In the start-up world, it is extremely difficult to prioritize tasks and goals. And the challenges are even more arduous when resources (both time and money) are scarce. If you can relate to this, then surely you might be triple-checking your business strategies, looking to invest in some kind of system to help you out.
Some of our customers who are in a startup phase have taken a proactive approach to adopt a CRM early-on. One of them, owners of My Community Alert (MCAlert or MCA), have dedicated some of their time to explain why they felt that adopting a CRM early (even an entry-level version) was extremely important:
1-) Thousands of dollars can be saved in the long term
Dr. Laura Kozloski Hart, MCA’s Chief Operating Officer, explained that one of the primary reasons they chose to move forward with Salesforce.com in the business’ early stages was to be able to have all of their customer information in the same database right.
This approach was taken to potentially save them thousands of dollars in the future with data cleanup and data migration projects if they waited to adopt a CRM later in their lifecycle.
2-) More time can be spent on prospects and customers
As mentioned earlier in the article, time management is one of the most crucial challenges of a start-up. The management team constantly multi-tasks, and juggling different action items becomes the norm rather than the exception for all involved. Being able to use an activity management tool such as Salesforce.com’s Tasks and Events, enables members of the MCA team to take their to-do lists from notepad scribbles to the cloud.
This saves several internal checkpoint meetings to see which items are pending completion, have been completed, or are waiting on someone else to move forward.
Additionally, with Salesforce1 (available even at the entry-level versions of the CRM), customer and prospect information is literally at team members’ fingertips, even when they are on-the-go.
3-) Employees can have the accountability to keep track of follow ups
Building upon what was mentioned previously, implementing a CRM early in a business lifecycle not only helps team members manage their multi-tasking workload, but it also helps them prevent key action items from falling through the cracks. With alerts and notifications, pending task items will pop up as reminders for each user to follow up until it’s completed.
This feature will help MCA close more deals, and most importantly, build long-lasting customer relationships based on prompt follow ups and responsiveness—all of which strengthens the partnerships MCA wants to build as it grows.
4-) The organization increases its professionalism with Salesforce
As a growing company, one of the main projects MCA’s leadership is currently working on is building a professional and successful sales team. Early adoption of Salesforce.com as MyCommunityAlert’s CRM helps the organization provide professional sales tools that help attract professional salespeople and make MCA a more desirable place to work.
According to Dr. Kozloski Hart, “Being professional and providing high quality tools to salespeople can help balance the uncertainties of a start-up for prospective new hires.”
“But a CRM is expensive!”
Actually, you’d be surprised. Answer this question: Would a 10% increase in sales make you consider the investment? Would 20%? According to Sirius Decisions, a study showed that a strong organization would realize nearly 70% more revenue than an average organization, purely based on data quality.
Better still, CRM systems such as Salesforce.com are scalable, with an entry point of only $5/month per user. At that price, you get enough features to start organizing your company and making sure that your data (one of your most important assets) is organized right from the start.
As you continue to grow, you can simply upgrade your licenses to acquire greater functionalities. The important thing here is that your information and your database always remains in the same place, never having to worry about moving data around or importing it to a new system.
Starting Off Early
“We have reached out to FullOpp very early on to better understand how a CRM can work for our organization. They have saved us hours of online research to discover what options would work best for our company. In one simple meeting, they were able to understand our key processes and how we can use a CRM to build on what we are currently trying to accomplish, and helped us pave a roadmap to implementing and deploying a system that will be easy to adopt and help us gain the organization that we need to sustain our growth.” said Dr. Hart.
If you have any questions about MCA, addressing organizational challenges, or how to help build an ROI case for a Customer Relationship Management tool, please contact our team today!
About My Community Alert
MCA is a provider of emergency and/or informational notification systems for community associations, municipalities (including police departments), property management companies, and other groups. Association, property managers, municipal leaders, and others can use MCA to disseminate important notifications and updates via text messaging and email to community members not only in cases of an emergency but also everyday quality of life events. MCA is based in Wellington, FL, serving clients nationwide.
For more information please visit www.mcalert.net
About FullOpp, Inc.
FullOpp is a registered partner to Salesforce.com, providing customers with insights and services to help their organizations generate greater revenues with the use of Salesforce’s Customer Relationship Management tool, with services ranging from implementations, administration and training. FullOpp is based out of Fort Lauderdale, FL with clients in the United States and Brazil.
For more information please visit www.fullopp.com