How CRM can help Small Businesses?

CRM is the most widely used software solution that is cost effective plus hassle free to use. The solution is not only used for sales & customer management but also for performing day to day business operations.

For small businesses, the CRM solution for Sales can double their sales at a faster pace. From lead generation, to placing an order or even the follow up of the same, CRM is the apt solution in efficiently managing your small business day to day operations and improve the efficiency.

However, ‘why does one require a CRM software?’ is what crosses over the minds of many small business owners. Below are some of the insights that can give a better clarity on how small businesses can make use of by adapting to the CRM technology and what you can expect when implementing a CRM for small business.

  1. Integrates the sales, marketing & customer data in one centralized place for easy customer management and retrieval.
  2. Provides fast access to vital data of customer from anywhere at anytime.
  3. Integrates your existing business process without hassle.
  4. Seamless usabilty with defined access control for better management.
  5. Customizable & configure to suit your business requirement and process.
  6.  Reduces Maintenance costs and increases business efficiency.

Why Cloud Based CRM suits Small Business?

It doesn’t matter if your company holds 100s of employees or just a handful. Today, CRM is the buzzword that is going to help you to establish closer connections with customers, provide professional customer service, sell more and grow your business further.

While big businesses more or less spend of different software solutions as needed, small businesses normally are more concerned on what they invest in.

Defintely small businesses have a clear straight forward requirement when choosing a software. It has to be affordable, should not be complicated to use, has to be easy in terms of deployment & maintenance and has to accessible at any time. This is because small businesses typically does not own its own server, hardware or IT personnel, and also will not be able to invest hugely at the initial stage. However, they would need the software to be tailored to their specific business process to avoid complexity in usage and also their team may be working round the clock and not just stick to a typical 9 to 5 time.

So small business owners need to consider a reliable CRM software that can satisfy them on the above needs and requirements.

Adopting to the new technology

Gone are the days when CRM software used to be expensive and complicated. Today’s CRM systems are not only more technologically advanced but also user friendly which comes with a variety of solutions and features that can address different types of businesses and industries.

Things have changed. Now everything is on CLOUD!

Things have definitely changed over the period of time and many small business owners opt for Cloud solutions to grow their business.

  1. Hassle Free Installation: The long and complex installation process is no more around. You can be ‘IT worry free’ and be up and runnding in no time with cloud based solutions. All you would need is an internet connection and you will be able to login and start using.
  2. Seamless Access: Round-the-clock accessibility is the most important benefit of cloud CRM. Cloud CRM gives you the access at anytime from anywhere – be it laptop, desktop, mobile or a tablet. All you need is just the internet connection.
  3. Ease of Use: With just the monthly fixed pricing, you can use the CRM as per your convenience. The system maintenance and the upgrades are maintained by your CRM vendors.
  4. Cost effective Solution: Investing on a Cloud CRM is never going to be a costly affair. There is no huge investments that can dig up a hole in your pockets. You can keep paying regular & smaller installment based monthly charges which is one of the reasons why Cloud CRM solution is optimal for small enterprises.
  5. Flexible Potential: How easy is it to own a product that can be tailored as per your business needs? You can anytime upgrade or downgrade based what features are required currently.

Do you want to find out how cloud based CRM can impact your business? Then try out a 7 day FREE Trial here: 

free crm trial

 

Optimize and Measure your Lead Source

Can you quantify how many leads your business receives from each marketing channel? More importantly, do you know which channels bring your most qualified prospects? As a business owner, it is vital that you are able to measure your lead source time to time to make strategic decisions and make profitable business.

Lead source is a critical piece of data you need in order to assess the value of your marketing campaigns and to take it forward with you lead management.

Maple CRM Solution

If you are using any Marketing or Sales tool to manage your lead process, you would have noticed the lead source or account source as one of the field to capture. By putting in place the best practices, you will be sure you can measure the value of your sales process efforts.

Define lead sources

Tracking lead sources can get confusing when leads encounter multiple touch points at a later stage. Ensure to have the lead sources defined which can be allocated whenever a new lead flows in. Most common applicable sources could be social media, advertisements, website, phone call, etc which can be followed with multiple others sources applicable to your business.

