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What is CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy that companies use to manage interactions with customers and potential customers. CRM helps organisations streamline processes, build customer relationships, increase sales, improve customer service, and increase profitability.
It is a software system that helps business owners to efficiently track all communication and nurture relationships with their leads and clients.
Why is CRM important for your business?
CRM helps businesses learn about their customers, including who they are and why they purchase your products, as well as trends in customers' purchasing histories. This allows businesses to better anticipate their customers' needs and, as a result, fulfil them.
CRM allows businesses to become more efficient by organising and automating certain aspects of the business. From sales processes to marketing campaigns and business analytics as well as customer data, CRM automates and streamlines these processes for businesses.
CRM software allows businesses to optimise their customer interactions. By simplifying and streamlining many of the more complex customer interaction processes, CRM increases customer satisfaction.
There are several CRM Software in the market today with varying prices and capabilities. You are however incredibly lucky to be in our company today, here at ADX Virtual. We have sieved through the chaff for you and are going to discuss three of our favourite CRM Software for small businesses.
HubSpot
HubSpot offers a full platform of marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM software plus the methodology, resources, and support to help businesses nurture relationships with their client base. HubSpot is an all in one polestar for business. You can manage all your social media accounts from there, even see and monitor their analytics. It has many other amazing powerful features.
Pros
Tons of Free Tools: Offers the most comprehensive free plan we’ve seen out of the dozens of CRMs we’ve researched. Whether you’re looking for customer support, marketing, sales, content management, or operational CRM, you get hundreds of powerful features and the ability to manage up to a million (1,000,000) contacts without ever paying a cent.
A Modular, Scalable Solution: HubSpot’s motto is ‘there’s no better way to grow.’ Of course, that refers to the range of scalable tools it offers covering operations, content, customer service, sales, and marketing. All of HubSpot’s tools are modular so the platform grows alongside your business as you scale and face the need for more advanced CRM features across different departments.
Easy to Use: everything is easily accessible, even though there are hundreds of features available.
Cons
Complicated Pricing Tiers: There are so many different plans and pricing options to choose from that some may be completely overwhelmed and resort to sticking with the (evidently limited) free version or moving to another provider.
Easy to Max Out Limitations on Free Plan: For example, on the free plan, you’ll only have access to 200 email tracking notifications per month, compared to the Starter plan having unlimited.
As earlier stated, it is a tad confusing but here are the plans for the most popular bundles:
Free plan - $0, free marketing, sales, services and operations tool
Starter: $45/month Essential marketing, sales, customer service, CMS, and operations software.
Professional: $1,600/month Advanced marketing, sales, customer service, CMS, and operations software.
Enterprise: $5,000/ month Our marketing, sales, customer service, CMS, and operations software.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive is another leading Sales CRM and Pipeline Management Tool that seeks to make Sales in order for businesses to thrive. It helps manage Sales and Customer Relationships efficiently. It is designed to help sales teams stay organised, manage their pipelines, and focus on the best opportunities.
Pipedrive wants to make it easier for small- and medium-sized businesses to better manage their sales pipeline, and drive more closed deals. It offers a clean and simple user interface that lets users start adding information and managing deals almost immediately.
Pros
Offers an intuitive interface and deal-driven workflow.
Easy to use
Solid mobile apps plus call and email synchronisation
Allows for integrations with several other different tools making it more efficient for businesses
Cons
Limited functionality for the price
No separation between lists of new leads and contacts
You can check out Pipedrive’s pricing options and packages here.
Zoho
Zoho, just like the other two CRM Software we’ve already discussed, performs functions such as managing, connecting and automating business processes across organisations.
Pros
Easy to Set Up: Right out of the box, Zoho makes installation and setup simple and straightforward.
Easy to Use: Little to no training is required to get the hang of this software, in large part thanks to the user interface.
Flexible: Different businesses have different needs in CRM software, and Zoho provides flexibility that allows it to work for all kinds of different businesses.
Video Guides
Mobile App
Cons
Free And Budget Versions Don’t Offer Much:
Customer Service Wait Times are long
The free plan is available for up to three users. Anything past that puts you into the next pricing bracket. You can check out the other pricing options here.
With the free version, you get lead, contact, and account management features as well as reports and analytics.
Conclusion
CRM is a must have for any business, because your customers sustain your business. It only makes sense that you have to nurture a relationship with your clients for continuity of your business. Contact us today to get in touch with our team of virtual assistants who are experts in Customer Relationship Management. Let us take care of your clients as you focus on scaling your business.