Small businesses often face constant workweek distractions and interruptions because employees wear many hats, and businesses don’t have the right software integrated into the workweek. Small teams must interact with customers, reply to emails, and schedule appointments while focusing on their other everyday job duties.
If you’re tired of your team constantly losing focus over repetitive tasks and customer interruptions, it’s time to upgrade to a customer relationship management platform (CRM).
A CRM can help small businesses boost productivity and limit the need for repetitive, mundane tasks. Whether you own a salon or a local medical facility, there are many advantages to updating your software and tools to maximize productivity.
In this article, we’ll explore seven ways to improve productivity with a CRM. Here’s everything you need to know:
1. Adopt Automation For Email & SMS Campaigns
If you want to boost productivity in the workplace, you need to adopt automation. Automation tools can help streamline productivity and workplace processes. These tools help marketers for small businesses build innovative workflows and campaigns that help you nurture leads in the background of your workweek.
Once you start using email and SMS automation, you can also personalize your messaging and automate follow-ups based on specific triggers. This is a great way to schedule innovative marketing campaigns that help nurture leads into paying customers or keep current customers engaged with your services.
It can also help your finance team schedule follow-ups on payments. For example, you can schedule an email follow-up with clients who haven’t paid their invoice in 30 days. This puts less stress on your accounting team and ensures relevant, timely follow-ups are being sent out.
2. Limit Interruptions with Automated Scheduling
Is your team still scheduling calls over the phone? Is your sales team constantly emailing clients back and forth to schedule an appointment? With automated appointment scheduling tools, you can limit client interruptions and give your team time back in their day to focus on other tasks that require a human touch.
Townsquare Interactive’s appointment scheduling tools integrate directly on your website. Customers can also reschedule or cancel their appointments without contacting your team, limiting no-shows and improving customer satisfaction.
3. Improve Customer Communication With an Integrated Inbox
Are constant customer service requests bogging down your work email? With an integrated inbox, you’ll never miss a follow-up or a touch point with a lead. Integrated inboxes are one centralized place to view past conversations, review customer inquiries, and check in on opportunities. This will help improve your customer service initiatives and ensure every opportunity is being capitalized on.
4. Scale Your Business With Data & Reporting Tools
To scale your small business, you need to understand your audience. CRMs have a suite of analytic tools and custom reporting features you can use to get more strategic with your sales and marketing initiatives. This can also make it easier for your team to build lead lists and better understand consumer behavior through customer history.
5. Enhance Your Marketing Strategy With Personalization & Segmentation
Customers want more than a standard marketing campaign or sales email. They want marketing content and sales follow-ups to be personalized for their needs. The best way to do this is to segment your sends by customer behavior or demographics.
CRMs have built-in tools that make segmenting customer data easier. You no longer need to keep this information in a spreadsheet or create pivot tables to understand your audience. A CRM will do this for you, helping to boost sales productivity and efficiency.
CRMs with email marketing tools also make adding personalization to campaigns straightforward. You can decide what personalization you want to add to a campaign or email without having to personalize each follow-up yourself.
6. Improved Organization with a Cloud-Based CRM
A cloud-based CRM is a must-have for small businesses. With these tools, you’ll have one centralized place to store prospect and customer information. You can also track all customer history and interactions in one place. This can help enhance the sales process, ensuring your sales reps are always on the same page and not going after the same leads. This can also help keep you on top of your finances. You can check in on payment status and use the built-in automation tools to schedule follow-ups.
Townsquare Interactive’s cloud-based CRM user-friendly and easy-to-use. Everyone on your team can easily see upcoming appointments, emails, payment history and invoices in one place.
7. Boost Sales Productivity With Automated Follow Ups
Sending sales follow-ups one by one is a time-consuming process for your team. With automation, you can schedule sales follow-ups using automated triggers based on the urgency of the request. Some great opportunities to send a follow-up include:
- A few days after sending an invoice without a response
- After a scheduled demo
- A week after an appointment, asking for feedback
- A few months after a client stopped using your services
- Checking in to reschedule a recurring service
Once you develop your automated triggers, you can set these follow-ups to send with just a few clicks of a button. Platforms like Townsquare Interactive’s sales software also have email copy templates and tools you can use to streamline the content creation process. These automation tools can help boost sales productivity and improve the customer experience. With this tools, your sales team will get time back in their day to focus on developing outreach campaigns so you can scale your business quicker and more efficiently.
Improve Productivity With Townsquare Interactive
Whether you own a small local med spa or an HVAC company, there are several ways you can improve productivity with a CRM. CRMs are innovative software businesses that need to grow and scale their business. With a cloud-based CRM and highly effective automation tools, you’ll never miss a touchpoint with your customers.
Townsquare Interactive was designed with small businesses in mind. Our business management platform has built-in tools that you can use to boost productivity and workplace efficiency. We also provide web design, SEO, and paid advertising services.