July 23, 2015
5 Must-Have CRM Integrations for Every Small Business
BY John Paul Narowski IN CRM Software, Small Business 0 Comment
If you are a small business owner, your first and foremost goal should probably be growth. In order to achieve growth you need personalized, customizable, time saving, efficient and affordable software to coordinate your sales team, increase sales, manage your contacts/leads and , improve customer service and experience. Congratulations! You have landed at the right place. Your solution is called cloud based CRM software and has everything ready for you.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps you organize and coordinate your leads, existing and future customers and keep all of the data concerning the interactions between you and them in one place. CRM not only stores the information in one place, but it’s also accessible by all your employees from anywhere, as long as there is internet connection.
Your sales reps and customer service agents will have access to all the pain points, needs and demands of every specific customer, allowing you to prepare for the next interaction beforehand and make the customer experience very personal and unique.
To maximize the benefits of your CRM system, you want every process to be completed in the shortest amount of time possible (a few minutes), while providing real value and problem solving solutions for your customers. For these reasons, CRM gives you the option to integrate some of your apps with the system and get real time automated updates. Below are the 5 most important integrations that every small business has to do.
Email Integration
You can sync all of your email accounts with the CRM system you use and every bit of new information concerning a lead or customer will automatically be updated in your database. You will also be able to forward, reply or create new emails using the same software: just change the account (ex. Yahoo or Gmail) and you are good to go. This will save you a lot of time between checking multiple accounts and also ensure that you minimize the amount of time that’s needed to spot a specific email from a customer and reply.
Mail Chimp Integration
If you are a mail chimp user, you should know the benefits of having all the information automated and together in one place. CRM allows you to integrate your mail chimp account and bring all the data from your customers and leads to your software. Having everything before your eyes is going to save you tons of effort, time and resources that are wasted in vain without using a CRM. That effort and time lost can instead be directed to something more meaningful than simply looking through files and notes to find information you need and save yourself quite a bit trouble.
Social Media Integration
Every smart business owner knows that you should be reachable on all the available channels. This means that you are most probably present on all social media channels and constantly monitor their activities to in order to increase engagement, answer questions, provide solutions etc. CRM lets you integrate all of your social media accounts at once and monitor everything with a single software: just change tabs. This will help minimize the amount of messages and tweets you might miss and also respond much quicker to increase customer satisfaction.
Google Apps Integration
Integrate google apps, google calendar and google contacts with your CRM system and automate your processes even more! Think about how much your sales reps can benefit from this automation. Since all the information is ready and available 24/7, it takes much less effort and time to prepare for every customer interaction prior to the meeting and make it as personal as possible.
Website Integration
The last, but certainly not least, important step to take is to integrate your website with the CRM software you use. This gives you endless opportunities to maximize your sales if used correctly. Think about a prospect viewing your pricing page, and in a minute or two, he/she gets a call from your sales rep and provides prominent advice and suggestions. The impact will be huge and your sales number will increase by a lot. Clients report up to 40% sales increase with the perfect utilization of CRM software.
CRM software is a cost efficient and effective solution for small businesses that want to grow in their sphere. Integrating your favorite apps with the CRM will increase your productivity and drive your sales up like never before.
