“Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.” — James Cash Penney
As a business owner or manager, you’ll be aware that no matter what stage of the business cycle you’re in – from start-up to expansion, or even a possible exit – there’s an endless number of factors that all need to be pulling in the same direction for things to work the way you want them to. The growth stage is perhaps the most critical stage of all. Even the simplest business comprises many complicated and connected parts. It can be a very tricky time. Here’s why a CRM is so critical when it comes to growing your business.
If you’re looking to upscale your business, then it’s worth taking a pause and giving yourself a great big pat on the back. In order to reach this stage, you’ve already put in some of the hardest yards. You’ve likely built up a decent income stream, you’re acquiring new customers and your cash flow is starting to cover expenses. That’s a huge effort!
But, it may not feel like it. While it all sounds great on paper, behind-the-scenes you’re sprinting on the hamster wheel, scrambling to keep up with a dizzying variety of new demands on your time and focus, including bringing on new hires and building a cohesive team. None of it is easy, right?
4 reasons a CRM is a solution you can’t do without
There’s no doubts that scaling and broadening your sales base will be made infinitely easier with the help of a CRM like Pipedrive. But. don’t just take our word for it. Here at Motii, we have built on Pipedrive’s amazing CRM offering and added functions that make it easier to customise Pipedrive exactly to your needs.
This isn’t just any old CRM we are talking about. It is one that has been built on the best technology, with your business needs in mind. It’s a system you can rely on to organise and manage your customer data, which will save you a whole lot of headaches as you grow.
If you’re wondering how and why, then let’s dive in and take a look…
It’s no secret that scaling up is a tight-rope act that requires a lot of careful attention to avoid any slips or falls. But so often it’s difficult to keep your eye on the horizon when the ground underneath you is wobbling in the wind. Losing focus can, among other things, lead to:
Scaling-up in any business is a delicate operation. You take on more clients, manage more listings and have even more to juggle in the process. If your systems aren’t streamlined from the beginning, then you’ll only be able to scale so far. You will reach a point where you are no longer able to track client interactions, lose leads the moment they enter your door and can’t keep track of all the different turning wheels.
A CRM will, above all else, streamline and simplify your business processes. It will keep everyone accountable, communicating and on track so that leads are converted to sales and customers are supported throughout their journeys.
You can grow bigger and faster with a CRM in place.
The demands on customer-facing teams these days are many and significant. It‘s tough out there, right? The number of ways and means for customers to be reached out to and engaged with is difficult to keep up with.
On one side this is great, as you can reach more and more customers. However, without the means to capture and nurture them, this is pointless. A CRM makes your teams job even easier. They can not only capture new contacts, they can keep track of interactions, make notes to follow up with them and stay on top of the entire process from start to finish with an automated system.
Let’s say you have a customer who has made contact over time through social media, online forms, email and phone. Asking a sales rep to stay up-to-date with this one customer through Excel is an exercise in complexity and frustration. Now, let’s say you’ve got 100 customers – it becomes a nightmare, right? And for those who are looking to ramp it up from 100 to 1,000 customers, it’s just not feasible at all.
Not without a CRM, which will easily track all these touchpoints and ensure the information is at the ready for your team any time of day. Overcoming challenges such as these will lead to happier and more productive team members. And your customers will be the direct beneficiaries every time.
A good CRM like Pipedrive is designed to provide your business with robust support tailored to your specific needs. It should be joining important dots and ensuring all facets of the sales and marketing process are connecting and communicating together. In essence, it acts as a virtual personal assistant: you let it know what needs doing, but it does a whole lot of the grunt work for you.
A CRM that manages workflow management will assist you and your teams – no matter how convoluted and ever-changing your workflows might be – to automate, coordinate and complete must-do tasks in an incredibly efficient way. This is critical to a business of any size, but even more so if you’re looking to get bigger and roll out more reps and marketing staff.
Pipedrive’s Workflow Automation feature, for example, allows you to automate mundane repetitive tasks. This means that your business can more easily scale. From auto-sending personalised emails to updating custom fields based on stage change or deal status, Pipedrive’s Workflow automations mean that you and your team can save time and make sure that all the little things get done.
Motii has built the Motii Wizard on top of Pipedrive. The Wizard gives you the ability to do things you cannot do with the off-the-shelf Pipedrive. Things like, calculate commissions inside of Pipedrive, trigger activities and emails based on date fields and auto-add options to multiple choice fields based on the creation of Persons and Organisations.
It’s no secret that data is the essence of any business. With correct, up-to-date, extensive data you have the ability to track how your team is working, whether customers are converting and what stages of the process need to be updated to improve these numbers. They are the crux of any business, which is why you need to make sure they’re accurate.
Pipedrive’s new internal Business Intelligence tool, Insights, is still in Beta, but it is already proving to be a winner among our clients. Insights is Pipedrive’s customisable reporting platform. It allows you to slice and splice your data and gain a deep understanding of what is important in your business.
If you’re on the professional tier of Pipedrive, you are able to create reports using all your custom fields as well as default fields. You can filter and display in just about any fashion. The reports are easily arranged into dashboards and show things like conversion rates, average deal value, deal value per stage, deal velocity, revenue forecasting, sales cycle duration and more.
Insights is the perfect tool for time-poor sales managers who are looking to track sales activities like demos, events, call and emails. They allow you to focus on leading rather than lagging indicators, meaning that you are always staying ahead of the game.
Motii already works with teams using Insights data to improve their sales processes, make crucial decisions and operate more efficiently. Creating shareable dashboards is easy. Simply create your reports and add them to existing dashboards or create new ones. Sharing is a click of a button and the shared link is live, meaning it is the perfect way to always be prepared for that weekly or monthly sales meeting.
Dashboards allow you to track all of your KPIs in a single place. You can track individuals, teams or the whole company. And the greatest thing about Insights is that you don’t need a degree in data analytics to use it. It may take a small amount of getting used to but once you have the hang of it, you can produce amazing reports and dashboards within minutes.
If you’re looking to grow your business, doing so without a CRM will make your job markedly more difficult. You will hit a point where you are unable to scale any further, which means those margaritas in the hammock will be a much more distant dream.
A tailored CRM has the ability to transform your business, while giving you the time to focus on the many other areas that need attention. Of course, we’re biased, but with the Pipedrive CRM, we’ve seen countless businesses taking the plunge and setting up an account and benefitting from almost instant results. Let us know if we can help you do the same.
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The ability to stay organised, keep clients and referrers informed, and hit key deadlines is crucial to growing any finance business. Without a streamlined system in place, missed opportunities, wasted time on repetitive tasks, and inconsistent communication can lead to lost revenue.
Integrating Pipedrive with your other business tools is one of the easiest ways to boost your productivity, improve data accuracy, and streamline your processes. Whether you’re just getting started or need help with a custom solution, Motii is here to guide you through the process.
