Why Every Small and Medium-Sized Business Needs a CRM Strategy?

Did you know that over 60% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) struggle to effectively manage their customer relationships, leading to lost opportunities and reduced growth? In today’s competitive market, SMBs face unique challenges — from managing fragmented customer data across multiple platforms to delivering personalized experiences on a limited budget. This is where a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy comes into play. By centralizing customer data, automating routine tasks, and providing actionable insights, a CRM can empower SMBs to enhance customer satisfaction and drive sustainable growth. In this blog, we'll explore why every SMB needs a CRM strategy and how it can transform customer relationships and elevate your business to new heights.

Let's define CRM

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Businesses use CRM software as a repository to unite and streamline sales, marketing, and customer support activities. Customer-facing teams can use CRM platforms to create more relevant and personalized conversations with prospects by centralizing all customer information and making it accessible throughout the organization Consolidated dashboards, pipeline views, built-in conversations, and automation of mundane activities - a good CRM can do it all for your business and thus can support the sales process and advance Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) initiatives.

CRM systems compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone (which many software come with a softphone), email, live chat, marketing materials & more recently, social media. They allow businesses to learn more about their target audiences and how to better cater to their needs, thus retaining customers and driving sales growth.

Nowadays some CRM tools can unify customer and company data from many sources and even use AI (artificial intelligence) to help better manage relationships across the entire customer lifecycle, spanning departments like marketing, sales, digital commerce, and customer service interactions.

According to Gartner, the global CRM market size is estimated at $69 billion in 2020.

The global customer relationship management market size is projected to grow from $101.41 billion in 2024 to $262.74 billion by 2032, at a CAGR of 12.6%

The value of CRM

Forrester’s CRM Playbook indicates that 61% of global software decision-makers were implementing, had implemented, or were expanding their implementation of customer service software. Meanwhile, 58% of software decision-makers intend to do the same for sales force automation (CRM) applications; 17% of decision-makers plan to adopt customer service software within the next year; and 18% intend to adopt sales force automation.

When properly integrated into your system, a good CRM adds value to your business in two significant ways:

• Business strategy enhancement: An effective CRM strategy identifies and develops business objectives, benefits customer service protocols, clearly articulates CRM features and processes, and addresses functional needs. It should include customer information, customer service goals, employee roles and strategic opportunities. In addition, a CRM strategy should include metrics relative to company initiatives and overall goals. The CRM data is pertinent to the success of the business.

• Cloud agility and adaptability: As more CRM platforms and solutions migrate to the cloud, their workflow automation and the infrastructure on which they run becomes more critical. For example, Salesforce augments its sales cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS), while Microsoft augments on Azure. Each cloud platform has a distinct suite of analytics and machine learning (ML) that greatly influences insights and determines CRM results.

Who is CRM for?

CRM software is for companies and industries of all sizes. It benefits large enterprises that need to easily track customer activity in one place and share it across departments, small businesses that often need to do more with less, and startups looking to be nimble and efficient. No matter your industry, or even if you’re a non-profit, if you communicate with customers — and your employees rely on information about those customers — CRM tools can help.

Customer relationship management software can benefit virtually any department at your company, from sales to service, to IT, to marketing, and more. Whether you want to start big or start small, it's easier to get started than you might think.

Why is a CRM system important for your business?

Doing business has become complicated. The average organisation uses over 1,000 different applications — but less than 30% of these apps are integrated.

To stay ahead, your company needs to be centred around your customers and enabled by the right technology. But getting up-to-date, reliable, and actionable information can be tricky. How do you translate the many streams of data coming in from sales, customer service, marketing, and social media into useful business information?

With a CRM solution, of course. Here are just a few reasons a CRM is important for your business.

A single source of truth

Customer relationship management software can give you a clear, unified customer profile — a single, simple, secure, and customisable dashboard with a customer’s purchase history, order status, outstanding customer service issues, and more. This information can be invaluable, especially since 70% of customers expect every representative they contact to know their purchase and issue history.

Whether they’ve previously reached out via phone, chat, email, or social media, a single source of truth ensures everyone at your company can provide the expected level of service.

Cost savings

Having a single source of truth doesn’t just benefit customers. It keeps companies organised and focused on revenue-driving activities. Sales teams generate a flood of data while talking to prospects, meeting customers, and collecting valuable information.

If all that information gets stored in handwritten notes, laptops, or inside the heads of your salespeople, there can be serious cost implications. Details can get lost, action items aren’t followed up on promptly, and customers get prioritised based on guesswork rather than data. And if someone leaves the company, unless their contacts and notes are saved in a CRM, that information — and business — may disappear along with them.

