Do you find it hard to get new business leads, or retain your customers? Anyone who owns a business has faced this situation at some time or the other. If you are a business owner, you must be aware of how important it is to be up-to-date with your leads and customer data.
To sustain in the present-day consumer-centric business ecosystem, a business should be focused on customer satisfaction, and to help with that, CRM software is the need of the hour.
CRM is necessary for a successful enterprise that is constantly able to acquire new leads, convert their leads to customers, and make sure that their current customers are satisfied with their products/services and are loyal to them in the long run.
CRM software, what are they and what do they do?
CRM stands for customer relationship management, and it can be anything from a software/application, strategy o, or r-process that streamlines the accessing, collecting, and organizing of customer data in the most efficient manner to garner the most value. Good CRM software are amazing sales tools.
To simplify it even further CRM refers to systems a company uses to analyze customer interactions and record data throughout the customer life cycle.
If you are a business owner, CRM software can tell you everything about your customers. That can help you serve them better and convert new leads into clients. Let’s understand how CRM software does that and several of its other benefits, ahead in this read.
The accumulated customer data is in turn used to understand customer behavior and hence improve business relationships through retaining existing customers efficiently and constantly acquiring new customers.
When a business is fairly successful in doing so and can effectively manage its leads and customers, the leads convert into paying customers, existing customers become more loyal and in general, the overall satisfaction across the customer base hugely increases.
Who can use CRM software?
CRM software can be used by a small business that might have a simple need of storing and accessing their customer data across various devices or a larger business that wants to manage and analyze customer interactions and enhance customer satisfaction in the process.
Many businesses use tools like email integration or spreadsheets to manage their customer data but a CRM software is much more efficient than any of these tools, which seem a bit dated in today’s competitive business ecosystem.
So, if you are still using one of the dated tools to enhance your CRM, then it’s certainly time to upgrade.
Ways in which your Business can benefit by using CRM software
1. Enhanced data organization
Once a business uploads its lists of leads, contacts, and customers it can instantly track sales and engagement across its network of leads and customers.
2. Better Communication
By using CRM software, sales teams can follow up more efficiently with leads and customers by creating and dispatching well-drafted proposals and setting automated reminders by creating a set of email templates.
3. Selective data sharing
A business can share resources and information about their leads and customers accumulated and analyzed by the CRM software with their Sales teams to help them manage leads more effectively and generate more revenue for the business.
4. Grab all leads
One can create ‘Web to lead’ forms and embed them on the contacts page on their website. Information captured would automatically be pushed to the CRM software and can be assigned to the sales team who can do a quick follow up resulting in sales.
5. Better Goal tracking
Using CRM software a business can keep its Sales team on track by sending them automated weekly Email reports that indicate their progress and their proximity to their monthly, quarterly, or yearly goals.
As you can make out by now, because of these enormous benefits that CRM software can induce to a business, a big chunk of businesses swears by it. Studies show that CRM software has helped businesses follow up on opportunities and leads much more efficiently and has helped them enhance their customer relationships. A lot of this is because accessing customer data and interactions is much easier when using CRM software, as it is all accessible in one place. By using a CRM software, you can achieve sales automation for all your goods and services.
There are several CRM software solutions in the market but in this read, we would be discussing and comparing two major players in the CRM ecosystem. The first one is HUBSPOT sales hub CRM and the other is ZOHO CRM.
HubSpot CRM
Although HubSpot CRM is most known for its ‘Market automation capabilities’, it also provides all of its clients with free CRM services that are completely free of any additional costs or expenses.
In other words, if you’re interested in learning more about the platform or CRM in general, you may start with their free CRM software and then upgrade to one of their commercial versions when your company’s needs change or you conclude that HubSpot is the best option for your business.
If you are a small company owner trying to grow, this platform might be your first pick. In addition to offering a free CRM, HubSpot is a wonderful place for a small firm to start since it integrates with marketing automation.
Therefore, you can take those leads from market automation and add them directly to your lead generation funnel provided you have your email marketing, social media, blog posts, or landing pages in place.
HubSpot Pricing
HubSpot offers 4 different programs you can sign up for, depending on your needs. For all these different options, HubSpot is priced at $45-$180 per user per month with the free CRM software with each option.
Their customer support is available 24X7 over email or phone but only with their paid versions.
Zoho CRM
One of the most popular systems, it is utilized by many small and medium businesses. It has a CRM that is very specialized and has certain unique capabilities. It can accomplish incredible things with AI and predictive analytics in addition to normal CRM tasks like lead scoring, pipeline management, etc.
For example-There are predictive sales capabilities within Zoho. it’s better automation systems that let you create customer journeys with your business.
In addition, it has some cool integrated social media features. It analyses behaviors and actions inside your pipeline to determine where your priorities should be and what the highest priority leads may be.
Therefore, as a business owner, integrating Zoho CRM capabilities with your marketing campaigns and social media engagement can greatly benefit you in the long run.
Initial customization for Zoho customers takes some time, but once it is done, things go a lot more smoothly since you can configure your dashboards and they are much easier to read and comprehend than the complicated dashboards of competing platforms.
Zoho Pricing
Zoho has a really good price point. If you have a small business with no more than 3 people you can sign up for a free Zoho plan, it has all the features any robust CRM platform should have. Zoho prices for medium to large businesses range from $12 – $45 per month per user.
If you use the free version of Zoho, you might want to upgrade to use their customer care, which is available 24/7 via email and phone calls.
Zoho has a great support team and commendable analyst ratings, which combined with its ease of use, make it a great choice for a business.
In a nutshell
In all fairness, if you are a new or a very small business with a tight budget, you might want to consider HubSpot as it’s easy to use, free of charge for CRM services, and full of helpful features.
HubSpot marketing hub can be a boon for medium-sized businesses as well if they are willing to spend on the additional features HubSpot offers in the long run. Along with the free CRM, HubSpot provides a wide range of potent tools that enable you to analyze your company’s performance in-depth, which is an increasingly crucial task as your corporation grows in size.
The capabilities that Zoho offers, however, make it a better fit for your needs if you run a large-scale business with a lot of sales. For a large company, the exclusive territory management tool from Zoho, which no other competitor platform offers as yet, stands out as being especially useful. Because of this capability, Zoho is a far superior option for large businesses with many sales and large sales staff.
All in all, both Hubspot and Zoho are extremely competitive and robust CRM software in their own right. While HubSpot is perfect for small or medium-sized businesses, Zoho is great when it comes to large-scale organizations.
You can read about both the platforms in detail and make your mind up as to which one suits your needs the best and can be helpful as a tool for better running of your company.
If this read might have you wondering that, by using this software you might certainly generate more leads and eventually have a larger customer base. When that happens, it also becomes pretty important for you to be able to manage customers better.
You should certainly give ProfitBooks a try in this case. It’s an accounting software with a free version for starters where you can effectively manage customers, send them crisp invoices, and manage your sales more efficiently.
Find out how ProfitBooks can help you with your accounting needs! Create your account for free today.
Also read:
Top 12 FREE Software For Small Businesses
