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How CRM works for small businesses

We’ll explain just how this free CRM works, for small and medium-sized businesses, SMEs, self-employed workers, start-ups and the self-employed.

Key definitions

Contact database

The contact database consists of:

  • imported lists, usually of several hundred names of individuals or organizations to whom you wish to offer your products or services. These are starting or reserve lists.
  • Prospects you’re currently stuck on but want to contact again later.

Brochure

An individual or organization you’re targeting but not yet selling to. Your prospects are generally selected from your imported contact lists, and you target a certain number of them to contact. They can also be added individually, following opportunities, calls or referrals. Prospects can be prioritized into 1,2,3 according to their interest or stage in the sales process, what the Americans also call “leads”.

Customer

A customer is a prospect to whom you’ve succeeded in selling, you’ve turned him into a client. A lost customer becomes a prospect again, unless you decide to delete it.

Proposal in progress

List of customers to whom you have made a proposal. You need to make this your top priority, since you have time on your hands with this customer, and he can earn you money. An accepted or rejected proposal must be reclassified.

Contacts on hold

A contact on hold is a prospect or former customer whom you can no longer contact for one reason or another. You don’t want to do away with it, but wait a little until conditions become more favorable.

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Here’s how to use this small-business CRM.

Step 1: Add a customer or contact

To increase your sales, you need customers and you need to increase the number of customers. You can choose between adding individual customers or importing a list of contacts from an Excel file by clicking on the“New” button in the top right-hand corner of each software page. This is the first step for any small or medium-sized company wishing to automate its sales management and develop its business.

Step 2: Fill in the customer form

  1. Organization name
  2. Name of contact person (if there is more than one in the organization, you create several records)
  3. Phone
  4. Email
  5. Category: so you can classify your contacts according to the particularities of your business. Each profession has its own particularities, and we offer you the possibility of adapting easily to them, without modifying the software. Everything is flexible.
  6. Give your customer or prospect priority 1, 2 or 3
  7. Planning follow-up is key for a small or medium-sized company, and you have the following options:
    • No follow-up planned
    • Today
    • Tomorrow
    • Next week
    • January, February, etc.
    • Schedule for specific date

Step 3: Place the customer file in the right list

Here are the options:

  • Contact bank: for new contacts you can add to your prospects as needed
  • Prospects: contacts you are targeting to whom you are not yet selling.
  • Customers: former prospects to whom you have sold and with whom you are currently working
  • Current proposals: customers or prospects to whom you have made a proposal
  • Contacts on hold: customers/prospects you can’t reach now, but want to contact later.

Step 4: Call a customer

  1. Replace contact if necessary
    • Prospect to current proposal
    • Current proposal to customer
    • Customer prospect if lost
    • Customer prospect on hold
  1. Give your customer priority A, B or C, or your prospect priority 1, 2 or 3. You don’t have as many resources as large companies, but you can be smarter.
  2. Plan your follow-up
    • No follow-up planned
    • Today
    • Tomorrow
    • Next week
    • January, February, etc.
    • Schedule for specific date

Step 5: Follow up and take notes

  1. Click on the “Next” bookmark
  2. Follow-ups are listed in order of priority
  3. Late dates appear in red
  4. Your notes appear without having to go to the form
  5. Contact customer
    • Immediately from the table
    • Either by clicking on the customer file to take notes

Step 6: Always prioritize follow-ups on current proposals

  • Accepted or rejected proposals must be withdrawn and reclassified.
  • every time you open your CRM
  • Before even looking at your follow-ups :
  • Importance before urgency

How to prioritize your tasks to sell more

We’ve shown you how to work with our CRM, now here are the priorities you need to set yourself to be effective.

Prioritize your lists according to what they can bring you

  1. List of follow-ups to be carried out: you don’t need to create them, they’re automatically created when you set a follow-up date, and they’ll prioritize themselves according to the date. If you set a previous month to the one you’re in, then it will be the next year’s month. For example, if you’re in December and you put a follow-up in February, it will be February of the following year, of course. Same thing if you had put November, it would be next year’s.
  2. List your current proposals to prospects or customers: this is your priority because you’ve invested time in them and they can pay off quickly.
  3. List of your customers: they are your lifeblood
  4. List of prospects: those who will boost your sales
  5. Reserve list: the prospects you will be looking for when you have completed your prospect lists.
  6. Prospects for the future: the ones you’ve called up, that are blocking you, but that you don’t want to delete, because one day they may become interesting again. For example, your contact blocks you, but one day he’s going to leave his job or his company.

Prioritize your customers and prospects individually

Customers

  1. A customers: large 20/80 customers, the 20% who make up 80% of your sales. They’re your lifeblood, and you need to look after and defend them.
  2. B customers: customers with potential, because they work with your competitors
  3. C customers: customers to sort

Prospects 1,2,3

  1. In general: short sales cycle (1 to 3 contacts to sell)
    • Prospects 1: high potential, easy to get into
    • Prospects 2: high potential, difficult to get in
    • Prospects 3: easy to get into, small potential
  1. Cycle de vente long: priorisation par étape du processus de vente (certains disent « leads » en anglais car il y a eu contact avec le prospect)
    • Prospect 1: final stage of the sale
    • Prospect 2: intermediate sales stage
    • Prospect 3: Initial customer contacts

Write your scripts. Example of a call structure :

  1. Identify, greet and show satisfaction as if you were the only customer
  2. Identify yourself: name + company + specialization
  3. Selling appointment scheduling
  4. Situation: the market is currently very active in your sector
  5. Solution: I invite you to a 30-minute face-to-face or videoconference information session.
  6. Objective: to show you how you can protect yourself or benefit from the current situation
  7. Would you prefer this week or next week?

Schedule call slots

  1. Minimum time windows of 3 h
  2. Full days if you are a developer
  3. Different times of day for different customers
  4. Business: mornings, afternoons, 5 to 7 p.m.
  5. Individuals: mornings, afternoons, evenings, Saturdays
  6. No disturbance
  7. Do not accept disturbances
  8. 100% concentration is all you can think about
  9. Aim for 2 or 5 appointments before quitting (depending on the ease of the domain)

Call with a preference for

  1. Customers with proposals: these are your priority, because you’ve invested time in them, and they’re the ones who can earn you the quickest return. You should look at it as a priority every time you open your system to see if you need to relaunch a customer.
  2. Key follow-ups to be carried out, displayed according to date
  3. Customer calls. The priority between customers and prospects also depends on your role: if you’re a farmer, your customers come first; if you’re a hunter, your prospects come first.
  4. Prospect calls to continually develop your customer base and replace lost customers.

Your ongoing priorities at work

  1. Every morning, make it a priority to open your CRM and look at your current proposals and follow-ups, which are more important than the messages or e-mails you receive that represent emergencies. You need to prioritize importance, not urgency, and not get distracted by small requests, otherwise you’ll neglect your big customers and prospects, and the competition will take advantage.
  2. Hold real or virtual customer meetings
  3. Administrative work is reduced to virtually zero with this easy, intuitive CRM, so if you have to do it, do it outside your customers’ opening hours.
  4. Statistics: coming in the next Pro version.

Tracking your results, your dashboard

  1. Les chiffres clés des réalisations:
    • Sales for the period
    • The number of completed proposals to get an idea of the success rate of your proposals (closing rate).
  2. Le futur :
    • The number of proposals in progress
    • The number of appointments in your calendar

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