All posts by Caitlin Delohery

Caitlin got her roots in inbound marketing before it got its name. As a teenager in the 90s, she promoted her independently published magazines by writing about the importance of indie publishing all over AOL. Now, Caitlin is passionate about moving people and society forward. She follows thought leaders in the National Speakers Association, the staffing industry, and all human rights movements. She loves learning and helping people learn.

Small businesses are scrappy. Nine times out of ten, they’re made up tough, creative go-getters who aren’t afraid of hard work.

Okay, I made up that stat.

But not this one: Since 1990, as big business eliminated 4 million jobs, small businesses added 8 million new jobs. While big businesses are toppling like bloated Goliaths, small businesses are rising like scrappy little Davids.

And the little guys have different needs from their big competitors and colleagues. Here are the must-have CRM features for small businesses.

Ease of use

Ease of use is the kingpin of features — it’s what you need to make all your other features fall into place. It means speedy adoption, streamlined interfaces, and intuitive design. Rockstar usability improves user adoption, software satisfaction, and your team’s productivity.

But beware! Just because a CRM is well known doesn’t mean it’s easy to use. Imagine a world in which octopuses and monkeys ran the show (stick with me). If you were a monkey and the most popular computer system was built for an octopus (waterproof, with four keyboards, etc.), you and your monkey team would waste an amazing amount of time trying to adapt to that industry-standard piece of equipment.

To be easy to use, your software needs to be the right size. A CRM with every feature under the sun is probably too bloated to be the most user-friendly tool for your small business. Chances are, your team would use just a small fraction of an enterprise system and lose a lot of time navigating around inessential features. Instead, go with a CRM that’s made just for you and your team’s needs.

Customization

Speaking of made for you, nothing quite says “perfect fit” like the ability to customize.

Moving into a new CRM is like moving into a new home. Your data fields, your dashboard, and your task list need to be just so. Any aspect that can’t be adjusted for the way you work will just get in the way. You’ll constantly be tripping over it.

This is especially true for small businesses. Your sales processes, follow-up strategies, and contacts will likely change as you evolve. Larger businesses may be able to get by with fixed strategies and platforms, but you need CRM that grows with you.

Contact information tracking

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s essential that your CRM can, you know, track your customer info. Like every other feature, your CRM’s contact info tracking should work with you, be easily accessible, and enhance — not impede — the way you work.

If you track very specific fields, such as fiscal year start date or hat size, look for a CRM with customizable customer data fields.

Email templates

Think of the number of emails your team sends in a week. Now, think of how many nearly identical emails your team sends in a week. It’s a lot, right?

You’re repeating sales techniques across customers and repeating appointment-setting emails with small tweaks across clients. You’re even sending similar emails to your team . . . over and over again.

When you have a small team, efficiency is the name of the game. Without templates, you’re reinventing the wheel every time for no reason. Tighten up your ship with a CRM with built-in email templates.

Follow-up tracking

The beauty of a CRM is you can see the big picture that emerges out of all the pieces that make your business work. The interactions you have with your customers — the emails, the phone calls — these are the small, steady, daily tasks that lead to big wins.

Your CRM should let you track all of that hard work over time so you can better understand what’s working for your business. A good CRM will be your virtual assistant, giving you a daily plan for where your energy will be best spent.

With follow-up tracking, you can systematize your outreach efforts:

Schedule regular email and phone call reminders to help you nurture your leads
Remind you of contacts who haven’t heard from you for a bit
Pinpoint exactly when you should contact your customers and leads, which will increase your chances of hearing back from them
Help you figure out whether your contacts like text, email, or phone best

When you’re working with a small team, this kind of virtual assistant can spell the difference between scraping by and knocking it out of the park.

Looking for more? Check out our blog on everything you need to know about CRMs, for newbies.

Caitlin Delohery

CRM Software

Why “Ease of Use” is the Most Important Feature of CRM Software

September 8, 2016 Caitlin Delohery Leave a comment

What are the most important features of your CRM? You’re probably thinking customizable contact fields, analytics, or being able to email from right inside your contact screen. But you’d be wrong. The single most important feature of your CRM is ease of use.

A little over 70% of senior executives would trade functionality for ease of use. Too many features can be overwhelming. We may think we need the app with all the bells and whistles, but when we look practically at how we use our software, extra features can really get in the way. Muck up the works.

Ease of use, on the other hand, is one feature that will help make your team’s day-to-day workflow simpler, happier, and frustration-free.

So, just what are we talking about when we talk about ease of use?