Avoid cluttering of lead source

During the initial stages you might have identified a set of lead sources and over a period of time that may keep growing. However, try to keep the number of lead sources to a minimum when customizing. Many tools provide charts and graphs based on sources which can be very informative with a good set of valuable sources.

Keep the lead source constant

Lead source should never change. The lead source is to identify where the lead is oginating from and that must not be changed once captured.

Analyze lead source

The value of a lead from each source varies from company to company. As important is the defining of your lead sources is, accurately tracking them is just as vital. If you are using Sales Management software or any Marketing Automation tool, you will be able to keep a good tracking process in place with different levels of metrics. Many tools offer various types of charts and reporting to have an indepth annalysis on the lead sourcing which you can make use of.

Accurately tracking lead sources is certainly a major value proposition for most of the businesses. Doing this step correctly is crucial to maximize your sales profits.

 

Handling multiple Business Entities in one CRM

Well, it is a common understanding that each business can have its own CRM solution. Who would have thought of collaborating all in one? or rather the question could be is it possible to configure multiple business entities in one single CRM system?

Yes, with multi dimensional CRM platform you can configure different verticals in one CRM software system.

You being the business owner can have the complete control of all your business entities and manage the process with ease. It would be extremely convenient with just one tool for all these distinct processes. The system can be defined to work based on each entity along with strict access control.

How does it work?

As illustrated in the above picture, no two businesses are same and neither are the processes they follow.

Maple CRM offers such multi company utility configuration within the same CRM system without much hassle. The solution ensures to have a less complicated and a user friendly system that can be customized to match your requirements and your process. It provides the flexibility to organize your CRM with multiple process defined.

To explore more on this feature and to have it incorporated for your business or businesses, do reach out to our solution experts. Call + 91 95389 25641 or write an email to info@maplecrm.com

Maple CRM Software for Small & Medium Businesses

Being an online Cloud CRM Solution provider, Maple CRM offers powerful, fully integrated and easy to use solution to manage customer base across the spectrum of Sales, Marketing and Service activities. Maple CRM enables a wide range of services and features that enhances the customer relationship and helps in meeting specific requirements of customers from business to business.

Featuring advanced product features and enhanced automation capabilities, Maple CRM integrates the power of Email & Phone along with its other functions. The automation can be plugged in as per the business process requirement to enhance the customer interaction experience.

Maximize the Operational Efficiency:

Maple CRM’s flexibility offers the added advantage of reducing operational costs associated with the customer interaction for both sales & support. With fast & easy administration, Maple CRM enables:

  • Integrate into website or landing pages using the Web API through Maple framework.
  • Defining customized views for each of the user to access the content as needed by them. The customized views provide flexible structure to create own pages and content.
  • Run defined rules to enable Maple to operate automatically based on certain actions. It can be connected to send email or SMS, notify user or the owner on variety of actions.
  • Have predefined Quotation & Invoice templates and use them to instantly generate quotes & invoices within seconds. The solution supports Product & Service Catalogue to ease up the process.
  • Easily track & report the entire sales process and the staff performance with just few clicks. Reports can be shared within sub-ordinates through the CRM interface and can be downloaded at anytime.
Maple CRM is a sales & customer focused software that offers powerful automation capabilities along with robust CRM that makes sales & customer service process easier than before.

For any questions, send an email to info@maplecrm.com 

4 Powerful ways to manage your Tasks

Enquiries to follow up, need to keep track of what is happening with each leads, have to prepare and send reports, need to keep up the productivity, newsletters to be sent to hot prospects and finally reach the targets. So much to do and less time in hand?

Well, it indeed seems to be so difficult when you start making the list of to-dos. To all the Maple CRM users, here are few effective ways that you can make use of.

Keep up with the Follow ups

Your customer enquiry supports reminder option. Add a follow up for each enquiry on a specific date and time. The system will remind you the day’s tasks on the Dashboard. It shall also notify through email about today’s activities and the pending ones. So you will never be able to miss any task.

Make sure you close each of the task once the activity is completed. If not, it will fall under the Pending tasks and you definitely do not want your manager to see that, Right?

Flexible Views

Configure your View Settings as per the way how you would like to see. Make different views for Hot or Cold cases. That way it will be easy for you to directly jump into those set of enquiries and work on them. Also, configure your enquiries view as per the stages you have accomplished. Keep an easy tab on where each of your enquiries stand today.

