Book

3 of 4

HOW A CRM
SOLUTION HELPS
SMALL BUSINESSES
PART OF THE CRM SUCCESS SERIES
Introduction
LEARNING ABOUT CRM
Technology has changed the game for small businesses.
Where department size was once an advantage, it can now
be a hindrance. Where large, established infrastructures
used to mean stability, they can now mean reduced agility
and flexibility. For decades, being “the little guy” has been a
disadvantage, but not anymore.

The right technology can turn an SMB from a niche player in

an industry to a major threat to established enterprise players.
Organizing, supporting, and enabling a small business with
a customer relationship management (CRM) solution like
Salesforce can help that SMB punch well above its weight and Table of Contents
harness the selling power previously reserved for big business.
03 Get To Know Your
This e-book will take a look at the specifics of what a CRM Customers
solution can do for your small business, including:

• How it helps you get to know your customers 06 Communicate At A

• How it enables you communicate at a massive scale Massive Scale
• How it can increase your company’s productivity
• How it can give your company big business power
09 Increase Productivity
Let’s take a look at how a CRM solution can help your small
business. 11 Big Business Power

13 Conclusion
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Chapter 1

GET TO KNOW
YOUR CUSTOMERS
The expectations of sales leads have never
been higher. With more data available than
ever before, your leads expect you to know
exactly who they are and tailor your sales
pitch to their specific needs and pain points.
Generic sales pitches or manipulative sales
tactics no longer cut it and only serve to drive
leads away. Today’s sales reps really need
to know their leads, and a CRM solution like
Salesforce can help.

Contact Management
CRM lets you do much better than a name,
address, and phone number. It allows you to
gain insights from conversations on social
media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and
YouTube, giving you the complete picture.
The tool even monitors customer interactions,
internal account discussions, and account
histories in one place. So if a customer calls, Today’s sales reps really
any employee with access can catch up on need to know their leads,
relevant details in no time. and a CRM solution like
Salesforce can help.

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Smarter Data Task & Event Monitoring
In an age of immediate solutions and readily available If a customer makes a request, whether it be for a quote
information, customers expect you to understand their business or a phone call, a CRM solution gives you the power to
needs better than they do. This means you need data that automatically assign the task to another staff member, while
doesn’t just cover the basics, but provides actionable intelligence leaving specifics on the account. This means everyone working
that can be accessed anywhere, at any time. Data.com is the with that customer knows exactly what is going on at all times.
sales tool of choice for getting the data you need on every Business owners can also monitor their own calls, meetings,
account, enabling you to find the right prospects, make the right and deadlines so they don’t miss any opportunities.
pitch, and to close the sale. Data.com Duplicate Management
will immediately improve the quality of your Salesforce data and
the accuracy of your selling with real-time duplicate alerts in the
Salesforce1 mobile app and Salesforce desktop.

“
Customers expect you to
understand their business needs
better than they do.

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 “Trunk Club runs on Salesforce.
It just works. Smoothly.”
–Brian Spaly, CEO, Trunk Club

Customer Spotlight:

Trunk Club
Trunk Club is looking to disrupt an
industry, and to do that they needed
technology that would allow them to
scale their business effortlessly. From the
one-to-one interactions that customers
have with their stylists to the real-time
response of their customer service
agents, Salesforce was the perfect
solution to scale the service and personal
touch that Trunk Club customers love.

Watch the film ›

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Chapter 2

COMMUNICATE AT
A MASSIVE SCALE
Despite all the advancements in technology,
sales success is still dependent on one thing:
communication. However, with more channels
and customer touchpoints than ever before,
sales professionals need to have the right
tools to communicate at the scale required
to be successful. Sales reps must be able to
respond to dozens, if not hundreds, of emails
each day, keep up with emerging channels
like social media, and nurture leads that aren’t
yet ready to buy. While this is no easy task, a
CRM solution like Salesforce makes it easy.

Email Integration
Email is one of the most powerful
communication tools available today and
continues to be the workhorse of nearly
every sales organization. A CRM solution
Despite all the
can integrate directly with email clients like advancements in
Outlook and Gmail, so sales reps don’t need technology, sales success
to interrupt their workflow to send or read
is still dependent on one
email. They can also easily track any email
thing: communication.

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conversation with any customer, a particular lead and prove
and share those emails with the invaluable when tailoring a
right employees. sales pitch.

Email Templates Lead Nurturing

To reach customers in a With easy-to-build lead
memorable way, emails must be nurturing campaigns, you
consistent and compelling. CRM can also give each of your
email features allow members salespeople the ability to run
of your sales and marketing their own micro-campaigns
teams to create email templates to engage and nurture their
on an as ­needed basis, so you leads on the fly, improving
can target customers in a more response time, increasing
personalized way and even get personalization, and
follow-up reminders. enhancing the capabilities of
your sales team. Designed to
send information only after a
Social Media
certain time period passes or a
Monitoring particular action is taken, lead
By integrating with social media nurturing campaigns can allow
platforms like Facebook, Twitter, a sales rep to educate leads at
and LinkedIn, sales professionals a nearly infinite scale.
can also get a more detailed
picture of who their sales leads
are and what interests them.
Information posted on social
media can give insight into the
struggles and pain points of

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Take an
interactive
guided tour.
Learn how a sales manager
and sales rep use Salesforce
to manage their day. This
interactive tour guides you
through the different capabilities
of Salesforce. Experience the
world’s #1 CRM app today.

Learn more ›
Chapter 3

INCREASE
PRODUCTIVITY
Small businesses gain a competitive advantage
by working just a little bit harder than their larger
competitors. The underdog mentality and drive to create
something new means small business sales teams are
constantly pushing themselves to reach the highest
levels of productivity.

