I strongly believe that right now is the best time in history to start a service-based business over something like an e-commerce business.
There are so many obstacles for e-commerce brands right now that include things such as:
Huge increases in full shipping container prices $2,000 -> $25,000.
Large increase in cost of ads on google, facebook, and instagram.
Long shipping delays from overseas.
Right now there is so much pent up demand for services in every industry you can think of, whether it be pool cleaning, plumbers, power washing, pest control, movers, etc.
This is especially true in cities where many individuals have moved to recently such as parts of Florida, Texas, and Tennesse.
It is shocking to hear some of the lead times for many of there service based businesses when you call them for a quote and an estimated time of arrival.
Many of these businesses have so much demand that they are able to charge whatever they want and still have back logs of up to weeks until someone can get to you.
I saw big opportunity in the Residential Firewood Delivery Space in my hometown. Most firewood guys were not raising any of their prices based on the what the market could comfortably handle.
Starting from Zero.
So how did I grow so fast in the first 90 days? I made sure I had the systems, software, and the supply in place.
$80,000 in residential deliveries is a decent amount of firewood. I made sure that I have the entire system down from the time someone clicked on one of our ads to the minute we showed up at their house for delivery.
Below is what the flow chart looks like:
Google Ads -> Phone call/order online -> Monday.com CRM -> Designated delivery time and money collected -> Driver assigned -> order completed and marked fulfilled.
How we did it: Ads + Referrals + word of mouth = $80,000 month (by the way we only spent $3,000 in ads that month).
We also were diligent to collect every bit of data from our customers that we could. By the end of the winter season. we had over 800 customers information that we can readily market to month after month.
This business is somewhat seasonal in nature, but we realized it doesn’t have to be. By getting peoples email addresses we are able to now incentivize purchases throughout the year during the off season at a better price, so that we can alleviate some of the fulfillment during peak season.
This will allow us to capture more customers who call in during peak season and provide them with a faster service time as well.
All in all, the secret is in getting the customer data. The data allows you to communicate with your customers and get order after order. You can also use your list to ask for reviews, referrals, and spreading the word.
We were able to get 75, 5-star reviews and dozens of referrals within the span of 3 months. This propelled us naturally on google in terms of our ranking. We now do better than firewood companies that have been around for over a decade.
Please feel free to leave me any questions or comments on this article.
CRMS are crucial for businesses of all shapes and sizes. A CRM helps you find new customers, win their business, and keep them happy by organizing customer and prospect information in a way that helps you build stronger relationships with them and grow your business faster.
Businesses that choose not to use a CRM or simply push off using one can suffer from a lack of efficiency and increased profitability.
When your business is financially ready to use a CRM you need to jump on board with one ASAP so that you can start to benefit from day one.
CRMs come in all shapes and sizes, so the best way to find the CRM that’s right for your business is by doing your research.
Here is a list of the best 15 CRMs that could be perfect for your business!
1) Monday.com CRM: is ideal for small businesses that want to manage and track their leads. It’s also great for businesses who want to collaborate with their team on projects in real-time.
Monday CRM is cloud-based, so it’s easy to access from anywhere. It also integrates with other popular applications, such as Google Apps and Salesforce.com.
***Monday.com is our pick (and what we are currently using)****
2) Zoho CRM: One of the least expensive CRMs on the market today, if you’re looking for a CRM to use as your very basic contact management tool, this might be a good choice.
It’s also a good choice for companies that want a CRM but don’t have or need much in way of customer relationship management features – think just simple lead tracking and pipeline analysis.
3) Pipedrive CRM: Manage leads as your business grows, jump on deals at the right time and nurture long-term relationships.
Pipedrive’s CRM for small businesses gives you back valuable time by centralizing multi-channel data and automating tedious processes.
4) HubSpot CRM: HubSpot CRM is part CRM, part marketing campaign management tool. It can help you keep track of customers as well as leads, but the CRM side of things doesn’t offer all of the bells and whistles found in other CRMs on this list.
For example, it can’t track deals or tasks, so you’ll have to look elsewhere if those are important to you.
5) Woopra: This CRM is best suited for users who want an app for analytics more than anything.
It’ll give you detailed reports on who your leads are, how they interact with your website, and what pages they visit most – but it won’t help you keep track of customer service issues or organize customer data.
6) Batchbook CRM: Batchbook CRM is an easy-to-use CRM for small businesses that want to get rid of their spreadsheets once and for all.
