Why Contact Management Software is Important for Small Business

Within five years, over fifty percent of all newly founded small businesses have gone belly up, and most of those who remain are only barely doing so.

Year after year, they limp along, making just enough of a margin to remain in business, but never managing to produce enough capital to strengthen, improve, or grow to allow them to progress to the next stage. But there are also new small businesses, of course, which seem to be super-charged. This is where the contact management software comes in.

Managing your contacts in the modern world

To begin with, when we run a business, we make many contacts. They may start with one or two people working in a home office, garage, kitchen, or even a local coffee shop, but the next thing you know is that dozens or even hundreds of people are employed, and their offices or goods are everywhere.

How do we manage the ever-growing database of information? The answer lies in a cloud-based contact management software.

• What does the difference make?
• Why are individual small companies taking off while others are languishing or dying?

Contact management needs to scale

This is a huge question, and there are plenty of small business gurus who sell all kinds of answers and make a lot of money. With little more than the Contacts function on their smartphone and the In Box of their email server, it is surprising how many small business operators try to manage their contacts with customers, suppliers, sub-contractors, team members, and more.

Some are trying to get by with nothing more than a wallet full of business cards they have gathered and a good book of the day/date that is old fashioned. If you are blessed with an excellent memory, this form of "system" might be enough to suffice and keep a business afloat barely.

Small Businesses can be tricky to sustain. Contact Management Software is an efficient tool that most of these businesses should familiarise themselves with the benefits. The challenges and risks an entrepreneur endures to set up a small business are uncanny; such contact management software can help them greatly.

It is insufficient for any organisation that wants to expand and prosper. Many office suites come with a few standard, often pre-installed, contact management tools. At the same time, a few contact management fundamentals are still included in most email systems.

• Should small businesses use contact management software?
• But for a small company, are these routine default systems adequate?

They typically do not. They have some marginal utility for monitoring names and addresses, but it is troublesome that there is no integration with other systems. This can be resolved with a cloud-based contact management software.

These are only a few of the kinds of issues facing a small business operator who wants to get by without an appropriate system of contact management. And it is easy to see how a small company can be severely hobbled by these kinds of problems. They result in missed opportunities to generate new customers, lost opportunities for current customers to sell, and enormous time and resource drain.

When you have registered all of the most important types of information about your business contacts, you need to be able to access and intelligently use that information easily. By allowing you to group data according to important categories and also to search for that information using various filters, and efficient contact management software makes this simple.

The advantages of contact management software

This is where small companies can begin to see the advantages of a first-class cloud-based contact management software. For example, it is easy to tailor your attempts at cross-selling or up-selling as well as target promotional content if you can group all of the customers who bought a particular product.

The advantages of clear grouping and filtered browsing, however, are not limited to working with clients. They often refer to working with manufacturers, subcontractors, and the like. For instance, suppose that your company has a printing project that it needs to complete. A well-designed contact management system would allow you to pull together all the printing businesses you have done business with to review your performance notes and cost records.

The misunderstandings of contact management software

Among many small business owners, there is a misunderstanding that contact management software is only acceptable for large corporations. They claim that small businesses do not need software for contact management since they have a small database that can be easily stored and handled on spreadsheets. You do need some contact management system, however, to develop and scale a business.

They are under the impression that as they scale up at a later stage, they do not need to use one at this point and can buy one. It can't be further away from reality. You need a contact management system to develop any company successfully. A small business has the greatest need to invest in contact management software. As a small business owner, you would be aware of the statistics of struggling firms.

Storing sensitive data safely and securely

A cloud-based contact management software helps you to store key details about your customers. Typically, these are their contact information (name, address, phone number and email address), correspondence, payments and customer experiences. All this is preserved in one location. It may also maintain a record of each activity; such as appointments booked/ reschedules, purchases, invoices, and any staff member notes.

Building relationships with customers

CRMS (Customer Relationship Management Software) is a more advanced, thorough framework designed to handle more prolonged and more complicated sales periods. For medium-sized and company clients, in particular.

It performs all contact management software duties but also has sophisticated sales and marketing roles. Getting a CRM makes it easier to nurture leads, monitor customer engagement and foster a customer relationship. The management of sales funnels, sales cycles, all these Customer Relationship Management software.

Managing your sales cycle

The contact management software handles the entire sales cycle processes, such as updating the lead status, keeping a record of planned meetings, organised demo, follow-up messages, and customer reviews. CRM plays an essential role in smoothly operating sales and producing leads.

Easy information organising

A contact management platform automatically organises information in a clear field, and no logistical activity needs to be thought about by the staff. When the company expands, it can help to attract more clients by getting automated processes in place.

Get the support you need

This will help to deliver exceptional customer support and make upsells and cross-sells by better knowing the needs of the client. By freeing up more time for workers to bring in new clients and support current clients, the organisation would raise revenues.

Tell us your story

Would you like to write for nichemarket just like Manoj has? Find out how to submit a guest post and when you're ready, you can contact us.

Contact us

If you would like us to improve the advertising for your site or want to know more about digital marketing for your business, then don’t be shy we’re happy to assist. Simply contact us

Are you looking to promote your business?

South African Business owners can create your free business listing on nichemarket. The more information you provide about your business, the easier it will be for your customers to find you online. Registering with nichemarket is easy; all you will need to do is head over to our sign up form and follow the instructions.

If you require a more detailed guide on how to create your profile or your listing, then we highly recommend you check out the following articles. 

• How to create a nichemarketer profile 
• How to create a nichemarket business listing 

Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, why not check out the following posts on CRM.

• Top 5 CRM Trends of 2021
• 5 Benefits Of Using CRM For Your Business
• 5 Reasons CRM Is The Key To The Most Effective Digital Strategy
• 10 Free Marketing Automation Tools For Small Businesses
• How Large Corporates Can Use Instant Message Marketing

Tags: CRM, Guest Post