Small businesses face plenty of hurdles in their path of growth. Businesses have shifted online now, so maintaining relationships with your clients in person is not a feasible option anymore. CRM systems are an important part of businesses today, as they allow them to conduct CRM activities with ease.
CRM systems help a business collect valuable data about customers so they can strategically work on retaining them. Almost every business these days uses a CRM platform to manage customer relations.
When it comes to CRM platforms, Salesforce is the top system available on the market today. It has become an indispensable part of many businesses. It is very easy to use and offers a high level of customization as per the needs of your business.
Salesforce is generally considered to be of use to big companies, but it has other tools that are beneficial for small and medium businesses as well. These tools help a business create memorable shopping experiences and cater to its customers in a personalised manner.
Here’s how you can use Salesforce for your small business
Get to know your customers
A big problem for small businesses is effectively managing their customer base. When you use a platform like Salesforce, you can see all your customer data on one platform. Salesforce implementation allows you to keep track of every interaction a customer has had with your business.
It gives you useful insights into customer data and helps you provide a customised experience for your customers. You can control how your business interacts with the customer based on their needs and preferences. They can effectively resolve customer issues with the help of the information available to them through Salesforce.
Generate good leads
Salesforce allows you to conduct customer analysis in order to track and target prospective customers of the business. This also helps you improve your marketing strategy and deliver what the customer needs from you. It helps you close deals and leads to higher customer conversion rates.
Salesforce gives you insights into the purchasing patterns of a customer. This helps you identify prospective customers and cater to them effectively. This is a great way of generating leads that are likely to be converted into new customers.
Understand customer needs
Customization in customer experiences is in demand and helps you retain your customers. Salesforce’s Einstein AI tool helps you perform analysis on customer needs and provide a tailor-made experience for your customer.
This leads to higher customer satisfaction and eventually keeps the customer coming back for more. You can target specific customer needs and cater to them in the best way possible.
You can offer customers solutions they didn’t know they needed, which greatly satisfies them. By predicting what customers want, you have a better chance of converting them into new customers and building long-lasting relationships with them.
Mechanise campaigns
Salesforce offers tools that help you automate processes. Related to marketing campaigns, Salesforce tools can help you plan a compelling marketing campaign and automate the process as well.
It allows you to target customers with automated marketing exercises across various platforms, such as email, websites, social media platforms, and mobile channels. This is dictated by a set of instructions provided by you as per your analysis of customer behaviour.
Create time-saving apps quickly
With Salesforce, you can create customised mobile apps within minutes. The mobile app for your business can be customised to provide a smooth customer experience with various features to better serve the customer. You can design the app as per the requirements of your business without the need for intense coding skills.
Build a community for customers
Social media sites have become a hotspot for customer interactions. But it can also work as a disadvantage for your business. That is why you should create a community for your customers where they can discuss their issues.
On this dedicated community platform, you can address the issues of the customer and work on providing solutions that can satisfy them. This allows you to tackle untoward situations in private and protect the company’s image.
Offer a personalised experience
Customers nowadays expect small businesses to provide a highly customised and personalised experience. To meet these expectations, Salesforce offers various tools that enable you to do exactly what the customer needs and provide a favourable experience. With the valuable insights Salesforce’s AI tools provide, you are aware of what your customer is looking for and can provide it to them without much hassle.
Meet customer expectations
With customer needs constantly changing, it is difficult for small businesses to keep up with their customers. To avoid losing customers in changing times, Salesforce provides in-depth analysis and trends of customer needs to help you understand how to cater to your customers. It also helps in ensuring customer satisfaction and better customer retention.
This is how Salesforce Implementation can help small businesses grow
Provides complete information on customers
To grow your business, you need to understand your customers. It helps you create personalised recommendations for your customers, which leads to better customer satisfaction. With complete access to valuable customer information, your sales and marketing teams can analyse customer behaviour and identify their needs.
These teams can share this information and work in coordination to ensure customer conversion. All of these activities help in providing a memorable experience for the customer, which keeps them coming back.
Improved sales forecasting
Businesses need data to grow further. Data analysis of customer patterns provides valuable insights for the business. This helps them understand customer needs and predict a sale before it happens. With better forecasting of sales, you can employ the necessary tools to work on customer conversions and retention.
Salesforce helps you understand historical data and present trends, which allows sales teams to forecast sales possibilities. With accurate sales forecasting, sales teams can get insights on how to generate revenue and create campaigns to effectively target customers.
Better management of sales teams
Sales teams are always busy with various tasks for target customers. A small business with a salesforce can get access to the latest and most updated customer information to effectively target its customers. The sales team can define its customer base based on the information available to them, which allows them to use their time to target prospective customers.
They can manage their leads better and convert leads automatically with the help of Salesforce cloud tools. It allows sales teams to streamline their processes, remove institutional hurdles, and optimise processes. This also leads to better productivity among employees.
Improve business processes
With all relevant data categorised and laid out in an orderly manner on Salesforce, small businesses can optimise various business processes to make the most of their resources. Salesforce helps improve business processes by helping them prioritise tasks based on the analysis of trends and customer interactions.
This helps teams work on lead generation and conversions in an effective manner. It allows you to engage with the customer at the right time, so you can cater to customer needs as and when they arise.
Higher rate of employee productivity
When employees have all the necessary information, they are more likely to work dedicatedly towards their goals. If your business struggles with using the collected data in the right way, employees will face obstacles in achieving their goals, which leads to lower productivity.
Salesforce helps optimise data in a way that is easily accessible and usable in an effective manner. Salesforce helps automate monotonous tasks, which allows employees to use their time to engage with customers. With the help of Salesforce, employees can dedicate their time to productive activities instead of doing small tasks that lead to no results.
Better customer service
Salesforce allows you to track every interaction a customer has with your business. This offers you valuable data on customer needs and behaviour. Salesforce gives valuable insights on customer needs, which allows your small business to cater to them in a meaningful way.
Customer service is important to ensure a favourable customer experience. With Salesforce CRM, your teams have all the information required about the customer and can take the necessary steps to cater to them smoothly. This makes for a smooth customer service process, which satisfies the customer and helps your business retain them.
Better decision-making
With so many useful insights offered by Salesforce, you have all the information you will ever need to make appropriate decisions for your business. Not only can you make informed decisions, but you can also make a call at the right time to get the first-mover advantage. A critical aspect of business growth is making the right decision at the right time to seize the opportunity.
Final thoughts
Cloud Odyssey here stresses predominantly the usage of Salesforce by small businesses. Small businesses struggle with tonnes of unorganised data that comes in the way of their growth. But a small business with a salesforce need not worry about hurdles within the business. It organises and streamlines data and mundane activities for you so that you can dedicate your time and resources to activities that will help you grow.