The downside? The CRM features in Batchbook might not be robust enough to make this CRM a good fit for larger businesses, so you will have to make a switch down the road.
7) Highrise CRM: Highrise CRMs come in two flavors – one is affordable, while the other costs are quite a bit more (but comes with some major CRM features like activity-based sales reports and customer satisfaction surveys).
Both CRMs come with a slew of CRM features, making this CRM great for companies managing large amounts of clients.
8) Zendesk: If you run an e-commerce site or any type of online business that deals with customers, chances are good that your company will be using at least one app within the Zendesk family.
The CRM, which can help your small business keep track of customers both on and offline, is quite possibly one of the simplest CRMs to use on this list; if you’re looking for a CRM but don’t have time to become an expert in complicated software, give Zendesk CRM a try.
9) Fresh Sales: Freshsales (formerly Freshworks CRM) is a full-fledged sales force automation solution for sales teams, making it easy to track pipelines and manage individual accounts.
Freshsales supports up to 5,000 users so you won’t need to worry about another solution for quite some time.
Whats neat about fresh sales is that it uses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to help users do more with fewer internal resources.
The CRM also facilitates easy tracking of deal progress throughout the pipeline. Simply by dragging and dropping, users can move a lead stage from new through to contacted and qualified, for instance.
10) Right Now: This highly customizable CRM can help you manage your contacts, automate tasks, and gain insights into what works best when building relationships with customers.
It also comes in three different price options depending on what features you most.
11) Marketo CRM: Marketo may be a CRM, but it’s also an award-winning marketing automation platform.
Similar to the HubSpot CRM, the features in this CRM might not be enough to help you organize your customer interactions – think things like lead generation and customer service.
However, it can keep track of all of your contacts while you focus on building your business.
12) Insightly: A no-nonsense CRM for small businesses that want to get rid of their spreadsheets once and for all, Insightly is affordable while boasting several CRM features including activity feeds that help you manage to up-sell campaigns.
The downside? It doesn’t have enough CRM features to serve larger businesses well.
13) Sugar CRM: Sugar CRMs’ simplicity makes it perfect for small businesses with limited tech skills. If you’re willing to pay $25 per user per month (or $150 per user annually), you’ll get quite a few CRM features with this CRM (including sales forecasting and campaign management).
Sugar is easy to use and won’t cost an arm and a leg (depending on which plan you go with).
But like Zoho CRM, it’s easy to use but lacks some CRM features -– things like sales forecasting and customer service automation — that might make this CRM a better fit for larger businesses.
14) Nimble: Nimble CRM is one of the most affordable CRMs on this list; plus, it comes with some basic CRM features like lead scoring and social media integration.
It’s great for small businesses looking to organize their customer interactions using an intuitive web app.
15) Sales Force: One of the most popular CRMs on the market today, Salesforce can connect to other apps like Google Analytics or QuickBooks Online to give small companies an enterprise-level toolset without having to shell out big bucks.
The downside?
It’s a pretty complicated CRM, so not the best option for companies that don’t have a dedicated CRM expert to run it.
Conclusion:
CRMs are essential tools for businesses of all sizes. They help you find new customers, keep track of customer interactions and data, and automate tasks to make your life easier.
CRMs come in all shapes and sizes so it’s important to do your research before deciding which CRM is the best fit for your business. In this article, we’ve outlined the 15 CRMs that will be perfect for any small business!
Look, Starting and growing a small business is hard enough as is.
You don’t need to add any additional layers of stress in your life by not systematizing and organizing all your customers, sales, and interactions in one place.
If you want to get serious about your company’s future and growth, it’s time to throw away the note pads with customer’s phone numbers you can hardly read and the outdated paper invoices and folders.
You know who you are! I’m talking to the guy who has all his receipts, customer phone numbers, and invoices thrown on the dashboard of the truck.
You basically look like a homeless person sleeping in your car – not a good look. Let’s change that!
You need to understand that the list of simplicity that using a CRM affords you is a long one, and very valuable.
So what exactly is a CRM? A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is an automated system used to manage all aspects of the relationship with a customer.
CRMs are generally designed to help track, organize and analyze all interactions between an organization and its customers.
CRMs provide businesses with detailed information about their customers’ history so they can personalize future messages, target promotions, and design customized products.
