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CRM Apps Help Small Businesses Grow — Here’s How

Gartner reports that in 2018, the CRM market reached $48,2 billion — a 15% growth compared to 2017. The biggest part of this expansion was driven by cloud services and software as a service (SaaS) solutions, as well as the resulting push to mobile capabilities. CRM apps are now a valuable tool for small businesses, especially as employees work more often from their mobile devices away from their desks.

As entrepreneurs face a plethora of small business apps to choose from, they may question why they need a CRM mobile app in the first place. It’s an important tool because “today’s employees aren’t confined to desks; they’re working on the go. Salespeople travel between locations, meeting with prospective clients. Field agents need access to schedules and work orders while on location.” This is just the tip of the iceberg: Sales, marketing, customer service, field agents, and business owners themselves all benefit from a CRM platform that can fit in their pocket.

A CRM app gives users a convenient option for working away from their desktop CRM platform. With it, the functionalities of your CRM software are available in an optimized version for smaller screens and fingertip accessibility, completely up to date just like your desktop CRM software.

The importance of having a CRM platform available no matter where you work cannot be overstated. Whether it’s at your desk, in the back of a rideshare, in a client meeting, or on a job site, your CRM system, including the CRM mobile app, helps you organize and manage your business, your customer database, and your customer experience in the most effective way.

How do CRM mobile apps help you grow your business?

For the modern small business owner, every decision must take data into account. To make the right decisions, you need to have access to your marketing, sales, and customer service data at all times. Moreover, it has to be structured and easy to analyze. That’s exactly what CRM systems are built for, and why CRM apps are an important tool for businesses on the go.

You could, of course, access your CRM platform from your smartphone’s browser app, but that’s a far less convenient and more time-consuming method when compared to a CRM app. For example, business owners often take calls, including important sales calls, at inconvenient times, but a CRM mobile app is a smart, fast way to make every call count — even in line at the post office. A CRM app means business owners don’t have to slow down or add another task to their to-do list just because they’re away from their desk; they can take care of it right then and there.

Why Small and Midsize Businesses Need CRM Technology

Being mobile helps companies prioritize some of the primary SMB success factors.

In an article for Investopedia, Chris Seabury shares a number of tips for growing a successful business. Some of them include: Get organized, keep detailed records, analyze your competition, stay focused, provide great service, and be consistent.

Several of the factors Seabury includes directly tie into the need for a CRM platform. When a business owner runs a company that only functions for very specific hours, during which every employee is always at their desk, they may not need any SMB apps. The reality, however, is that most small businesses operate during the hours when customers need them, and small business owners rarely work just eight hours during a workday. Furthermore, sitting at a desk all day, every day isn’t feasible for the majority of business owners or their employees.

Your company needs to be organized, with detailed records available no matter where your employees are. Successful small businesses have all the information they need at their fingertips in order to provide great service and be consistent in their interactions with vendors, partners, and customers.

CRM apps take away the pressure to rush back to the office to take care of a customer or finalize a contract. A few taps on the screen, and your employee has the same information in front of them as they would if they were using their desktop at the office.

Salespeople sell more effectively when they know a customer.

The more information your sales reps have on a lead or customer, the more effectively they can immediately communicate with this person. This is one reason why a CRM platform is a necessary tool for small businesses: It helps create a fuller, accurate picture of leads and customers. A mobile CRM app takes that capability a step further and gives salespeople that information from their smartphone or mobile device. If a salesperson is at a trade show, for example, and has a promising conversation with a lead, they can immediately input that contact’s information into their CRM app, see that the prospect’s company is rated as a hot lead, and quickly follow up with that lead for a more targeted conversation. With this kind of immediate accessibility, you can shorten the sales cycle, because you move customers through the funnel faster.

With an integrated suite of SMB apps, you can also take advantage of your email marketing software with this lead. As soon as the lead from the trade show expresses interest and permission, you can start them on a drip campaign or add them to specific email marketing funnels, all from your mobile device.

The best CRM apps enable you to attract the right customers — at any time.

A technique that’s widely used in B2B sales is account-based selling, or ABS. This approach has the client at its core and often employs the following five metrics about their company:

Size
Industry
Location
Revenue
The kinds of products or services they have or will purchase from you

A CRM app ensures your salespeople have all those metrics at hand while they’re interacting with a company’s representative. This helps the salesperson identify how likely the lead will be to convert — and if that potential client is ideal for your company. The ABS approach allows you to pursue the best clients for your business, no matter if you’re at your desk or on the road.

When you have a profile of your ideal customer, no matter if you practice ABS or another sales method, you can adjust your lead generation channels accordingly and as necessary. Reaching the right prospects can dramatically improve your conversion rates and, as a result, bring more revenue.

How Do CRM Mobile Apps Help You Grow Your Business

CRM mobile apps give you the power to improve customer support.

Modern customers and clients demand immediate attention. With that in mind, a key characteristic of excellent customer service is how promptly a company assists its clients. By aggregating and organizing all the information about a customer’s support requests, CRM systems help you interact with them more promptly, providing the solution right when it’s needed, without ever logging in to your work computer.

СRM apps help you manage the channels your current and potential customers use to send their support requests. From your mobile device, you can respond quickly and effectively. You can use your CRM mobile apps to reply to urgent tickets even if you’re away from your computer. Also, to increase customer satisfaction, you can use live chats that are part of your SMB apps.

Additionally, you can prioritize support tickets based on particular client needs. This way, you’ll be able to respond to certain clients immediately and maintain the highest level of service. For example, if a roofer knows a severe storm is going to impact a certain area, they can prioritize customers who likely will have emergency repair needs in the aftermath. When the crew is working on a house, they can get an alert that another customer nearby needs assistance as soon as possible and respond accordingly.

A CRM system provides metrics you can track to measure the effectiveness of your support team. You can also set benchmarks and goals for agents to reach. CRM platforms and their accompanying mobile apps allow you to control customer support processes and identify any areas that need improvement.

Companies Must Be Mobile Enabled to Succeed

The best CRM apps grant users access to different layers of data on the go.

Top CRM platforms have powerful reporting features, and their accompanying apps let you access that data when you’re away from your office. For example, you can build in-depth reports that cover all aspects of your business, including lead generation channels and a list of companies you should target for upselling.

Take it a step further and group your reports in customized dashboards. There are three important benefits of those dashboards:

The data is based on a prebuilt set of reports that are automatically updated
They indicate how well your marketing and sales teams are meeting their KPIs on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis
You can schedule the reports to be sent to any team member on a regular basis

With the help of reporting that’s available on any device that connects to the internet, you can better understand the productivity of your sales team and identify the duration of the full sales cycle, from lead generation to conversion. Additionally, the reports help reveal which channels are the source of your best leads and what they cost you.

Conclusion

Gone are the days when business technology was only available to enterprises with unlimited budgets. In today’s world, there is a convenient solution for a business of any size. More than that, now small and midsize businesses have access to the top sales, marketing, and customer service technologies, some of which fit in the palm of your hand. These tools can help SMBs drive more sales and increase revenue, and for businesses that want to stay ahead of the competition, it is an absolute must that they take advantage of small business apps, CRM platforms, and other tools that keep businesses running smoothly.

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