Why Small Businesses Shouldn’t Get CRM
Posted by: cmaeon in technology, CRM on Aug 11, 2010
One of the most popular CRM solutions in the world will tell you to automate your sales force, ditch the software and get your reps selling instead of administrating. Sounds good, right? Except for one small hitch… what if you’re the sales force? What if you don’t have reps, managers and executives to automate?A small business with only a few sales people (or only a single sales person) probably isn’t so bogged down that adapting a traditional CRM solution that reduces paperwork and greases the information wheels will really do anything for them. Most small businesses run lean – the sales department isn’t usually so disconnected from the logistics department that CRM solutions will make them more efficient – sales and logistics are probably sitting next to each other. They might even be the same person.
What a small business needs to do isn’t automate their non-existent sales force; they need to create something that functions as an automated sales force! There are many things that someone in sales has to do every day: nurture leads, send information, follow up on sales calls, and remind people of sales, promotions, deals… the list goes on. If a small business could automate those tasks, sending information, follow ups, and incentives automatically, the time consuming grunt work of selling would give them more of their time back. Time they could spend making deals. A small business doesn’t need software or solutions, it needs a robot.
That’s where CRM and small businesses disconnect – traditional CRM can make those processes more efficient, but it doesn’t do them for you.
