How do you keep track of sales opportunities? A folder on your desk? A series of post it notes around the office? A spreadsheet system? We’ve seen a lot of creative ideas for tracking leads, but we believe that the best thing you can do is move to a CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, system.
Here are a few reasons we’ve heard that people shy away from CRM:
- I’m still small, a one-man operation. The post it notes are fine for the amount I’m keeping track of.
- I don’t have time to learn a new system. I have just enough bandwidth in my day to actually make those calls and drive those sales.
- It seems complicated and I’m just not sure I need all those bells and whistles.
[/mk_custom_list]
We get it. We started small too, with a handful of clients and few enough leads that a simple spreadsheet seemed like enough. But here’s what we’ve learned.
Those opportunities grow quickly and you don’t want to wait until you’ve outgrown your system to start a new one.
A CRM can actually save you time, and mental space, by keeping track of contacts and tasks related to them for you.
There are plenty of simple software integrations that you can learn quickly. They allow you to start small, with just a “contact-proposal-follow up-sale” flow. You can add more features later as they make sense to your brand.
And here’s what you may be overlooking
Even the most sophisticated and organized paper or spreadsheet system is lacking the ability to automate. With a CRM, you can receive daily or weekly alerts to remind you of tasks associated with each contact. It can also crunch the data and begin to forecast and provide projections for you, which is helpful as you grow and need to evaluate your marketing efforts. You can also provide access to other members of your team and assign them certain tasks.
Here are our favorites:
No matter what size business you have, now is a great time to set up a CRM. Take some of those sales tasks off your mind and let the new system become a team player in your sales funnel process. If you have any questions about what kind of CRM you should be using or how to set one up for your business, why not drop us a line? We love helping businesses like yours learn to Sell More and Do Less.