A CRM means less administrative work… and more time to focus on driving sales.

Connecting all your teams

A CRM brings your teams together, sharing information that makes everyone’s job easier.

For example, marketers can use CRM tools to manage campaigns and lead customer journeys with a data-driven approach. CRM software provides visibility into every opportunity or lead, showing you a clear path from inquiries to sales. Then, commerce teams can serve up personalised offers on your website, while customer service already knows a customer's history if they reach out with questions.

Increasing productivity with AI

Some of the biggest gains can come from combining CRM with the power of AI. Doing so enables you to quickly pull together everything you know about a customer, which can be used to personalise every interaction. Having this level of knowledge makes every employee even smarter and more productive. It equips them with insights to make more accurate predictions around forecasts like quarterly sales targets, ecommerce sales, or the best time to send a marketing email.

Generative AI can help speed up tasks for teams across your business, too. Labor-intensive tasks like drafting sales emails, crafting marketing messages, and writing or localising product descriptions can now be done in a matter of seconds.

How are CRMs useful for different kinds of businesses?

Customer relationship management systems can be easily customized to meet the specific needs of any business type or size. Startups, as well as medium to large enterprises functioning across industry verticals, can use a customer relationship management software to improve their sales, marketing, and customer support efforts. Apart from simply streamlining business processes, CRM platforms can assist customers in many ways:

B2B

It's a common myth that B2B businesses don't need a CRM. The truth is B2B businesses also need to store their information securely and use it to maintain healthy relationships with different parties and to create a loyal customer base. From managing an account's contact information to staying up to date with business deals, payments, and reports, B2B companies do best with a CRM platform in place. It helps them stay in sync with their partners, vendors, and other stakeholders.

B2C

B2C companies have shorter customer life cycles and typically require solutions that are more direct and less time-consuming. All communications with prospects need to be personalized and quick, or they might end up losing the sale. A multichannel CRM tool with features like lead management, instant customer surveys, marketing automation, and more helps B2Cs reach out to their customers more easily, thereby boosting productivity and increasing sales.

SMBs

SMBs aren't just small and medium businesses, but smart and modern businesses. There's no truth to the common misconception that cloud CRMs are too expensive and complicated for SMBs. They can always start their CRM journey with a free system. As a kind of technological equalizer, small business CRM systems provide SMBs with a level playing field and the ability to compete against the bigger players in their industries.

Enterprises

As companies grow, so do their customer base and the complexities of each deal. With sophisticated features like workflow management, advanced analytics, territory management, and sales and marketing automation, an enterprise CRM system can help reduce the time salespeople spend on mundane tasks and give them more time to concentrate on their customers and unify their operations across multiple geographic locations—thereby boosting productivity and revenue.

What are the benefits of CRM?

Here’s how a CRM system can help your business today

There are many benefits of using CRM software — especially when your business combines CRM with AI and data you can trust. Here are just a few of them:

1. Connect your business silos

The ability to easily share data across your teams is a huge benefit to both your customers and your business. A CRM provides everyone at your company with a simple, customisable user interface with real-time updates they can use to serve customers. So when a customer calls in with a question, the service agent can see their entire history, past marketing offers, and previous purchases. The CRM can even offer up suggestions for new products the customer may like, based on trends and insights uncovered by AI. A CRM with messaging capabilities that incorporates your customer data makes it even easier to communicate across your teams, with the data you need to collaborate right at your fingertips.

2. Make improvements to your bottom line

Introducing a CRM platform has been shown to produce real results across a business. It helps your employees save time, work more efficiently, unlock opportunities, and serve customers better. Using Salesforce CRM, global customers across all business sizes have a proven track record of success, including:

Source: FY2024 Salesforce Customer Success Metrics Global Highlights. Data is aggregated from 2,165 customers across 10 countries.

3. Increase customer lifetime value

By understanding your customers better, cross-selling and upselling opportunities become clear — giving you the chance to win new business from your existing accounts and to build lasting, more profitable relationships. With more visibility, you can keep your customers happy with better service. Happy customers become repeat customers, and repeat customers spend more.

4. Offer better customer support

Today's customers expect fast, personalised support at any time of day or night. A CRM system can help you provide the high-quality service that customers are looking for. Your agents can quickly access a customer’s record of all past interactions so they can provide quick, informed answers and service.