Send instant Emails

Draft your newsletter template and save it for multiple usage. Choose the type of segment to whom you want to target your emails, select the template and shoot the email. You can easily keep a note on which all enquiries the emails have been sent.

Status Reports in seconds

Well, in seconds? You got it right. Do not waste time in downloading customized reports for last updated customer enquiries. We have your daily and weekly status report ready for you. Go to Report Templates and choose Account Updates Report. Download your report by selecting the date range and there it is.

Additionally, you also have an option to share the report to your manager directly from the Report Templates. Now sending the report is also easy.

Want to explore more options with Maple CRM? Write an email to support@maplecrm.com and our team shall guide you through it.

Looking for subscribing to Maple CRM? Please write to us info@maplecrm.com or visit www.maplecrm.com

How important is CRM for your Business?

We all know it is important to know how your company is recognized by your customers and clients. And we do know that the customer satisfaction is directly proportional to how well your business will do in future. But as an Owner or Manager, can you measure or track this?

Client Management

Spreadsheet is not the answer! It can get lost, outdated or might fall into wrong hands. Client Management is an important process that every small to medium or large companies have to ensure of following. An efficient tool like CRM can enable greater visibility into your client base, help in achieving long term profitability and formulate better plans to increase business efficiency.

The customer database increases the value when everyone works together in populating it with the essentials. Keeping a good overview of the customers with customer centric strategies including collaboration can help company improve business success.

Sales & Tracking

As a business owner, the last thing that you want is to lose income by targeting wrong customer segment. CRM solution can ease your work by enabling you to strategically implement sales process that can reveal the potential prospects based on multiple data points.

Have you experienced someone leaving your organization and nothing is left behind? Pipeline wasn’t up to date. Important contacts and details are not available because it was stored locally? Don’t let it happen to you. With CRM, track all your customer interaction, history and preferences through the system and not through your staff’s mailbox.

Customer Service

Managing customer relationships has become a top priority for continued business success. CRM can improve your company’s customer service practices helping your staff to respond to client’s queries quickly and effectively.

The goal is to instill greater customer loyalty and provide customer satisfaction that can eventually improve the company’s ability to retain customers and thereby create valuable revenues.

If you’re looking to get started quickly, try our Maple CRM Software FREE Trial

Better Employee Management through CRM

Employees are the significant assets and the primary promoters of profitable business for an organization. Hence, apart from managing clients and customers for business purpose, it is a decisive responsibility of an organization to manage and fulfill all needs of its own employees.

It would be improper to say that a CRM system is only used to manage clients and customer; most of the HR heads or managers are using CRM technologies for managing company’s human resource. CRM not only resolves a company’s customer side but also it helps in empowering employees. Senior Managers can monitor the way employee deals with any customer and can make decisions based on their findings.

• Better Training Opportunity

Using a CRM software not only helps in customer Management but also to track the performance of employees. Depending on the way executives’ deals with customers, management can rank the performance of employees and also identify any rectifications or modifications needed. This paves way for effective training opportunities to employees.

• Systematic Performance

Unlike maintaining a spread sheet to record the day to day activities, CRM software helps an employee to perform a job in a systematic and professional way. CRM software also helps employees to manage their day to day tasks and activities without fail.

• Good Bye to Sticky Notes and Note Pads

Effective usage of CRM Software in any organization reflects real time communication with customer without flaw. You will be reminded about task for the day through email and SMS giving no chance for cut outs.
It is time to say adieu to sticky notes and note pads.

• Better Time Management

Customer Relationship Management software helps employees to save time by scheduling mails and SMS to respective customers. Create attractive email templates and send bulk email and SMS, when you would like to communicate about any special offer, seasonal discounts etc to your customer segments on a go. CRM software allows you to differentiate between prospects amongst leads letting you to decide how to manage your valuable time and which customer is to be focused more.

• Avert Chaos

We understand it is strenuous to manage multiple customers simultaneously. It can create pressure and chaos within your executives. Managing every information of a customer in one place can solve this problem. There may be numerous documents like invoices, quotes, proposal, brochure, bills etc. for a single customer. It is always better to attach it along with your customer details in your CRM system enabling more easiness to locate it when you need it. Also sending Mails and SMS, updating remarks and reminders, for a particular customer can be done without switching screen.