CRM solutions are designed to enhance a team’s

productivity and make all of that hard work pay
dividends. By simplifying lead management, improving
territory management, and providing a central hub for
all your sales tools, a CRM solution can turn any small
business into a well-oiled machine.

Simplified Lead Management

When marketing and sales are both generating leads,
companies need to develop workflows to manage the
CRM solutions are
diverse new influx of sales opportunities. Without a
system in place to manage all these leads, a sales team
designed to enhance a
can be thrown into chaos. team’s productivity and
make all of that hard
This is where a CRM solution like Salesforce can help.
work pay dividends.
With marketing automation technology to handle much
of the organizational grunt work, and organizational tools
to keep everything neat and orderly, a company can

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harness its inflow of leads to start driving with no involvement from IT. Sales teams
business results. can now optimize their sales coverage
on the fly, in a matter of minutes,
Before a lead even makes it to a not months. A more flexible model
salesperson, marketing automation means more accurate forecasting, less
tools like Pardot can automatically take ambiguity, and greater responsiveness to
care of most of the administrative work. issues.
Leads can be automatically scored and
graded by how well they fit your ideal All Tools in One Place
lead profile. Bad leads can be added
There is no shortage of tools for sales
to lead-nurturing journeys, while good
reps to use these days. New products
leads can be routed to the appropriate
are springing up around common
salesperson based on location, industry,
pain points every day. But all of these
or business type.
solutions can fracture our attention
and silo our data in a way that can be
Territory Management both time-consuming and ineffective
Despite being commonplace across — especially at small and growing
most companies and industries, territory businesses, where time is precious.
models are notoriously hard to set up,
execute, and maintain. CRM solutions CRM solutions serve as a central hub
like Salesforce are changing that with for all of your essential tools and data.
territory management systems. Sales Everything you need to win a deal,
teams no longer need to involve the IT onboard a new client, and report on
department to create territory models or your performance is all accessible in one
struggle with the ambiguity of assigning interface. The Salesforce AppExchange
and working clients. also allows you to integrate your
must-have third party tools as well,
Involving IT in the setup process of reducing the time you spend switching
territory models effectively excludes the among different tools and making your
teams that will actually make the most data more accessible and easier to
use of the models. Salesforce allows understand.
sales teams to set up their own system
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Chapter 4

BIG BUSINESS
POWER
Many small businesses run into the same
obstacle at some point in their lifetime: They
have a great product or service, but they
don’t know how to grow their business to the
next level. How do you increase revenue and
win rates? How do you grow your pipeline
while keeping costs under control?

CRM solutions can help jumpstart business

growth. CRMs streamline operations, allowing
you to increase your win rates, grow your
pipeline, and decrease your costs.

Increase Your Win Rates

In nearly every industry, there is more
competition than ever before. This means Many small businesses run
it’s harder than ever to win a competitive
deal. Closing a deal comes down to who
into the same obstacle at
is better organized, better prepared, and some point in their lifetime:
better informed. A CRM solution aligns your They have a great product
processes so you can sell with the poise and or service, but they don’t
efficiency of a Fortune 500 company.
know how to grow their
business

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CRM solutions were designed to pipeline, and exactly where they
make closing a deal as easy as are in the sales cycle to accurately
possible. Leads are automatically assess performance and forecast
routed as they come in, complete out your quarters. Salesforce
with contact information, account allows you to organize all of your
activity, and relevant company leads, get an accurate view of
information. Salesforce users your pipeline, and better forecast
immediately have an arsenal of your deals.
information to start moving a
lead to close. Comprehensive Decrease Your Costs
performance metrics make
Bootstrapping and staying lean
understanding what’s working
allow small businesses to maintain
(and what’s not) easier than ever.
a competitive advantage over
In addition, the Salesforce1 Mobile
larger players. Salesforce helps
App makes it possible to sell from
keep hardware and personnel
anywhere, allowing salespeople to
expenses low, improves support
be ultra-responsive. Every aspect
while shortening down times, and
of Salesforce has been designed to
decreases the risk and difficulty of
help users win deals.
scaling up your sales organization.

Grow Your Pipeline

Keeping track of leads on a
spreadsheet just doesn’t cut it
anymore. Companies can no
longer afford to have their pipeline
be a mystery. You need to know
exactly how many leads are in your

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Conclusion
Punch Above Your Weight
It’s a brave new world for small businesses. Agility and flexibility
have become major business assets, allowing SMBs to thrive
against even the biggest competitors. Salesforce helps push this
advantage even further.

Grow your business by increasing close rates and improving

pipeline. Enhance productivity with collaboration and
customization. Drive innovation and scale quickly with industry
leading products. SMBs already have an advantage over larger
competitors. With Salesforce, the possibilities are endless.

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SALES SOLUTIONS
THAT WILL MAKE
YOUR BUSINESS
MORE PRODUCTIVE
If you want to grow your sales and establish a
transparent sales process, you need an easy-to-use
Customer Relationship Managment system. Salesforce
allows you to store customer and prospect contact
information, accounts, leads, and sales opportunities in
one central location.
The information provided in this e-book is strictly for
the convenience of our customers and is for general

32% Improvement in informational purposes only. Publication by salesforce.

win rate. com does not constitute an endorsement. Salesforce.com
does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of any
information, text, graphics, links or other items contained

Learn more › 40% Increased sales

productivity.
within this e-book. Salesforce.com does not guarantee
you will achieve any specific results if you follow any
advice in the e-book. It may be advisable for you to
consult with a professional such as a lawyer, accountant,

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revenue.
architect, business advisor or professional engineer to get
specific advice that applies to your specific situation.

© 2014 Salesforce.com. All rights reserved.

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