You know how hectic things can get if you’re a small business owner. When you only have a few employees, everyone wears multiple hats. You handle everything from sales to marketing to customer service and beyond.
In the early days, with a handful of clients, it’s easy to organize things in a spreadsheet. But what happens when you start getting more customers? How do you keep track of everything? At some point, you’ll need to upgrade your systems if you want your business to scale successfully. That’s where sales software comes in.
In this article, we’ll explore what exactly sales software is. We’ll look at the key benefits it provides for growing small businesses, and how a platform like Townsquare Interactive’s business management platform can take your organization to the next level.
What is Sales Software?
Sales software is a solution that allows you to organize and manage your sales process in one centralized location. Everything from lead tracking and communications to deal stages and customer profiles can be digitized to give you better visibility and control.
Every time you get a new lead, whether it’s from a Google search, referral, or other channel, you need to follow up with that potential customer. There might be multiple touchpoints, like an initial call, estimate appointment, contract signing, etc.
Now multiply that by dozens of leads per week! Without a proper system, it gets challenging to keep up.
Sales software acts like a database to store all your essential lead and customer information digitally in one place. So, no more rummaging through paperwork or spreadsheets. You can instantly access what you need when you need it.
Sales Software vs. CRM Software
You may have heard people reference customer relationship management (CRM) tools. Sales software and CRM software are pretty similar. The main difference is that CRM encompasses more functionality beyond sales, like marketing automation, analytics, and customer service capabilities.
The Benefits of Small Business Sales Software
If your small business isn’t using CRM or sales software yet, you might be hesitant to change your current workflow. But trust us, you’d be missing out on some significant advantages that can impact your bottom line, like:
Central Access to Data
One of the biggest advantages of using sales software is that all your customer data is stored in one central location. Let’s say a potential customer emails your sales rep about getting a quote for a roof replacement. Your sales rep responds with a customized estimate and has a phone consultation to discuss project details. The prospect seems interested but wants some time to think it over and review a few more options first.
A week later, the customer called your office again with follow-up questions. But the sales rep who helped them initially isn’t available. Any member of your team can easily pick up that conversation, though. The details of the initial interaction are logged in the system for anyone to reference.
This centralized access makes your entire organization run more efficiently. With an integrated inbox, nothing falls through the cracks; your team always has context before engaging customers.
Drive More Sales
When you can clearly see all your active leads and opportunities lined up together, you can better prioritize and focus your team’s efforts on the deals most likely to close. Sales software lets you track exactly where each lead is within your sales process. So you can tell if they need more nurturing or are ready for a proposal.
These insights help you pursue suitable leads, ultimately guiding them down the funnel to close more deals.
Improve Customer Service
It’s been proven time and time again that providing excellent customer service is critical for business growth. In fact, 96% of customers say customer service is a crucial factor when deciding whether to be loyal to a brand.
With software centralizing customer interactions, anyone on your team can deliver personalized experiences. Your customers will appreciate not having to repeat themselves whenever they talk to someone new from your business. They will feel well taken care of and valued. And they’ll keep coming back for more.
Increase Customer Retention
While we’re on the topic of customer relations, the work doesn’t stop once a sale is made. Keeping track of customers post-purchase is another benefit to be had here. You can continue to nurture those relationships as long as you’d like. Sales software gives you visibility into customer activity to quickly identify opportunities for further engagement.
You can set tasks like:
- Send thank you email and customer satisfaction survey two weeks after project completion
- Call customers 90 days later to inform them of warranty details
- Offer 10% discount on future services for any referrals
These small but meaningful touchpoints make a big difference in retaining happy customers who give you more business.
Enhance Team Collaboration
When your sales, marketing, and customer service teams constantly play phone tag or schedule meetings just to align, valuable time and energy are wasted. Sales software eliminates those inefficient back-and-forths.
Now, your staff can seamlessly work together. They can share relevant information and collaborate on the best ways to attract customers.
How to Use Sales Software as a Small Business
Now that you understand the benefits of sales software let’s explore some of the specific features you can take advantage of. Townsquare Interactive’s CRM, for instance, offers a range of tools to help small businesses.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is a feature that allows you to rank your leads based on their likelihood to make a purchase. Using the rules you define, your software automatically calculates a score for each potential client. You instantly know who the hottest prospects are versus those that need more warming up.
Marketing Automation
Running multi-channel campaigns with email, social media, SMS, and more is highly complex to manage. Email/SMS marketing automation functionality helps streamline the process so you can create messaging sequences and trigger them automatically when certain conditions are met (like when a lead hits a specific score).
Analysis and Reporting
Making data-driven decisions is the best way to approach sales. With a software solution, you can compile all your metrics to efficiently run reports on things like:
- Lead conversion rates
- Average sale amounts
- Top-performing sales reps
- Lead sources driving revenue
These insights help you double down on what’s working well and course-correct where needed.
Customer Segmentation
Not all customers are the same. Being able to categorize them based on common attributes allows you to tailor messaging and offers specifically to different segments.
Townsquare Interactive’s Sales CRM for Small Businesses
Hopefully, you now understand the immense value that sales software delivers for streamlining processes and driving revenue. However, most solutions in the market cater more to enterprise-level corporations. Very few provide an accessible, easy-to-use system tailored to small and midsize businesses.
Townsquare Interactive offers an all-in-one business management platform that combines CRM, marketing, payments, and more. We serve industry SMBs like HVAC companies, lawyers, contractors, medical offices, and agencies.
With Townsquare, you get enterprise-level power and capabilities designed for your smaller, agile team. Everything is cloud-based, so you can access it from anywhere at any time—no new hardware or IT resources are required.
Don’t settle for piecing together disjointed solutions that slow you down. Bring all the tools you need into one seamless platform. Contact our team today to get started.