Make CRM software more productive

The purpose of any CRM is to help you to manage and improve your business process. The more effectively you use the CRM system to manage your customer details, the more quickly you can achieve your business strategic goals.

Here are few points that you can use to get more out of your CRM software.

Get people to use your CRM

The most important step of your CRM life cycle is to get your people use it. If you want to get more out of your CRM software system then get the users to maximize its use. Many users may resist the change, may perform actions outside the CRM system, etc,. but you need to set up a challenging process of shifting everything to the system so that you can ultimately get 100% CRM adoption going forward.

Users may take time to adopt it completely. Some users may quickly adapt to the system but some may take time to understand and use it. Give sufficient time and training to make them use it effectively.

The sooner you get all your users on the system and entering data, the more effective the system will be and the more productive your CRM project will become.

Train your Users

Just bringing a CRM solution to your process doesn’t really help. Make sure you include enough time and budget for effective training.

Users should not only understand how to use the software, they should understand the benefits of the new system and how their part of the operation fits with the rest of the company.

Training builds familiarity with the system and confidence for the users. That not only makes users more productive in the first instance, it also encourages them to use it the way they find it comfortable and useful.

Extract Information

Using CRM effectively is the key to getting the most productivity out of your CRM solution. A CRM system enables users to evaluate buying cycles, identify prospects capable of buying within a period of time and view your executives activities which indicates how actively your executives are working on, etc. CRM can help you to forecast growth, analyze and make business decisions based on these data.

CRM software helps companies organize, access and manage easily all the existing and prospective customer information. Enforcing discipline, training and motivating the staff to use the software are very important factors.

A CRM system can become one of the most important tools you’ll need to scale your business.

 

Effective Communication as the CRM strategy

Businesses spend hugely on acquiring new customers. They invest more to market their product and services so that customers can know their presence and contact them. But strangely, when it comes to managing relationships with these customers there remains no strong process to follow.

Given the fact that businesses can spend a lot to obtain a customer, then is it not worth spending little to retain the existing ones?

The success of any business is connected with the customers and the basis of it is the communication. Businesses can enable better communication with the customers to improve the success level of the business.

Enabling successful communication using a CRM solution can boost not only customer service management but also the business sales.

CRM for effective communication

SMS solution using CRM

SMS is the easiest and most convenient way to reach to customers. Many CRM solutions provide the SMS solution that can act as a two way processing. Manual or automatic SMS can be sent to customer intimating them about the payment renewal, or stock availability, etc. Customers can also simply send SMS to show interest in any particular product or request for status enquiry.

Emailing through CRM

CRM solution provides much more capabilities than just a simple mailing system. Businesses can make use of Email Templates which is a huge time saver plus it can also support macros to make your emails look professional without spending much of your time. Automatic Emailers can be configured thus letting your CRM do most of your work.

There are many more such CRM advanced tools that can ease your customer communication process.

Such additional tools in CRM can maximize the effectiveness of customer interactions and improve your business life cycle. CRM is not just about managing customers but it is also about bringing value to the business.

 

Smart way of Customer Management

If you are thinking that managing business and customers is a difficult process, then you haven’t used a CRM solution yet. Get to know Maple CRM and see how it can simplify your business process. It can make your business life so much easier. That’s not only to it. With Maple CRM, you can go mobile to stay connected to your customers quickly, track the status, etc. while on the go.

Simplifying your work process

Automating the work process

One of the biggest daunting task that you face everyday is to find ease to do things. But here in Maple, we have worked our way out to make it easy for you do different tasks from the same window. For example, updating customer details & history, sending email, updating status, re-assigning it other user, adding reminders, etc. can all be tedious if you have to switch windows to perform these. Maple not only makes it simple but also captures these updates automatically for your record.

Easier Customer Interactions

Email and SMS interactionMaple enables easy interaction with customers through email and sms. Create intuitive HTML email templates and use them to send instant mailers to your leads and customers. Same goes with SMS. Just have it ready before in hand and send it when needed.

Secure Document Storage

We know that there are many bills, valuable files, quotations, brochures that you may have designed and sent it to your customers and you would want to store all of them for future reference. What better way to attach it along with your customer details in your CRM system. Way too easy for you to locate it when you need it.

There are much more to add to the list. Plus more new features are coming up soon. Stay tuned in and do like our Facebook page.