Founding, launching, and scaling a startup is normally done with a common objective – becoming a success As about 90% of startups actually fail, it’s clear that it’s not so simple to be successful – especially if you want to go global and make it big time. There’s a reason the startups with the highest valuations are called unicorns – they’re a pretty rare phenomenon.
To make it work, startups need to leverage every tool at their disposal. Make every resource count and make every process as efficient and streamlined as possible. A CRM is a critical part of this.
Startups often make the error of assuming that a CRM is a surplus to requirement – believing them to be reserved for medium or large businesses. But that’s not the case. They hold incredible value for small, resource-stricken startups as well.
What is a CRM?
A CRM (customer relationship management) is a tool used to optimize the full spectrum of customer management and business operations. It’s a software system used to help build, nurture and have oversight on customer relationships, as well as with other organisations, shareholders, team members, investors, suppliers and so on.
It helps with time management, organisation, lead generation, business management and communication.
CRM solutions include various features to boost a team’s efficiency. This includes the ability to enable teams to organize and manage basic information (such as contact details), give easy access to customer/shareholder profiles and related interactions with them, integrate business workflows and create automation to increase engagement. CRM can also generate more sales, identify marketing opportunities, and, ensures customer retention – to name just a few.
What’s the benefit to a startup?
CRMs give a workspace for startup teams to have complete oversight over the full spectrum of their business processes. It harnesses all of the possible accumulated data at every point of a business journey and pulls it together.
For a startup – this is incredibly powerful. Small, dynamic teams can benefit from the slick, streamlined automation – optimising time and enhancing efficiency. Here, we take a look at 4 fundamental ways a CRM can benefit startups:
- Get your startup organized
- Boost customer retention and acquisition
- Funding oversight
- Empower collaboration
We’ll focus on these four elements, as we think they are most relevant for startups, but there are a whole host of other benefits. Freshworks’ product Freshsales Suite is an example of a quality CRM dedicated to startups, you can check out their core benefits here.
Get organized
It’s a data-driven world, and we’re just living in it. In 2022 and beyond, data has immense power and startups need to have it well organised to be able to leverage it appropriately. CRMs provide a way to store data and information in an organised way. This, in turn, organises and informs processes and empowers better data-driven decisions.
A CRM gives a visual overview of all the relevant insights and formation. It can be pulled up when needed and constantly updated.
The additional benefit of the modern CRM is that in today’s world, spreadsheets just don’t cut it. A CRM means that data and business information is optimised and more efficient, which as a result enhances time management. From workflows and tools to help create, manage and allocate tasks to the ability to generate reports, a CRM is the organisation tool every fast-growing company needs to take advantage of.
Customer acquisition and retention
Getting the first customers onboarded is the lifeblood of any startup’s journey. After that, the tricky work begins – retaining customers.
A quality CRM system can help in both onboarding new customers, identifying them in the first place, and ensuring that your startup develops a reputation for delivering excellent customer service – essential for customer retention and long-term success.
CRMs track all customer deals, interactions, transactions and so forth – basically any contact between every customer and your company can be tracked, recorded and analysed by a CRM. Knowing your customer inside and out means you can predict their wants and needs, which means you can cater to them and optimise whole business processes.
It is the best friend for both sales and marketing teams, giving the important insights to launch lead generation campaigns, ways to close the sales funnel and identifying marketing opportunities.
CRMs also benefit from social media integrations which can be priceless in maintaining customer engagement across your entire network.
Funding oversight
One benefit of a quality CRM tool for startups is the ability it gives to keep track of funding.
It can be used to track existing investors as well as identify ways to attract new investors. It also generates powerful reports and insights – which are useful to have on hand to show investors why they should be putting their money into your pocket. The oversight and the data provided by a CRM have great potential to fuel your funding strategy.
Empowering collaboration
Yes, we know startups are small. So buying into a tool that helps teams work together more efficient might not seem so important. But, as a startup, your aim is to grow. That means taking on new team members. In addition, startups are increasingly characterised by disparate, remote-based steams.
With a CRM, new team members can be easily onboarded and brought up to speed with what’s going on, the key objectives, and what’s happened in the past. It also helps team members have oversight of what’s happening across departments and teams. The startup world is well known to be full of workers wearing multiple hats. Collaboration tools make that possible, giving marketing teams an eye on what’s happening with sales, and business developers up to date with what the devs have up their sleeves.
With a CRM, data is shared easily and it’s all made accessible to everyone, regardless of where they are or when they started or who they are. They can also be tailored to assign tasks, set up notifications, run performance analysis, share calendars, set up collaborative chats, and generally have more visibility when and if it is needed.
Freshworks for Startups
Freshworks has created a CRM solution specifically catering to startups and their unique needs – Freshsales Suite. Freshsales Suite is a powerful, modern CRM solution that combines the power of sales and marketing automation, chat, and telephony in a single, comprehensive solution.
Using a CRM like Freshsales Suite means you can focus on what you do best – scaling your business – rather than getting bogged down in burdensome manual work.
Germain Brion, VP-Sales of startup Chargebee: “We initially had Salesforce CRM but didn’t really use it. The instance was incredibly complicated because it allows for so much customization that you end up doing nothing. When we explored Freshsales Suite, the first thing I remember saying is, okay, the interface is clean and simple.”
The Freshworks for Startups programme includes a global community of 400+ VCs, accelerators, incubators, and startup communities from 87 countries – all fuelled by its omnichannel model. Get in touch today to find out more.
