is the perfect tool for collaborating with your team as it has a built-in task manager.
- Create email campaigns. Set automatic email responses triggered by certain actions of your leads and clients. Save on using other tools with NetHunt CRM.
- Automate your sales. Instead of manual tasks, delegate the hard work to the CRM system.
George Rowlands
Key takeaways
- A CRM system can boost your startup, if chosen and implemented correctly.
- Automate your sales processes and centralise client data with a CRM system.
- Find, store, and nurture new leads easier with the help of a CRM.
- Shop around for the perfect CRM by reading reviews.
Try NetHunt CRM for free for 14 days. You won’t regret it!
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