A guide to ProCRM.ai’s CRM and small business automation platform
What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a tool that helps business owners track all communications and nurture relationships with their leads and clients seamlessly. It replaces the multitude of spreadsheets, databases, and apps that many businesses use to manage client data. A CRM like ProCRM.ai not only organizes and holds information but also enables serious automation, which is essential for serious small businesses. The result? Enhanced organization, efficiency, better time management, fewer manual tasks, and delighted clients.
A CRM consolidates all the data from your sales leads and customers in one place. It integrates all communications (form fills, calls, emails, text messages, and meetings), documents, quotes, purchases, and tasks associated with each lead and client. This centralized data ensures that your entire team can access critical details at the right time to close a sale or deliver exceptional service.
What does a CRM for small business do?
The core function of any CRM software, including ProCRM.ai, is contact management. A CRM stores and manages all data for every kind of contact — from leads to business partners.
You might wonder, “Isn’t this just like a spreadsheet? What does a CRM do that a spreadsheet can’t?”
Level up with a CRM
A spreadsheet is useful if you have fewer than 100 contacts or if you’re only tracking static information like names, email addresses, phone numbers, company names, and websites. However, a spreadsheet can’t keep up with more complex, dynamic data, like which emails a contact has opened, which pages they’ve visited on your website, or their last purchase date. A CRM like ProCRM.ai automatically updates as your leads and customers take actions, whereas data in a spreadsheet becomes outdated as soon as you stop manually updating it.
The best CRM software shows how hot or cold a lead is through lead scoring. Based on rules you set, points are added to a lead’s record for important actions (like submitting a form or clicking a link). This enables your sales team to focus on the hottest leads. Achieving this level of insight is nearly impossible without a CRM.
What a CRM doesn’t do
CRMs aren’t designed to assist with backend operations like production, warehousing, shipping, engineering, or finance.
Additionally, CRM tools can only manage what they can see. If team members work leads or deals outside the system, the CRM’s effectiveness for the entire team diminishes.
While some CRM software is used solely for data management, an all-in-one CRM system like ProCRM.ai offers essential features like business automation, landing pages, quotes, and invoicing, helping entrepreneurs manage their entire businesses more efficiently.
Examples of how a CRM works
A good CRM like ProCRM.ai doesn’t just collect information. It helps you leverage that data to:
- Get personal at scale by sending the right messages at the right times to leads and clients.
- Focus sales teams on the hottest prospects.
- Shorten the sales cycle.
- Monitor, analyze, and improve results.
Example Scenario:
Imagine a real estate agent wanting to grow her contact list by offering a free educational course on home-buying basics. She runs a Facebook ad campaign linking to a course registration page with questions about desired location, property type, price range, and timing.
Each lead’s responses will trigger different automated follow-up communications from the realtor.
- A lead looking to buy a home within two months in the realtor’s service area would be tagged as a “hot lead” and enter a fast-track communication sequence.
- A lead whose purchase timeframe is six months out would be tagged as “long-term nurture” and receive a series of emails offering home-buying resources, designed to keep the realtor top-of-mind until the lead is ready to buy. The CRM could also create a follow-up task to contact the lead via phone four months later.
- Leads whose target purchase location is outside the realtor’s area will be tagged as such and will only receive communications related to the course.
As you can see, CRM software offers numerous benefits, especially in sales and marketing.
How does CRM make business automation possible?
A CRM platform like ProCRM.ai amplifies your sales and marketing efforts without requiring large teams or excessive advertising budgets. Coupled with business automation, you can create a sales and marketing engine that significantly boosts your growth.
Sales Automation
Automating your sales tasks with CRM software streamlines the entire sales process by improving visibility, prioritization, and follow-up.
- Greater Visibility: A CRM provides the visibility your sales team needs to be most effective. Having all lead and customer data in one place facilitates easy handoffs between teammates if the account owner changes. Sales reps can see exactly what a lead has done, allowing for personalized conversations that encourage the appropriate next steps.
- Better Follow-Up: Automating follow-up with leads and clients ensures that you no longer need to manage sticky notes or copy and paste the same email to every new lead. Your system initiates follow-up at the right times, creating a consistent customer journey and converting more leads into clients.
Marketing Automation
Integrating CRM and business automation into your marketing process offers powerful insights, personalization, and testing opportunities, ultimately leading to increased sales.
- Insights: With consolidated data, it’s possible to analyze patterns and find insights that lead to greater profitability. For example, identifying characteristics common in ideal customers allows you to spend your advertising dollars more efficiently.
- Segmentation/Personalization: CRM enables sending the right message to the right person at the right time. You can personalize your messages at scale with emails that dynamically pull information stored in your CRM and are automatically triggered by specific actions.
- Testing for Improvement: A robust marketing CRM allows you to test different promos, messages, ads, and more. Data from testing proves which option is most effective in driving maximum profitability.
How Do I Get Started with CRM?
The best way to understand how CRM software can organize and grow your business is to try it out. Sign up for a 14-day free trial of ProCRM.ai’s CRM and business automation software today (no credit card needed).
Getting Started with ProCRM.ai:
- Import your list of contacts and map your fields.
- Add custom fields to capture any new data points you’d like to store for your leads or customers.
- Categorize your contacts with tags for easy segmentation (website leads, repeat customers, vendors, partners).
- Add tasks, notes, files, and other details to a contact record.
- Create a lead capture form or landing page to collect lead data directly in your CRM.
- Explore additional features that will help you level up your business, like Easy Automations, Appointments, and email marketing.
By following these steps, you can fully leverage ProCRM.ai’s capabilities to streamline your operations and drive growth.