Carving out market share from large, well-established competitors with only a fraction of their workforce and a fraction of their budget – that’s the challenge facing most startups every day. The difference between sinking or swimming is the ability to find a way to do more with less, and all great startups know that to succeed, they need to find a way to play to their strengths while minimizing the impact of their weaknesses. Luckily, startups do have one major factor working in their favor – agility – especially when it comes to implementing new technology. The ability to recognize and leverage game-changing technology to outcompete bigger and wealthier competitors is a common thread across almost every great startup success, and customer resource management software is one of the technologies most often at the center of those stories. 

CRM systems offer a myriad of benefits to small companies looking to do more with less, not the least of which are the abilities to rapidly accelerate relationship building, enable employees to get more done with their workdays, and to create laser-targeted training programs based on the needs of the people on the front lines. By tying all aspects of their company together through a single, centralized piece of software, startups can eliminate waste, save time, and turn every employee into a contributor to a positive customer experience – a huge differentiator in the David vs. Goliath situations many startups struggle with. 

Use Automation and Customer Data to Establish Strong Relationships Quickly

Finding a foothold in a market – especially an already mature market – is a difficult task for startups because it requires customers in the space to take a risk by going with a newer, unknown player over the companies – however underwhelming – that they already know. With the deck already stacked against them, startups can’t afford to miss a single chance to establish and nurture relationships with potential customers. 

Customer resource management platforms are the ultimate tool for establishing fast, efficient, and quality relationships with new leads because they take the art out of relationship building and instead make the process data-driven. In the past, getting to know a prospect required an enormous amount of time and salespeople with great memories. With a CRM system, the details of each and every interaction with a lead – from face-to-face meetings to phone calls to texts to emails – can be captured and stored in the system, often automatically. Lead data can even be collected from initial web visits before any one-on-one contact is established. 

The creation and centralization of huge caches of all relevant customer data enable sales professionals to approach every future interaction prepared with a complete knowledge of every prior interaction, enabling them to provide more efficient and, just as importantly, more personalized service. The result is that relationships – and trust – can be built at light speed, enabling startups to operate as if they’d been around for years, even when they haven’t. 

Centralize Tasks to Enable Staff to Get More Done in Less Time

A common aspect of essentially all startups is that people are at a premium, days are long, and it’s all hands on deck to get things done. But burnout is a real problem, and startups have a responsibility to help their employees work as efficiently as they possibly can. Among the biggest sources of wasted time and headaches are inefficient workflows that require employees to jump back and forth between multiple systems, manually move data from one place to another, and struggle to communicate effectively. 

Customer resource management systems knock down the roadblocks that cause inefficiency by centralizing as many tasks as possible into a single, easy-to-use point of control. For instance, CRMDialer, one of the best CRMs for startups, absorbs and centralizes lead generation, lead management, marketing, email, internal chat and team collaboration, billing and payments, reporting, inbound and outbound calling, and much more. Bringing all of those important daily processes into one place enables employees to spend more time on mission-critical tasks and less time managing logins and juggling data. 

The integration of almost all of a startup’s sales and administration tasks also ensures that the quality of work done is better since team members will always have access to the information they need to do their jobs as well as possible – no matter where in the organization that information lives – right through the centralized CRM on their computers or phones. 

Supercharge Training to Hone Great Startup Sales Teams

You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and that’s as true of people as it is any other area of business. Ensuring team members get the training they need requires managers to be able to accurately track where they’re struggling and where they’re thriving, and that means employee-generated data. 

Customer resource management software enables managers to quickly and easily access the data they need on every area of their salespeople’s interaction with customers, from email and phone communications, to presentation generation, to close rates, and beyond. The built-in power dialer also enables managers to go beyond the numbers to listen in on live or recorded sales calls, ensuring quality control and getting a feel for each sales or support agent’s strengths and weaknesses. 

With a crystal-clear picture of where each member of the team needs the most improvement, laser-targeted personal training plans can be developed, making HR’s job easier and ensuring a startup’s internal teams are as well-oiled and effective as possible – a key to success when competing with larger, established organizations. 

 

The best CRM for startups is the one that offers these benefits and more while maintaining the flexibility and scalability necessary to grow alongside a company in real-time. CRMDialer is the industry leader in customer resource management, offering a full suite of sales and productivity tools along with a built-in power dialer that completely replaces a traditional enterprise phone system (and eliminates the associated monthly bill.) 

Best of all, CRMDialer offers unlimited users, unlimited lead and customer accounts, and unlimited document storage, meaning that as startups grow into major players in their respective industries, their CRM will grow along with them, but their bill won’t. 

To find out more about everything customer resource management can offer your startup, reach out to a member of the team or put the power of CRM to work by starting your 14-day no-commitment free trial of CRMDialer today.