Many CRMs also include software that helps you recognize which customers are most profitable, how loyal your best customers are, which marketing or advertising campaigns produce results, whether or not your employees follow up consistently with every customer — plus lots more.
There’s no doubt that CRMs can save business owners valuable time by keeping them organized and up-to-date on a company’s sales activity and customer demands.
CRMs also save money by helping to identify and track the best customers, rewarding them with speedy service and profitable deals. CRMs are extremely effective tools for small businesses as well as large corporations.
CRM software provides you with a central place to manage your contacts, schedule appointments, make notes about follow-up activities, share files, and even send email or text messages directly from the CRM.
Most CRM software has calendars that let you view all of your meetings, deadlines, and tasks in one place so you can easily prioritize what needs your attention right now.
Not sure where to start?
First, you need to understand that there are many CRM’s out there in the marketplace that serve all different types/sizes of clients.
If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur doing between $0-$1,000,000 in revenue. Monday.com could be your best bet – so read on.
Monday.com CRM
Monday.com takes just minutes to get going!
The image above is an actual shot from our own CRM. We have removed certain columns for customer’s privacy as well as a few other key metrics.
This is fully customizable, and it’s as easy to use as a spreadsheet!
If you are looking for a CRM that will grow with you & your team, Monday.com has the perfect CRM package for your business.
They understand that every company is different so they built their CRM with customization in mind.
The best part is, you do not need to have any programmers or developers in your back pocket to build this out for you or make changes.
Monday.com CRM is ideal for small businesses that want to manage and track their leads. It’s also great for businesses who want to collaborate with their team on projects in real-time.
Monday CRM is cloud-based, so it’s easy to access from anywhere. It also integrates with other popular applications, such as Google Apps and Salesforce.com.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with cloud-based solutions. Here is a run-down for you, as it is important to understand.
Cloud-based technology refers to the ability to access and use information or applications over the Internet. This means that instead of having software installed on your computer, you can access it, or store it, on a remote server.
Examples of this technology include consumer services such as Dropbox, Google Docs, and Microsoft Office 365.
You can easily build workflows by integrating Monday with your favorite apps like Slack or Google Drive. Monday also has integrations with Gmail, Salesforce, Quickbooks Online, Outlook & more.
If you are looking for a CRM solution that was made specifically for teamwork inside of sales teams and other orgs within your company, then this is the CRM you should be looking into.
They also provide a mobile app, so you can access your information on the go. Finally, Monday has a built-in reporting feature to help you analyze data and make informed decisions for your business.
This part is actually my favorite part about the service. Having access to the mobile app saved us many times over by being able to do quick customer look-ups on the road, re-routing our drivers at a moment’s notice, and double-checking if order payments were complete.
User Interface/User Experience.
The Monday.com user interface is intuitive and easy to use, as well as visually pleasing with simple navigation, that enables users to easily see existing projects or new tasks.
One of the features that I liked most was the communication log which makes it convenient for businesses that have more than one person handling communication.
Communication Updates are easy and efficient.
Oftentimes, tasks can be duplicated which can lead to several issues along the way. This is especially true for sales leads that are coming in.
On multiple occasions, there can be double communication to clients on delivery times or order confirmations.
Even worse, one rep could be telling a client one price, and later a second rep could be reaching out saying a separate price. This is common with service-based business transactions.
It also stops more than one rep “working” an account, to avoid further confusion and potential issues with crediting a certain rep to a sale. This is due to all conversations and data being time-stamped within the app.
In addition, you are able to see a full communication history that the team members are having by double-checking their conversations that are compiled in a single thread.
That way, you are able to provide more efficient feedback and correctly prioritize requests from clients based on the overall conversation.
What is the Price Range?
Monday.com pricing depends on many factors.
To start out, they do have free plans for small businesses. The service is easy to use and can be customized to fit the needs of any business.
The free plan includes all of the features of the paid plans, so businesses can get started quickly and easily without having to worry about finances.
The pricing of monday.com is going to depend on the company size since they base the amount you pay on the number of seats your company needs.
As you can see below in the photo each price is based per seat. Most small businesses have between 1-10 employees.
One thing to mention. The smallest amount of seats you can have is 3, even if you don’t have 3 employees.
Depending on that you are looking at between $24-$80/month depending on your team size. I can’t begin to tell you how worth it this is for you to utilize.
Monday.com has worked great for our small business and it can for you too!
Happy Hunting!
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