The only app small and medium enterprises need

How often do you see an article screaming something like this: “21 Must-Have Tools for Your Businesses”? Maybe you’re curious and check a few out. Yet you do nothing. You’re thinking, don’t fix what’s not broken. Besides, you’re too busy to chase a new shiny object anyway.

But, are you too busy to boost revenue?

Let’s face it, people put together these lists only to drive traffic to their website and not to help you. Instead, be proactive and search out the one essential tool that’ll serve your target audience customers better and improve sales; a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

This may not be as exciting as your social networking apps such as Instagram or LinkedIn, yet just like these, CRM is built around people and relationships. That’s because every other app or system feeds into you’re CRM system -- or should.

A CRM system is the foundation of a customer relationship platform. Think of this as your marketing and selling hub. The web forms on your landing pages, email marketing, social marketing, and even events like trade shows are the spokes feeding the CRM hub your people connections, allowing your company to effectively engage.

Your CRM does much more than collect information from online and offline business activities. A CRM provides a unified view of prospects and customers from multiple sources. A CRM segments prospects and customers, based on your rules, into useful groupings. A CRM communicates with other tools surrounding it to execute steps in the marketing and sales process such as email campaigns, mobile messaging, and much more.

Maybe calling this a Customer Nourishment and Cultivation System makes more sense. The key is finding AND using a CRM system based on your practical needs. Here’s a short primer on how to go about that.

Where to start; make a list and check it twice. A CRM is built around relationships -- tracking the type of interactions and the products and services people are interested in, to the college football team they love. And everything in-between. But HOW are you really going to use it and for what? Plus, like all new apps there’s a learning curve. So, get into deep thought mode and ask yourself and the team some pointed questions, then prioritize a list of must haves and nice to haves. The list might include simple to use and a shallow learning curve, responsive customer support with an online library of video tutorials, ability to integrate with your email system to log both inbound and outbound communications, a level of marketing automation capability with easy to set rules, syncing through the cloud to smartphones, and administrate control to set levels of access.

The CRM app contenders. Here’s where you’re expecting me to say which CRM systems to consider. Wrong! Sure, I have my favorites, but I’m not telling. This is personal for you and your company and the best place to start is take your list and search online. Unfortunately, there are well over fifty (yes 50!) viable CRM contenders. So to make it easy as pie, there are two highly reputable place to go: Capterra  and GetApp. You can search by company size, industry, most popular, features, and pricing too. During this process you’ll see features you hadn’t thought about that may be useful. Read the apps’s descriptions and compare, then narrow these down to three. Go to each website and quickly eliminate one or all three. Rinse and repeat a few times until you have a contender or two. Ask each finalist a question or two (via email or chat support) about a feature and its usage to make sure this function is what you thought it was, as well as to get a feel of how good the support is. Then signup for a trial with the one or two that look like the best fit.

How to get people to use the CRM you’ve chosen. I bet if you had just bought a new sports car, you’d be excited to drive it off the dealer’s lot as fast as possible. It should be the same with your CRM app -- get going quickly because driving more revenue is fun! The truth is people will resist to using it. You can demand that everyone in your organization start now, but a better strategy is to help, not push. First you and the other leaders of your business must commit to using the new CRM system. You’ll get firsthand experience on exactly how it’ll will help streamline your business, plus demonstrate to the team how critical this is. Next, set up training for your team. Determine the three to five initial functions needed to be successful and focus on these. Attend the training sessions yourself to reinforce the importance and maybe learn a few more things too. Add additional training over time. Now use your CRM by running regular reports to get the pulse of company’s sales and marketing efforts. And when you call one of your team members to ask a question based on these reports, I promise they’ll start using the CRM as intended!

Zeroing in on the right CRM and setting it up will take some time. Yet it’s an investment that will save time and make money for your company in the long term. It’s a solution that will make your day-to-day operations more efficient and provide a needed shift to strategic growth.

Customer relationship management isn't just for large companies. Small and medium enterprises, and even one-person businesses can benefit from a more ordered approach to managing the sales process, tracking leads, and ensuring that follow-ups are done in a timely way.

The goal is clear: improve customer relationships, assist in customer retention, and drive sales growth. This what your CRM is all about.

Ron Stein is founder of More Customers Academy, helping business leaders build strategic messaging and positioning that cuts through the competitive noise to grow revenue. Ron has developed his own highly successful 5-step Stand Out & Sell More approach to winning new customers as a result of his twenty-five years of business development, marketing, and selling experiences. He works with a range of businesses, from startups to large corporations across industries including technology and healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services and banking. Ron conducts workshops, leads company meetings, offers keynote talks, and consults. He can be reached at 727-398-1855 or by email.