Why your small business (really) needs a CRM

When you start your business, you probably handle a small number of clients whose details you know like the back of your hand. But, a successful small business doesn’t always remain small. Things change.

How can you manage information, keep up with business and sustain relationships when your business begins to grow? And do all of that efficiently?

Customers hold the key to your success, and a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) will help you centralize customer relationships and grow your small business. Optimizing sales is important to reach your big picture goals.

Freshsales is a cloud-based sales CRM designed to give small businesses the edge they need to grow their potential. Its simple and easy-to-use interface, no-complex setup and affordable pricing make it an ideal CRM for small business across B2B and B2C.

In Freshsales, managing activities is at the click of a button. We bring to you four big features—leads, deals, email and phone—that are crucial for every small business. Including yours.

1. Lead management

Gone are the days of rolodexes. It’s safe to say they’ve been effectively replaced with more reliable and evolved systems of managing contacts. A collaborative tool like a sales CRM that enhances and simplifies sales routine is essential, even for a small business.

With Freshsales CRM for small business, lead management can transform how your sales reps organize and track leads.

Lead capture—Auto-create leads from emails

For small businesses, building new customers is the recipe for a growing business. When leads show interest in your product, it is important to capture them. An effective automated system to capture leads is pivotal in bringing new customers.

In Freshsales, new leads are automatically captured from emails. So even if you forget to add them, Freshsales doesn’t.

 

 

Lead scoring—Rank leads from hot to cold

Identifying viable sales leads ahead of the first call or email saves time otherwise spent on leads who take you nowhere.

Freshsales’ lead scoring feature scores your leads to help sales reps differentiate the hot leads from the cold, and maximize sales efficiency.

Lead scoring

By configuring lead scoring (add and subtract points based on lead’s property), you can strategically jump sooner on hot leads. Freshsales also comes with custom views to filter leads as hot, warm and cold for quick access.

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2. Deal management

Streamlining and organizing sales deals allows small businesses to regularly oversee progress and developments of each deal in order to meet targets.

Freshsales’ sales pipeline feature visualizes the sales cycle of a deal, and helps keep track of open opportunities. You have options to see deals in more than just one view with deals spread across stages; you can also filter them by owner and add any number of deal stages.

Sort deals by name, value, expected close date, etc. to prioritize activities based on business scenario. Color-coded icons—red for overdue activities and yellow for no activities—will motivate your agents to follow-up consistently.

Every element in the deal block is packed with information for quick focus, and clickable links allow you to drill down into details.

Deal pipeline view

The drag-and-drop interface allows you to conveniently move deals across stages without having to manually update records.

Drag and drop deals in pipeline

For small businesses, a sales pipeline will help you analyze your sales process. With Freshsales, build the perfect pipeline— manage deals better and close deals faster while letting no opportunities fall through the cracks. To save time navigating screens, send emails, make calls and schedule tasks and appointments from the pipeline so you don’t miss out on follow-ups.

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3. Email management

Email management system continues to be the most popular and efficient tool of communication for businesses. It is only logical that your business emails be captured in your sales tool so you can access all your information in one place. For small businesses, sharing business communication promotes collaboration and empowers sales reps to achieve overall goals.

The email tool in Freshsales comes loaded with the smartest features to help small businesses organize emails, reach out to prospects in seconds and track email performance.


Email page view
Connect your mailbox—Email from the CRM

Email integration system is helpful for small businesses to reduce manual entry and view communication in one place. Integrate your Gmail, Office 365 or your custom account directly in Freshsales sans third-party integrations. Once integrated, you can send and receive emails without having to switch between the CRM and email client. These emails are recorded in your inbox.

Additionally, Freshsales provides two email addresses: an account email shared by your team, and a user email for each Freshsales user in the account. The team inbox gives your sales team visibility into new business emails. This one-place email system assures small business teams of staying on top of emails, and keeps all sales reps informed.

Email conversations—Auto-log emails

In Freshsales, emails don’t just live in the inbox. They’re automatically logged to the relevant lead or contact record in a conversation view. Designed to provide more insight on each customer, this makes navigating through emails easier and faster.

Email conversation view

Sometimes you may wish to hide emails for personal or confidential reasons. Freshsales helps you do this. If you don’t wish to link a particular email to a record, uncheck the “Link conversation to Lead” box in the compose window before you send an email.


Hide email option 
Bulk emails—Create, send and track email campaigns

Small businesses rely on email marketing to drive traffic and attract website visitors in order to increase sales. In Freshsales, the bulk email feature makes sending campaigns a simple and easy task for small business marketers—email all your leads or contacts in one go.

Personalized emails are found to increase click-through rates and sales! Our default and custom field placeholders help you achieve that. Save time with unlimited email templates, and share them with your team. Track email campaigns right from the CRM by simply enabling the Track option in the Compose window.

Bulk emails, templates and placeholder
Track emails—Real-time opens, clicks and response notifications

It’s good to know how effective your campaign is by analyzing how many recipients performed some sort of action on the email— opened and clicked. This is particularly key for small businesses to track what’s working and what’s not.

Freshsales not only makes this possible, but also effective with real-time email notifications. So you’re notified when someone opens your email, and you can time your response accordingly.

Real-time notifications

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4. Phone

Say you’re a sales rep assigned to call a lead. You may begin by locating the phone number from one place, then pick up your deskphone to make the call. After you’re done talking, you’ll manually log the call somewhere. This is an inefficient and time-consuming way for sales reps to call in the digital age. In effect, it reduces sales outreach for small businesses because sales reps don’t have enough time for chores!

Freshsales’ Phone feature comes at no extra software/hardware cost. Buy toll-free and local numbers to make calls from Freshsales. Access a quick summary of your contact, and call them in one click.


One click call

Just like emails, nothing is missed on the phone radar inside Freshsales. Incoming and outgoing calls are automatically logged and recorded. You can attend calls in browser or on your phone via the Freshsales mobile app.


Call history

Configure welcome and voicemail messages in one of three ways: record your own message, upload a pre-recorded audio file, or use the text-to-speech functionality. Jazz it up or keep it formal, and entice your leads with a greeting even after business hours.

Give your small business the CRM it needs to fly high

By investing in a sales CRM for small business, you take the mystery out of getting new customers and making sales. It gives clarity on all sales aspects to help you drive your business to success.

Freshsales is helping small businesses increase revenue and productivity of their growing teams. We invite you to join our list of happy customers. Read the success stories of HiveXchange, CovalentCareers and PG Marketing on how Freshsales CRM is changing the way they run their small businesses.

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It’s free for 30 days on our fully loaded Estate plan. No credit card required.