Posts for "Small Business CRM"

Start with the basic features At the start, your sales team does not have to adopt the full spectrum of features that your CRM offers. Let them start using the basic, intuitive features of the CRM such as creating or importing leads, logging customer correspondences, and creating tasks specific to prospects. These features are usually those that have similar counterparts in traditional customer relations management. Offer training and tutorials that are easy to consume According to a Neochange survey, only less than 10% of CRM users reach an acceptably effective usage of a CRM. This shows how CRM adoption can introduce a steep ... READ MORE

I have a good friend who was a producer of the cult TV show "Veronica Mars" from 2004-2007.  Recently, the creative team behind that show made Internet history in an interesting way - they partnered with the website Kickstarter, a resource for crowdsourced fund-raising, to raise millions of dollars to underwrite production of a "Veronica Mars" feature film. As of this writing, over 50,000 fans have pledged anywhere from $10 to $10,000 or more. Pretty cool. My company is the corporate sponsor of xTuple PostBooks - a leading open source ERP - which is currently being honored as the "Project of the Month" ... READ MORE

When you started your business, you may have had visions of customers beating down your door to buy from you. Unfortunately, growing a new business takes a lot of hard work. Luckily, there are a bunch of tools that will help you grow. Here are four essentials: 1. Social CRM A social CRM, such as Batchbook, will help you organize your contacts and build better relationships with them. When you are just getting started, you likely won’t have a ton of customers or contacts. Leverage the relationships you do have by staying in touch and providing great service for every sale. Social CRM ... READ MORE

Stride is not your everyday CRM system: rather than doing contact management, the company provides a software solution for deal management, allowing sales people to more effectively focus on revenue-generating opportunities rather than mindlessly entering contact information. Co-founder Andrew Dumont joined us for a discussion on what sets Stride apart in the increasingly crowded Sales and CRM space. What is your company's mission? We want to make the sales process approachable to anyone, not just sales people. As small business owners ourselves, we came to the rash realization that every business has to sell to keep the lights on and further growth. ... READ MORE

CRM software helps sales departments to organize their activities, track their prospects and opportunities and ensure they are able to forecast better about their opportunities in the months ahead. In spite of those benefits, however, the adoption of CRM systems still lags behind that of other enterprise software. Some of the reasons we have observed are: Unfamiliar user interface: this is the first hurdle to cross for most users; even after they have mapped their existing processes to the new CRM. Bear in mind, even terminology differences (ie calling a "deal" an "opportunity" is a source of irritation). Feature over-load: Most CRM software has too many features ... READ MORE

Over the last few weeks it seems that the intensity of the debate about using cold calling or digital lead generation has increased to a level of intensity where it is getting a bit absurd. It seems to me that proponents of both sides are trying to make unrealistic claims about the efficiency of their pet route to market, I decided it had all got a bit too extreme when I read the following quote: “And that’s when it hit me: Cold calling isn't just a terrible idea during a recession, but may actually be contributing to the recession itself! Think about it...” Well I ... READ MORE

For how ubiquitous CRM systems have become at most any sales or contact-oriented business, it's amazing how many ways the average system can (and does) fail. Granted, much of time the blame for this falls on companies who didn't do their homework to figure out which system is the best fit for their team and its specific needs, but poor design decisions, rudderless development and inscrutable interfaces don't help either. Most people who use a particular CRM system aren't using it out of any great affection for the service. They're using it because the decisions on software adoption are made at ... READ MORE

The first part of this feature was a brief history of Open Source as a trend that quickly grew into an entire philosophy of software programming. Alongside that we provided some tips to keep in mind and things to look out for when considering adopting a piece of open source business software, be it ERP, CRM, business intelligence, or anything else, for your company or organization. In this second part we'll give you a list of a few open source solutions available in the ERP, CRM and business intelligence segments as well as possible upsides and downsides to adopting each one. Business ... READ MORE

Salesorder.com calls itself "the world's favorite web-based ERP." And yet, Salesorder.com may not be the first company people think of when they hear that term. CEO Nick Spooner joined us for a talk about their under-the-radar sales strategy, and why their biggest competitors have the wrong business model for SMBs. To learn more about Salesorder.com, visit their website. What inspired you to establish Salesorder.com? Our view of the world is crystal clear: small businesses are very badly served when it comes to unified information systems. There are five major brands when it comes to accounting software, led by QuickBooks and Sage. Small businesses ... READ MORE

CRM is a tough market, but it's even tougher for the small businesses looking for solutions that fit their needs. FutureSimple—founded in 2009 by Uzi Shmilovici, Bart Kiszala, Pawel Niznik, Ela Madej and Agata Mazur—aims to solve those needs with Base CRM. We talked with Uzi Shmilovici, CEO and founder of FutureSimple, on why he started developing software for small businesses, how Base CRM came about, and where the future of CRM is headed. What was the initial inspiration behind founding FutureSimple, and how did Base CRM come about from there? In 2009, I was a co-CEO of a web agency in ... READ MORE