5. Accelerate work with automation

CRM software helps employees get more done, faster. With capabilities like Salesforce Flow Orchestration, you can automate complex, multi-user processes into simple and streamlined workflows. Plus, fully integrated productivity platforms such as Slack provide a single place where employees can collaborate right in the flow of work and automate processes. And now with AI, the best CRM software can automatically generate workflows using conversational intelligence to create even better experiences.

6. Use AI to identify trends and efficiencies

As seen from these previous examples, having AI built in to your CRM can help your business grow. It can make your employees more efficient, serve your customers better, and find new opportunities you may not see on your own. Generative AI can even write personalised follow-up emails for your sales team or knowledge articles to share with support teams based on customer interactions.

AI and CRM

To remain competitive and achieve customer satisfaction, companies must adopt innovative CRM tools from vendors offering feature-packed products and services that are often industry-specific and leaning into the newest technology, such as AI CRM. The AI customer relationship management software takes both the power of AI and traditional CRM tools to enhance the customer experience and customer interactions.

An example of AI CRM in action is IBM and Salesforce working together with teams of trusted consultants, designers and engineers to apply deep industry expertise that will ultimately change the way work is being done. The project improves the employee experience and better addresses customer needs.

With the availability of multiple solutions, it is important to consider what is driving your overall business objectives. Whether it be the technology, architecture, functions and usability of your application, the overall cost, risk and speed of your project, or the product vision and partner services provided by your selected vendor, your CRM is critical to the present and future development of your enterprise

Challenges with CRM

The transformations of customer engagement and customer loyalty are among the primary benefits of CRM, and it must be achieved in increments. Forrester identifies three important areas of risk associated with CRM implementation:

• Size: Organizational project management teams tend to be less accurate with CRM pricing and benefit estimates for larger projects versus smaller ones. The larger the project, the wider the range of risk.

• Vendor risk: Organizations, at times, must replace a CRM vendor because their product is no longer meeting their business needs or the vendor has been acquired. In either case, CRM costs can significantly increase.

• User adoption: Organizations must properly prepare and train their sales reps to operate a new CRM application, otherwise they are less likely to accept the new user experience. Therefore, sales management is a key part of a successful CRM adoption.

Implementing CRM systems and best practices

After you've decided to implement a CRM and even chosen one. What next?

Below are some best practices that will help you and your team implement and use your CRM successfully.

Map out your sales process and ingrain it in your sales team.

• How do potential customers find you and how are they going to get into your CRM?
• What happens to those potentials once they are in your system?
• What steps should your sales team follow when a lead is assigned to them?
• What happens when your sales team closes a deal?

Train your staff and management teams on CRM.

• Does your team understand why you’re implementing a CRM system?
• Is your management team aware of the time-saving benefits they’ll receive by using a CRM system?
• Does your team understand the value of the customer life cycle and how a CRM system can help?
• Can you restructure employee compensation to reinforce the benefits of using a CRM system?

Use automation for repetitive tasks.

• What actions are performed on every lead, contact, and potential, and could they be automated?
• What specific tasks should be automatically assigned to a salesperson once they receive or convert a lead?

Quick Recap

In today’s fast-paced market, SMBs need more than just hard work to stay competitive — they need smart tools that help them build stronger customer relationships and drive growth. As discussed, a CRM system offers a unified source of truth for all customer data, helping businesses cut costs, streamline operations, and connect their teams. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, a CRM can be tailored to your specific needs, enabling you to automate sales and marketing processes, improve customer service, and gain valuable insights through data analysis. Additionally, with the power of AI, CRM systems can identify trends, predict customer behavior, and personalize interactions, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. While implementing a CRM comes with challenges, following best practices — such as mapping out your sales process, training your team, and using automation for repetitive tasks — can ensure its successful adoption. Ultimately, a well-executed CRM strategy isn’t just about managing customer relationships; it’s about transforming them into growth opportunities for your business.

Wonder what's next? <br/> Start your CRM journey with Growsoc

While enterprise-level organizations have the resources and expertise to afford top-shelf software solutions, we understand that small and medium businesses (SMBs) require special focus and dedicated attention in terms of resource management. Smaller businesses have requirements similar to enterprises, but face more challenges in terms of finances, workforce, infrastructure, and so on.

Growsoc is the ideal place for your CRM partnership where our expert team crafts systems around these challenges. We build AI backed custom CRM solutions by hand-picking the features most necessary for your business, and ensure that the system is simple, solution-oriented, and affordable - all of which qualifies GROWSOC to be your perfect CRM partner.