Here’s a great breakdown of some of the hallmarks of primo usability:

Simplicity. Is it so straightforward your technophobe uncle could use it?
Speed. Is it quick as a bunny after downing a shot of espresso?
Lack of Disruptions. Is it a smooth operator?
Ease of Integration. Is it BFFs with your favorite sales tools?
Consistency. Is it as reliable as Old Faithful?

With those things in mind, it’s a little clearer why ease of use is so important. That list is pretty much everything you could dream of in a new tool for your team.

But there’s more!

Here are three big benefits of top-notch usability.

User adoption

When a CRM is easy to use, it’s its own best advertisement. It sells itself to your team so they want to use it. This helps you get over the initial hurdle of convincing your team that they need a new system to begin with.

The tools your team uses should make their job easier. And if learning your CRM is a job in itself, your team is going to take to it as willingly as a kitten to water.

An easy-to-learn, intuitive CRM, on the other hand, makes for smooth and happy sailing.

Satisfaction

And speaking of happy, an easy-to-use CRM is integral to your team’s overall job satisfaction. Your team will spend a lot of their time each day interacting with your CRM. For most teams, especially in client-facing businesses, their CRM is one window on their computer that’s always open.

And as with any window you gaze through day in and day out, your team will notice the little imperfections in your CRM. The little daily frustrations, hiccups, and confusions in a difficult-to-use CRM are like the cracks, nicks, and bug guts on your car windshield. They make you a little less adept at getting where you need to go, they impede your ability to see the whole picture accurately, and they make the job of going places less fun.

With an easy-to-use CRM, your team can just cruise on through their work days. An easy-to-use CRM, like a spotless windshield, facilitates a big-picture view, helps your team focus on what’s most important (your clients and contacts), and makes them that much happier at their job.

Productivity

Happiness isn’t all you have to gain from a simple CRM. Your productivity will increase as well, because happy people work harder.

In a recent study, 70% of staff said poorly performing technology is a drain on their productivity rates. Poor technology is also demotivating and results in higher employee churn.

You may not think a complex piece of software would trip up your team’s smooth functioning or even contribute to turnover. But technology is, in many ways, another member of every business team. Overly complex tools impede performance — much in the same way a difficult teammate would.

An easy-to-use CRM is a team player. It does what a CRM does best, and it does it well: it speeds connection, streamlines workflow, and keeps your team organized. Above all, it supports your team to focus on what it does best: grow your business, build relationships, and get stuff done.

There you have it — the power of ease of use in a nutshell!

Looking to get down to basics? Check out our blog on all you need to know about CRM, geared right toward CRM newbies.

Caitlin Delohery

CRM Software

New to CRM? Here’s What You Need to Know

August 23, 2016 Caitlin Delohery Leave a comment

So, you’ve begun the exciting adventure that leads to your first CRM platform! Awesome! Here’s a beginner’s guide to help you get the lay of the land.

What exactly is CRM?

You probably know that CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management (that’s probably why you’re reading this blog post!). But what the heck does that mean?

Think of CRM as one of those colorful umbrellas that’s big enough to house everything you need to have fun at the beach — your cooler of microbrews, a fine selection of beach reads, and matching beach loungers. Your CRM umbrella contains everything you need to nurture your customers through the buyer’s journey, the combination of goodies you use to keep those customers happy.

Here are some of the pre- and post- sales activities and data that fall under your CRM umbrella:

The actions your sales team takes to turn someone who is interested in your product or service into a customer

Meeting in person
Chatting on the phone
Emailing
Texting
Using a live chat feature
Mailing marketing materials
Engaging on social media
Publishing hot content that addresses your customers’ pain points

All of the fun things your team does to delight and retain customers post-sale

Touching base on the regular
Promoting the good stuff your customers do
Setting up awesome referral programs
Creating an army of brand advocates

The data your current and future customers create through their behavior

How many of your customers were referrals from other customers
Where in the sales funnel each customer is
How many deals your team has closed by company, region, and other factors
What sales strategies turn leads into customers

Your CRM software is the technology that you use to make sense of it all.

What is CRM software?

CRM software is a powerful tool that helps you manage and analyze all of your interactions, whether they’re with newbie leads or your loyal fanbase. It’s the sidekick software that helps your superhero team boost relationships with everyone who already loves you and those who will love you very, very soon.

Here are some of the ways CRM can improve follow-up, streamline workflow, and empower your sales team to do their best:

Track customer contact information
Automate emails and other messaging
Log phone calls and in-person meetings
Sync with future and current customers’ social media profiles
Store and share team notes specific to each contact
Track prospects throughout the sales funnel
Manage follow-up scheduling
Automate contact follow-up
Provide reports that track customer behavior and help you make sales forecasts

Think of a CRM platform as a social media feed just for your sales team to keep in touch with customers.

