To provide customers with a personalized experience, companies now want to integrate technologies and platforms with their customer data. As a result, the CRM software industry continues to expand at a surprising rate. As per reports, 91% of businesses with over 11 employee strength now leverage CRM software. It is projected to reach a revenue of $80 billion or more by 2025. The reason behind such massive usage could be the convenience such software provides while accessing customer data with mobile as well as a cloud solution in real-time. If you have the right tools by your side, you can boost your lead generation, sales, and revenue while keeping your customers happy. It renders a win-win situation for all!
What is CRM?
Businesses use CRM (customer relationship management) software to organize, synchronize, and automate every facet associated with customer interaction along with sales, marketing, analytics, customer support, and services. The software can connect these areas in addition to establishing communication via emails and notes. It can even handle some less complex project management and speed up the whole process. Certain software consists of calling capabilities and chatbots to help sales reps better communicate with customers from the software directly. Powerful CRM systems can deliver reliable functionality without any trouble. This software is endowed with all these features to achieve a common aim – to optimize the entire process of customer relationship management to boost the overall productivity of your business. CRMs have shown tremendous improvements to become more advanced. These systems are perfectly capable of integrating with a broad spectrum of business processes. With the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning, CRM will continue to expand beyond horizons.
Why is CRM essential for your business?
As your brand grows, there is an inherent need to take care of the different areas of your business. From your customers to employees, from sales and marketing efforts to analytics, everything in its wake escalates. In this scenario, it becomes difficult, costly, and inefficient to operate your business manually. If not handled with care, it could cost you sales and customers! Therefore, you must not rely on manual spreadsheets or sticky notes alone! And this is where CRM software comes into the picture. It can promote your business growth by streamlining workforce and business processes while letting you enjoy automation at your fingertips! The benefits CRM software brings on the table:
Organizing Data Efficiently
Businesses need to manage a huge amount of data, including contacts, customer profiles, and more. Managing them manually is the real challenge, but not with CRM software. It provides a clear-cut view of all your data through efficient management. It can even help in running your sales processes without a hassle.
Better Insights
You can gauge sales performance and perform an audit via several metrics, including deals booked, calls made, email auditing, etc. You can distinguish your prospects at all the stages of your sales funnel by looking at the customer relationship profiles.
Simplifies Sales Processes
You can utilize different communication channels capable of increasing the efficiency of up-selling as well as cross-selling. These systems can also optimize your marketing efforts by recognizing customer behavioral patterns.
Customer Segmentation
Customer segmentation is useful to sales teams and digital marketers to shape their personalization efforts. Using the software, they can segregate prospects into groups based on parameters such as location, deal, and more. This way, sales teams can focus more on specific areas and help customers with a precise solution.
Facilitates Team Collaboration
The more your employees understand your targeted customers, the better they can identify their needs and streamline their efforts in that direction. They can extract useful information from the CRM system to achieve maximum results in minimum friction. Hence, it facilitates better collaboration between your team members.
Funnel Management
CRMs help you build and manage your sales pipeline. You can easily track all your contacts and manage them without losing a beat! Through the software, you can automatically send emails based on customer behavior, follow-up via calls, and so on. Thus, it can help you in growing your client base and forging stronger bonds with them.
Integration and Automation
Automate your tasks and integrate with other applications as well, including email, SMS, calling, eCommerce, accounting, marketing platforms, etc.
Why cloud-based CRM?
Gone are those days where you needed an expert IT team dedicated solely to take care of bulky and expensive CRM software. Modern Cloud-based CRM is technologically sophisticated yet user-friendly designed to attend your unique business requirements. According to a report, only 12% of companies utilized cloud-based CRM in 2008, but it has now rocketed to 87%. These systems allow you to store all your collected customer information in the cloud that you can access at any time. Hence, you don’t have to worry anymore about data storage, management, and payment for each license for different devices. From deployment to maintenance, everything is effortless using a cloud-based solution. Cloud-based systems perform everything on-premise and have greater adaptability to your business requirements. So, let’s check out some of the best Cloud-based CRM solutions for growing your business beyond boundaries!
Zendesk Sell
Turn your conversations into real-time conversions using Zendesk Sell to streamline your business processes, enhance productivity, and pipeline visibility. This comprehensive and easy-to-use tool is built to address the frequent issues of your salespeople. It carefully removes possible friction incurred due to deal updates and helps your sales team to collaborate, access, and analyze relevant deal information. Zendesk Sell provides your sales reps with access to all the integrated tools available, so get a full insight of a customer’s account. This way, they remain in the loop and can capitalize on obtainable opportunities. As the tool automates data capture, it is easy to keep track of new and old information that reps can use to stay updated in the sales pipeline. It also helps them prioritize your prospects and customers. Making calls, scheduling meetings, sending emails, viewing deal history, everything is accessible just a few clicks away from the dashboard. Zendesk Sell offers Smart Lists to filter and segment your deals and leads in real-time. Spot opportunities, stay organized, and close deals anywhere with this desktop sales software even when you are offline. It offers unified integration with Mailchimp to help you track your campaigns, and Pandadoc to view your contract status. You can also build apps using the Zendesk application framework. Forecast and analyze your business with reports, enjoy a drag-and-drop dashboard, and 30+ reports for interacting, understanding, and visualizing your data.
