Top 10 reasons why your Small Business in Singapore needs CRM in 2019

You might have heard the term. Everybody has heard the term at some point, but you might know what it is. I’m talking about “CRM”. 

If quizzed about CRM, you might venture with a   “CRM is something to do with handling customers right? “ 

It’s much more than that and in this article, we cover why businesses need CRM. 

CRM : is an approach to managing a company’s interaction with current and potential future customers that tries to analyse data about customers’ history with a company and to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth. This definition from Wikipedia.

We’ve given the definition of a CRM, but we want to talk about why, you as a small Singapore based business need a Singapore CRM to navigate through your business.

Here are some Salient points.

The Need for CRM in your Business

Clutter may have worked for Albert Einstein, but not your business.

Better Communication with Customers

One of the top reasons companies choose a product is because of the customer service. Generally with products that require constant communication with a customer, the customer prefers a single point of contact who is aware of their situation. Sometimes the customer representatives aren’t available and this can be a hassle for the customer to get the new customer representative up to speed. A CRM has the intricate details of a customer, all saved and stored and that can be retrieved in a click of a button.

Creating a Pipeline for Sales

One of the benefits of a CRM is the status of your sales. You’ll know at what stage a prospect is in the sales funnel. This way, you’ll be able to predict revenue in the future. This makes life easy for a sales team, they wake up everyday in the morning and they know who to contact and what to tell them to advance the person through the funnel.

Segmenting of Your Customers

One of the most powerful tools in a CRM system is the segmentation. You can break down your customers into different segments. Customers who pay, customers who don’t. Customers who buy when it discounts and the ones who don’t and so on. This gives you a very clear picture of the type of customers you have. With a bit of A/B testing you can figure out if you can increase your revenue by increasing the price of your product without losing a lot of customers.

Automation

A CRM automates a lot of tasks. Tasks regarding customer support, marketing. Wherever possible, automation is put in place so that massive amounts of time is saved.

Data about your Customers

A CRM tool stores all the data in one central place and gives you access to it through a custom dashboard. Data displayed elegantly through an interface makes life easy. Data is the backbone of a business in the present era. Knowing how your customers are satisfied or not satisfied will guide the business to dig in further and find the points of trouble. You could choose to display sales reports, customer satisfaction numbers and other data. Customizations are core to a CRM dashboard and you can keep an eye on the metrics that are important to your business.

Organizing Information

This, in my opinion is one of the most important aspects of a CRM. A business is inundated with information pertaining to sales, customer information, product updates, marketing metrics and so on. If you don’t have a grip on your information, life can become haywire. A CRM organises and structures your information, you can also customise it in a way where the most important information is displayed first. This is a very underrated aspect of a CRM. People may say that they get their individual reports, but the fact that you can see the bigger picture looking at a single tool, makes it a powerful tool.

Constant Communication

A CRM tool helps in communicating with your clients regularly. A sign of a good business partnership is constant communication. A CRM automates emails and makes sure that you are in constant touch with your customers, no matter what.

Tools for Everybody

If you are wondering CRM tools are just for larger companies, then you’ll be mistake. CRM tools vary in pricing, features, functionality and most importantly by size. There are CRM tools customised to your situation

CRM follows up well

We have a lot of things going on, when running a business. A lot of your leads initially come through a lead magnet like an e-book or course etc. A CRM automates this process by sending out the right items to the correct email addresses. You can automate following up, so you can deliver what you promise to customers.

Social Data

Over the recent years, a lot of companies have started relying on social data to tighten their decision making. Now, there’s nothing more powerful for a business than to know the pulse of the people. People might not share their deepest secrets, but they do share their buying habits and purchasing habits and much more. The Indonesian credit industry have relied for the past few years on social data to help with their loan disbursement strategy.

Integrations

One of the niftiest features in modern day CRM’s is the integration with other tools. For example, Hubspot integrates with analytics tools, advertising tools, accounting tools and much more. With these tools, you have an eye in the sky.

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What if I run a business without CRM? 

You can if you want to, but as your organization grows, using excel sheets to manage customers becomes cumbersome. And truly in a world where your competitors use automated tools and CRM’s, your business will be out-gunned, out-manoeuvred and out-sold. 

CRM also brings a certain structure to your business and makes your employees very productive. If you are doing things manually, your employees will be stuck with all manual work and their productivity plummets. 

In this day and age, a CRM tool is a must. 

The Best Types of CRM – Cloud-Based CRM 

A cloud-based CRM is hosted on the cloud and gives you access to data and information everywhere and at all times. Here are the benefits.

Easy Deployment 

A cloud-based CRM is easy to implement with just a few weeks of effort required. As opposed to other dedicated software which will take months for an organization of the same size. 

One Step Upgrade

CRM software needs to be upgraded on a regular basis. Over the cloud, this is just a matter of minutes without causing any down time

Cost Reduction

This goes without saying. Costs with cloud hosting are 1/3rd the cost of a normal CRM because of no hardware and software purchases. 

Security 

Cloud-based CRM tools are much safer than remote tools as they have a high-security system in place and cannot be breached easily. 

Top CRM Softwares

Zoho CRM : The Zoho CRM has a free package for upto 10 Users. They are one of the most trusted companies in the world with clients like Amazon.

Hubspot: Hubspot which is one of the famous Marketing softwares in the world are also known for their CRM. The best part about their CRM is the integration with their other marketing tools which gives you a seamless experience. They also have a free service for small and medium businesses.

Salesforce: Big enterprises uses this software. It forms the bulk of operations in an organisation.

If you are in the edge

As a smaller business, you compete against the big guys. It is important for you to equip yourself with the right toolsets that can put you on a level playing field. Smaller companies have to get up to speed with the latest in analytics and data management. The difference between a big company and a smaller company is the handling of information. A more structured and data oriented approach can improve your top line and bottomline.

CRM in a Nutshell

CRM for those who are unaware, stands for Customer Relationship Management. It’s a tool or software that companies can use to handle their customers in a data-oriented way that benefits the company in the long run. The term customers include new customers, old customers, lost customers and people who aren’t customers yet! 

In summary, the best CRM will be able to boost revenue, reduce cost and improve leads. If you are looking for a lead generation solution, then reach out to us on our chatbot.