If you’re like me (and pretty much everyone I know), you use Facebook to remember your friends’ birthdays. When we do this, we’re outsourcing certain aspects of our personal relationships to the social media platform.

CRMs provide the same kinds of reminders for your business relationships.

	Social media feed	CRM “feed”
Status updates	Your ex’s relationship status Jealousy-inspiring pictures of tropical vacations Info about what your buddy from college ate for lunch	Detailed contact information Notes on last interaction with a customer Info about what your hottest leads are Tweeting, Facebooking, and LinkedIn-ing about
Reminders	An invitation to your niece’s 8th-grade graduation A memory from four years ago when you just got back from your jealousy-inspiring vacay	A reminder that a lead is due for follow-up A reminder that a customer-specific task will be due next Tuesday
Dashboard	Recent friend updates Calendar Friends list Groups list	Recent lead and customer updates Calendar Contacts list Companies list

A CRM superpowers your lead nurturing process and frees up your team’s time to focus more on the customer relationship part and less on the management aspect of the sales process.

What should you look for in a CRM?

Sometimes, it seems like there are as many CRMs as there are startups in San Francisco. Some come with all the bells, some come with all the whistles, some mix and match bells and whistles. But don’t get distracted by all that. Focus on the fundamental characteristics that will best guide your CRM search.

Ease of use

Inside CRM found that 55% of users think “ease of use” is the most important feature of CRM software. In fact, 72% of senior executives would give up some of those bells and whistles in their CRM in favor of usability.

When it comes to a CRM, you don’t want this:

You want this:

Customizability

Your system should work for you, not the other way around. You don’t want to have to change your business practices, sales tactics, and workflows to suit a CRM. A good CRM should be adaptable, flexible, and easily tailored to exactly what you need.

For example, a highly customizable dashboard makes a CRM easier to use, simpler, and more fun. Each member of your team can choose what they see right when they start their day, prioritize the information they need most, and organize modules in a way that’s intuitive for them.

This also gets your team to buy-in to the CRM — like a new office space, they can move in and arrange their CRM exactly how they like it.

Easy integrations

A CRM should play well with others. Along with adjusting to the way your team works, it should talk to the essential tools that your team uses. A CRM that can’t partner with your email program or your calendar is falling down on the job. Seek out a CRM that pairs well with the tools that are already crucial to your workflow.

Affordability

Analyzing cost is about more than simply comparing price tags. It’s about making sure you’re only paying for what you’ll actually use. Before you pay top dollar for an enterprise-level CRM system, make sure it aligns with what your company needs.

What are the benefits of a CRM?

The average return on investment for a CRM is $8.71 per every $1 spent.

If that’s not enough to convince you, here are five ways CRM software helps your business grow, makes your sales team more efficient and effective, and frees up more time to nurture your future customers.

Saves money

Along with an off-the-hook ROI, a good CRM makes your team better at their jobs. It does just what it’s name promises — it improves your most important relationships — those with your customers. By providing data on your sales efforts, a CRM helps you focus only on those initiatives that are most fruitful.

Saves time

“I love data entry!” said no salesperson ever. Manually inputting customer information can be time-consuming and boring. Especially if you keep detailed information about your contacts, manual logging can be a major timesuck. A CRM saves your team valuable minutes on every single contact, prospect touch, and customer interaction.

Standardizes records

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes make mistakes, especially when I’m doing manual data entry. Chances are, your sales team isn’t perfect, either (though I’m sure they’re awesome).

The less complete your customer records, the less effective your sales efforts. A CRM helps you eliminate these errors, standardize the information kept for each contact, and get a clear picture of your organization’s network of contacts.

Improves follow-up

Businesses with strong follow-up are businesses that grow. In fact, 35% to 5% of sales go to the salesperson who responds first.

By automating follow-up reminders, a strong CRM platform makes sure that you never miss an opportunity to make that first touch. Further, it helps your team stay on top of regular contact, so your leads are nurtured well and your customers stay happy.

Helps your business scale up

As you grow, manually tracking customers will be more and more unwieldy. A good CRM will improve your capacity to scale up and encourage your team to grow and grow.

There you have it — a quick overview of what CRM is, what it does, and how it can benefit you.

Looking for more? Check out our blog on how a CRM helps you find, nurture, and win deals.

Caitlin Delohery