Freshsales
Leverage the power of AI to handle your business process and engage well with your customers using Freshsales CRM. It offers smart in-built tools such as Freshcaller, where you can quickly make calls and send personalized emails to your prospects and customers tailored to their needs. For getting started, you do not have to be a tech geek; everything from account creation to running is super easy. You can use it for lead scoring, activity capturing, and many more to get a detailed insight into your business. It also offers reports to help you identify and segregate your potential leads who exhibit buying behaviors. You can even get real-time notifications and alerts when a new email opens if anyone clicks your links and more.
Keap
Is there a way where you can extract more productivity while working less? Yes, through smart work! This is exactly what you can expect from Keap, a solution that automates your business process and breaks down complex tasks into smaller, achievable ones. This way, your sales team can work with more focus and efficiency to enhance overall productivity. With Keap, you can automate all your follow-ups to respond to them at laser-fast speeds. It greets new leads with personalized emails and sends reminders to your existing customers. It also updates all the interactions and stores them in a single place for you to manage easily. Utilize this advanced software to set up appointments, get quotes, send invoices, and track leads; enjoy everything just a few clicks away. Interestingly, it offers Campaign Builder to automate your marketing and sales efforts. You can tag new leads, send emails, assign tasks, and more with this configuration.
Really Simple Systems
Designed for growing teams, Really Simple Systems CRM is super-easy to set up and simple to use. Create an effortless organization with a centralized hub, which includes a customizable Sales CRM, plus options for Marketing and Service tools and integrations with external apps – so everything is in one place, enabling great team collaboration and customer relationships that drive sales growth. This cloud CRM software gives full visibility of your customer interactions and builds upon the strength of your team and relationships. With their Integrated Marketing solution, you can build campaigns and send newsletters directly from your CRM system. There’s no need for a separate emailing product as everything you need is in one place! Really Simple Systems CRM provides a customizable solution that can be modified to fit your needs, offering self-service options as well as a full Customisation Service. From the start, you will find that support is there when you need it. This free service comes in many ways, including the online chat system or through the myriad of self-service resources.
Hubspot CRM
Hubspot CRM serves your business more than just a contact management system. It offers free tools to automatically update reports and track performance. You can gain complete visibility of your sales pipeline instantaneously through a comprehensive dashboard. As a result of obtaining reports on individual performance and sales activity, you can even coach your sales team towards your goal. If you have a small, medium, or large-scale business, this CRM has the right solution for everyone. You can enjoy unlimited data and users, along with 1 million contacts without any expiration date. Hubspot also offers you advanced and time-saving tools so your sales teams can deliver better productivity. These tools also eliminate friction among them and foster collaboration. Additionally, these can notify your reps as soon as a customer opens an email or visits the company website. Hence, they can efficiently follow up the right leads and at the perfect time. You can connect better with your prospects by scheduling your meetings, using email templates, live chats, click-to-call function, and more.
Salesforce
Did you guess that coming, didn’t you? Salesforce, indeed, is one of the best cloud-based CRM solutions for transforming your business. Remain connected to your customers in a unique way and unite your sales, marketing, IT teams, service, commerce, etc. using the single software. Empower your sales team to increase productivity and garner solid leads without any hassle or speed limits. It also helps you deliver accurate proposals, quotes, and contracts while automating your bills, revenue recognition, and subscription. Sales Cloud is endowed with artificial intelligence to allow your sales teams with actionable insights, predictive scoring, precise forecasting, and intelligent automation to guide the future of business in a productive path. You can also synchronize your emails and calendar for automated data entry. The tool offers an array of options for customization, including workflow builder, collaborative forecasting, auto activity capture, and more. To help you automate your business process, Salesforce offers Flow Builder, which is a drag-and-drop tool. It allows you to create business workflows for ensuring compliance or putting repetitive activities on auto-pilot. You can boost the power of Salesforce CRM by integrating it with Facebook and other sales and marketing channels. Other features:
Comprehensive onboardingCustom dashboard and report generationAutomatic tracking of emails and scheduling meetingsEnterprise-level security
It offers a standard plan, Salesforce Sales Essentials at $25/month for a single user and a Professional package to enjoy its enhanced capabilities at $75/month per user.
Zoho CRM
With a global network of 150,000+ businesses spread in 180 countries, Zoho CRM helps companies to grow their revenue by enhancing customer engagement and converting more leads. Using the tool, you can smoothly schedule meetings, conduct presentations, organize webinars, and obtain real-time reports. Sales is a number’s game, and you can stay ahead in it by keeping track of performance and sales metrics. The software empowers your business processes with smart AI tools, unified dashboards, and dedicated mobile apps to ensure you play an “unmatched game”! Collaborate better with your entire team via common feeds, resolve each other’s queries, share insights, and send deal data to update everyone. Using the software, you can reach your customers through calls, social media, emails, and live chat. Additionally, get notifications immediately when a customer interacts to help him/her in real-time. The tool also automates your tasks, cuts down repetitive tasks, and lets you follow up better with your customers. Be it deployment, onboarding, or training, and everything is simple, including data migration from spreadsheets and other CRM systems.
