Choosing the correct CRM for your small business is a complicated decision. There are many factors to consider and making the wrong choice can be a costly mistake. Once you have selected a CRM it will become an intricate part of your company’s operations. I have laid out 4 factors that we have found critical to selecting the right CRM for our small business clients.

Is it scalable?

Small to medium size businesses always should be thinking of the future. Adopting a new CRM can be a daunting process, with the time it takes to train staff and figuring out how your business processes fit into the CRM. You don’t want a tool that doesn’t have the capacity to grow with you. If you can select a CRM that has the ability to grow as your business expands, you will thank yourself later.

Enhanced email features

Based on your industry and business model, your needs for email will be different. If you are using email for marketing already and using an email marketing service (like MailChimp, Benchmark, Campaign Monitor, or SendinBlue) you should check what CRMs have plugins or integrate easily with your service. This can make email marketing campaigns easier and less time consuming, allowing you to track contacts click through rates and other data straight from your CRM. Our favorite is PowerMailChimp for Dynamics CRM.

If your business deals regularly with customer service questions, check and see if the CRM has an easy to implement support desk feature. Support features will track and create ticket numbers for better communication between the customers and support.

Tracks sales efforts through the pipeline

With a small sales team, where everyone is busy multitasking, it is important to keep track of the progress of potential sales. What sales attempts have been made, how far along in the pipeline they are, expenses, and travel are all things that a CRM should be able to monitor and organize. The best CRMs allow this data to be recorded in real time which enables a sales team to act quickly without missing an opportunity.

It is mobile (cloud based)

Mobility is important because of several factors. Your sales team may often be away from their desks so giving them access to your CRM from anywhere will make the data they are tracking more accurate. In addition, SMB’s often do not have a large IT support team in house. Cloud based CRM’s take the responsibility for developing, updating, and maintaining the CRM.

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Why Partner With Bauen Solutions?

At Bauen Solutions we focus on the unique needs of small to midsize businesses. In addition to being Gold Microsoft Partner Certified, we understand the challenges businesses face when growing out of old technologies and specialize in finding new solutions to increase your efficiency and profitability.  Our small business IT specialist have years of experience helping company’s like yours overcome these difficulties and other IT issues that small and midsize businesses may encounter. We focus on building relationships with our clients to better understand your IT and business challenges and find the right solutions to get you to the next level.