Salesforce is widely-regarded as one of the preferred CRM solutions for new companies and small businesses with its simple out-of-the-box solution, broad array of functionalities, and great reputation in the industry.

However, committing to a CRM system is a significant step for any developing business, and it’s critical to assess why you need to make this investment and what you’ll gain from it. It combines sales and customer service products into one easy-to-use app to help you build stronger customer relationships.

Get your team up and running in minutes and offer them the tools they need to communicate more effectively from anywhere.

Why Salesforce?

Customer expectations are rapidly rising, and your startup must keep up to stay afloat. It’s critical to leverage solutions that integrate client data under one umbrella to evaluate interest in your brand and provide greater customer service. Your best bet is Salesforce, the world’s most popular customer relationship management platform.

It automates all customer contacts and sales processes, as well as provides analytics and other benefits. When you use Salesforce, you can focus on the things that matter most to a new business: building customer loyalty, expanding your market presence, and fine-tuning your product or service so that it can grow more quickly.

Why do startups require customer relationship management software?

Simply because the system allows companies to store and manage information about their customers and prospects. Beyond that, many businesses may use CRM in a variety of ways, each concentrating on a distinct end objective. This could be anything from managing conversations and leads to figuring out what your customer will do next.

Choose the best option for you.

A quick-start solution is designed to provide everything a business requires—no more, no less. It will be able to handle both the technical and operational aspects of deploying Salesforce CRM because it facilitates running a small business.

Define your unique objectives.

Salesforce CRM professionals will assist you in defining your Salesforce roadmap by providing a technical consultation and advising on which features and capabilities will be most beneficial to your company. The software is then customized to fit your business model, so you can start reaping the benefits of customer relationship management in just a few days.

Save time and resources.

Startups are almost certainly dealing with the issue of “so little time, so much to do.” Although it may appear to be a waste of money to put money into something that won’t pay off right now, a CRM will ultimately help your team work more efficiently and minimize mistakes that could be costly to your business. Saving time is extremely important to a startup, and it is one of the most significant returns a company can achieve.

Develop into a customer-centric business.

Whatever your company offers, a thorough understanding of your customers is critical to success. A successful startup firm depends on your ability to manage new and current partnerships. A strong CRM should serve as a tool for better understanding and prioritizing your customers.

For startups and small businesses, having a customer-centric approach is very vital. At this point, an organization’s vulnerability to unfavorable client experiences hurting their business is greatest at this point. It’s also the time when you’re still proving yourself and earning your audience’s trust.

This implies that your customer experience must be excellent. This task is made significantly easier by having complete control over the data and interactions. Tasks like mapping each point of contact and organizing your time and marketing efforts may be made a lot easier with the right CRM software.

Your requirements alter as you progress from prototype to completion. Keep moving with products that let you focus on your customers while also letting you grow.

Scalability

A CRM platform can aid with scalability, which is a major concern for many firms. According to Salesforce, 70 percent of businesses struggle with scalability, which leads to a shaky foundation. Any company’s incapacity to develop will always be negative.

Even if you work for a small business with few resources, this should never be obvious to your consumers. Even if you’re exhausted, you must maintain constant communication. As your customer base grows, you may find it difficult to provide larger groups the attention they need.

This is when technology can come to your rescue. With limited resources, creating a single communication hub that collects all client touchpoints, from sales transactions to email communication, can help you expand. A good platform will also let you set up automated interactions and send reminders, which will help you keep leads while also growing new ones. This will help you keep leads while also growing new ones.

With the best analytics tool, you can increase and measure your success.

With Tableau, you can improve your business by gaining more insights, making faster decisions, and gaining a competitive advantage. Tableau is a visual analytics software that is revolutionizing the way businesses use data. Connect and view your data in minutes, and use data to enhance your team. A free trial is available to startups.

Build a solid culture and give back to the community.

The 1-1-1 model for startups is called “Pledge 1 percent.” It’s a simple way to give back to your community by leveraging a portion of your future prosperity. It’s a tiny step now that could have a significant influence tomorrow.

What makes Salesforce unique?

Salesforce is thriving in the public eye thanks to its corporate social responsibility and gender equality initiatives. Investing in a company that has demonstrated steady growth adds stability to your own operations. Its free online learning platform makes it very simple to learn about the software without having to devote a lot of time to it.

It’s simple to roll out across teams with no prior expertise with Salesforce or other CRMs thanks to the game-style learning. Furthermore, the top three reasons for deploying a Salesforce product, according to the latest Salesforce salary survey, are the capabilities on offer, shifting to the cloud, and a loss of faith in a prior customer relationship management system.

What are the best Salesforce products for small businesses?

You’ve decided that your expanding company needs to handle its customer data, but which Salesforce solutions are best for you? It’s difficult to know where to begin with such a diverse portfolio. Salesforce’s options are limitless because of its unconstrained capacity to scale and adapt.

Here are two excellent products that we believe will help a startup meet all of its needs:

Salesforce Service Cloud

A CRM isn’t always about sales. Salesforce may also provide a platform for tracking communication and managing service operations for startups that provide a service for their consumers. For a company that provides customer service, the customer experience is critical.

Having the capacity to customize customer service for each individual can help you improve your service in the long run. As linking remote and in-house personnel becomes easier, complaints falling through the cracks may become a thing of the past. The Communities feature is one of the Service Cloud’s attractions.

Communities assist in the creation of portals where customers may communicate issues with one another to address difficulties, while your team monitors and controls the topic. This could save you a lot of time and help you establish your brand’s credibility, making you even more accessible.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

This is utilized to create a transparent sales process for the entire team. The Sales Cloud is a good place to start, and it can be grown to match the demands of a growing company. This can help you track prospects, manage existing dialogues with your customer base, and handle overall communication in the future and past thanks to a variety of capabilities, like Einstein.

Salesforce claims that the Sales Cloud improves win rates by 32% for its customers. Furthermore, the Sales Cloud has been shown to enhance sales productivity by 40% and revenue by 32%. The out-of-the-box system has a basic three-tiered price structure.

Consider the costs of setting up and changing things when you’re planning, because these could lead to bigger costs in the beginning.

What can Salesforce CRM products help you with?

1. Case management, customer access across all channels, integration with legacy data systems, and more are some of the features of Service Cloud that can help a new company get off the ground quickly.
2. With sophisticated community software that creates engaging, self-service experiences, Experience Cloud enables you to provide excellent service.
3. The Sales Cloud enables you to automate administrative duties, better manage prospects, and quickly pivot go-to-market strategies.
4. You can automate the marketing pipeline and identify your top customer insights with Marketing Cloud and related products like Pardot, closing more deals and increasing ROI.

Bottom Line

There are plenty of Salesforce solutions available, and it’s worth looking through the company’s product and solution portfolio to see what you might be able to use both now and in the future. Being a tiny business doesn’t mean you have to act like one. When you invest in a strong CRM solution, you’ll be able to manage customer data like a big company as you grow.

Martin Gessner

Martin Gessner is the Founder of Focus on Force.

He has spent over 10 years working in various Salesforce roles including business analyst, project manager, consultant and solutions architect. Along the way he has earned twelve certifications, published "The Salesforce Career Playbook", and helps Salesforce professionals learn more about Salesforce, develop their career and prepare for certifications.