Pipedrive
Searching for CRM software that can help stay focused on your customers to drive your business ahead? Pipedrive offers impressive features to help you prioritize your deals, predict revenue, and track the overall sales performance. It offers custom web forms and chatbots that feed hot deals into the sales pipeline in real-time. You can track the entire communication by auditing calls, contact, and email history. Hence, take control of data and use it to shape your sales efforts. You can easily access the software from your smartphone or PC and integrate it with sales-boosting apps as well. With Pipedrive, you can eliminate repetitive tasks by employing artificial intelligence. Use the software to explore your reports and compare them against your set goals. Pipedrive offers complete transparency and security on how your data is used to safeguard from unforeseen circumstances.
Salesmate
Manage your business workflows effectively using the Salesmate CRM and build long-lasting customers that rely on you. This has so many features hidden in its sleeves that are useful for your business in driving revenue and reducing complex tasks. Engage with your customers and prospects and help them immediately with relevant information. It gives you accurate insights so that your sales team can deliver personalized experiences to every inquiry they receive. Hence, your conversations can convert into potential leads and then transform into happy customers. It offers a drag-and-drop option to track, progress, and filter your deals, allows you to set achievable goals for your sales reps, and lets you gauge their performance. It uses analytics and accepts 700+ integrations, including Outlook, Google Apps, Zapier, etc. to support your business with other systems. Customize it the way you want and sell your product or service from anywhere with your laptop, Android, or iOS device.
Insightly
Let your unique business message reach your customers in a whole new level of personalization with Insightly to cast a memorable impression. It helps you stand out in the crowd by offering feature-rich, customized, and intuitive interface, which is painless to use. Using Insightly, you can track relevant lead data, marketing campaigns, communication, and tasks to analyze the overall business workflow and automate it. The CRM facilitates automatic lead routing to the right customer in real-time so that reps can follow up with them while they still have a chance. You can also execute customized business logic to synchronize external entities from Oracle, SAP, etc. Sending bulk emails to your contact list is flawless, and it also tracks the entire email delivery and notifies you. This way, you can have the statistics of how many emails were opened and clicked. The software maps customer relationships via a record linking function where emails, customer data, and other information can be linked to your database. Insightly lets you build custom apps and deploy them across mobile devices and the web in minutes. You can even design dashboards, create exquisite data visualizations, and track insightful metrics with ease and industry-level security.
EngageBay
Are you looking for an affordable CRM solution? EngageBay is a decent alternative. Employ this software to procure customers, cultivate a strong bond with them, and convert them into loyal customers. It can smartly address all your sales, marketing, and customer service needs. Automate your marketing campaigns, tasks, and routine using EngageBay to witness elevated productivity and efficiency in your business without affecting quality. Manage deals, get 360-degree customer insights, schedule meetings, and a lot more. Go one step ahead to serving your customers through live chat and customer support ticket management.
Nutshell
Crafted with excellence to meet the diverse needs of different businesses, Nutshell offers a CRM to help you build fruitful business relationships and trigger more conversions. The simple-to-use software is easy to handle by your teams without requiring them to be an IT pro, yet provides sophisticated solutions. Through sales automation, the CRM puts all the time-consuming activities on autopilot, thereby allowing your team to focus on nurturing customers. It offers performance tracking and reporting so you can be aware of what’s happening in real-time and work on areas that need improvement. Using Nutshell, you can collaborate efficiently with your teams and remain updated with all the important aspects demanding your attention. It also helps in managing your pipeline and contacts better and offers dedicated customer support.
Less Annoying CRM
As the name suggests, Less Annoying CRM offers a simplified solution to help small businesses manage their contacts, follow up their leads, and track them effectively without “getting you annoyed”. The user-friendly system takes just a while to set up and is effortless to use. You can even take the help of its video introduction to get better with its functionality. But in case you are stuck, they offer free email and call support even though you are not their customer yet. While choosing CRM, many businesses get perplexed with endless features and functionalities. Especially small businesses find it difficult and end up paying their hard-earned money on features that they would not even require in the first place. To make things “less annoying”, this solution is available at your disposal. It helps you improve your customer service, upscale productivity, and assists you in closing more deals. You can store all the information under one umbrella, including your files, notes, tasks, pipeline data, events, and more. It offers a search feature to help you find data easily. Integrate different systems with this software such as Google Calendar to manage tasks and events while saving your time. Through lead reports, you can remain updated on leads, including the priority and status associated.
Conclusion
With huge competition around, it becomes necessary for a growing business to find unique ways to stay ahead in the race. Using CRM SaaS, businesses can build long-lasting customer relationships, manage workflows, and shape their sales and marketing efforts to trigger growth.
