For any startup owner, selecting the best CRM system is crucial. A successful CRM implementation keeps their sales organized, with all the deals and contacts in one place. Being a decision maker for your startup or small business, implementing the best Sales CRM is high-priority, however, you must keep these factors in mind while choosing a CRM for your startup!
1. Pricing and Scalability
- It is the most important factor as it requires a huge amount of work to get done for moving the entire sales team to a new system.
- Yes, the pricing of a CRM system plays a crucial role, however, startup owners and business owners must understand how their sales team will scale the business using the new CRM over the next few years.
- Apart from scalability, contact limit, user limit, storage limit etc., are also worth considering before taking a plunge for choosing a CRM.
Ask these questions while deciding upon a CRM for your business:
- How long is the implementation process?
- What is the level of technical assistance included by the vendor?
- Does it provide ease of use?
- Will the employees get trained easily?
- What is the minimum number of users required?
- Is this CRM allowing easy integration with the systems that I already use?
- Is there any additional setup fee?
- Am I allowed to add more users or opt for more integrations?
- Does it provide built-in security features?
2. Customization
- Every system allows the user to create the standard data fields; leads, contacts, accounts, etc…
- What must you understand and find out about your chosen CRM is does it allow seamless customization of your favorite data fields?
- If yes, then ask the vendor if all the important and needed field types are supported by their system.
- Will the system allow you and your team to customize itself as per the users’ objectives and department requirements?
3. Mobile
- The world is mobile nowadays. The always-on-the-go audience loves to always stay on their mobile devices for everything.
- Be it booking the tickets to their favorite movies or to get a table in their favorite restaurant or to shop.
- So, if you are zeroing in on a CRM vendor, there is no harm in asking them if they have an app for complementing your mobile startup life.
- Although a majority of the CRM vendors have launched their apps, many leave out the key features for the desktop or SaaS offerings.
- So thoroughly check out the mobile app of your chosen CRM vendor.
4. Automation
- As a startup, you might feel that automation is not the feature you might want for your business. This is a huge wake-up call for you.
- Automation allows the users to create a chain of commands that help them in assigning various records and tasks to the teammate.
- This is really important if you are looking forward to a successful lead management process.
- They are also called CRM workflow rules where users can define the actions to be triggered based on various criteria, for e.g. A website visitor fills up your sign-up form after visiting the website. This is the criteria which have a definitive action. With the set workflows, now you won’t have to manually enter the lead into the system. Moreover, the workflows will allow you the freedom of assigning the lead to yourself or any teammate.
- You can also send them a welcome email allowing them to know that you have acknowledged their sign-up and will shortly get back to them.
- Workflow automation also help users in staying in touch with their current leads, deals, and contacts so that their sales process stays smooth.
5. Integration
- CRM vendors create these intuitive and smart sales automation tools to make things easier for the users.
- As a startup business owner, you must check and ensure that CRM of your choice is compatible with other applications you have been using for easing your business process.
- Check with the vendor to see if the CRM will integrate with your website.
- Will it fetch your social media platform data, company emails, and customer analytics?
- A CRM that allows smoother in-built integration helps businesses streamline their business process quite quickly and with ease.
6. Size and Expertise of Sales Team
- Implementation of a CRM is a cumbersome process.
- The complexity is such that you cannot easily reverse the effects.
- So, it is advisable to find out the exact number of users who will be ultimately working with it.
- You must also make sure that they attend and learn any of the courses required for adapting to the CRM’s new processes.
- Scalability is one more important factor that startup owners must consider.
- The CRM of your choice must grow with your business and must be accessible to all the members across all teams.
- Based on your team’s skills and strengths, you must decide which CRM will complement their work.
- Otherwise, based on the difficulty of usage sales team might not properly adapt to the CRM leading to a plummeting ROI.
- Free trials of the CRMs allow users to understand which one will fit their teams’ needs for streamlining the overall business process.
7. Connectivity to the cloud
- The technological advancement has allowed vendors to tweak and upgrade the cloud industry so much that everything from our photos to our office files can get stored over it.
- When you are looking for a CRM for your business, make sure to check if the vendor allows cloud-option.
- If yes, then also check for the support services available for the same.
In conclusion…
Being at the helm of the startup is like sailing your ship on a voyage around the ocean. You face various situations and challenges in the rough environment of the ocean. Having a life jacket on you all the time allows you to have the freedom to venture into risky waters.
CRM acts as your life jacket and allows you to streamline your sales process so that you can be all set for the future voyages. CRMs are built to suit the sales requirements of varied companies, the one you choose must fulfill your requirements successfully.
Salesmate, the sales CRM software has been associated with many startups and solopreneurs since its inception and has helped them gain momentum in the market.
The intuitive features that this sales tool provides at the price is competitive and the best in this industry. If you have any further question regarding Salesmate’s features and pricing then do get in touch with us.
We welcome you to Salesmate! 🙂 A subtle yet systematic and intuitive sales intelligence-based CRM that provides high quality service without blowing a hole in your budget. Want to know more? Start a free 15-day trial, today!
