When talking about CRM, Salesforce must be the first thing that comes to your mind. If you look at the services, Salesforce provides only then you will get the idea of how enormous it is. In their plethora of services, they have CRM verticals for sales, service, marketing, commerce, sustainability, and safety. Additionally, they have other products like analytics, integration, slack, etc. Here, we are going to talk about Salesforce for small businesses particularly. Without further ado, let’s dive into the article.
3 Reasons Why Small Businesses Are Not Using a CRM Software
Before learning about Salesforce for small businesses, we would like to discuss reasons why small businesses still are not leveraging the advantages of a CRM. In a later section, we will show you how Salesforce counters these issues.
- High subscription cost: On an average cloud-CRM cost nearly $100 per user per month. A small business who thinks about thousands times before spending a dollar, how are they gonna spend so much on CRM. Instead of that, they prefer to use excel spreadsheets, emails, notes, or any other tool that can save them money.
- Steep learning curve: Costly employee training is one of the reasons small companies could not afford to deploy any advanced system. Most of the cloud-based platforms are built to fulfill the needs of large multinational companies, who have a budget for employee training.
- Businesses don’t feel the need: And there are some businesses that actually don’t feel the need of CRM. They prefer using the existing system and don’t want to migrate it. However, this reason costs them in the long term, but unfortunately, most small companies are avoiding CRM for this particular reason only.
What does Salesforce CRM have to offer to small businesses?
The Executive Vice President of Salesforce CRM Application, Mike Rosenbaum once said, “We’ve taken the full power of Salesforce and tailored it for the unique needs of small businesses.” Salesforce Essentials is the most affordable CRM plan. In this, you will get the following benefits.
- It is affordable to all: As per the latest Salesforce Essentials pricing, it will cost you $25 per user per month if billed annually. Small companies who have five or less employees can easily invest in this platform. Also, you don’t need to invest in other resources too. The CRM platform by Salesforce for small businesses is reasonable.
- The training is quick and free to users: Salesforce understood how small businesses owners were facing problems in learning the new and advanced functionalities of a CRM. To tackle this, they build an online learning environment called trailhead. Through this, users are able to learn the flow and features at an exponential rate.
- Customer experience is intuitive and interactive: Unlike other CRM service providers, Salesforce hasn’t cut down the features from their premium product. Instead, they genuinely understand the needs of small businesses and built a platform around them. And evidently, they have done a pretty good job.
- A powerful software for SMEs: At this price range, you will find various other alternatives that will promise to deliver even greater value. But let us tell you most of them are just gimmicks. The user experience and robustness you will get from Salesforce Essentials are incomparable. It introduces technologies like AI based predicting, Machine learning, and much more, which was only possible for big companies only.
- Advanced features: The best thing about using Salesforce is they didn’t notched down too many features. You will get some advanced functionalities like sales forecasting, lead management, social intelligence, and einstein AI recommendations. Getting hands on these advanced features with any other CRM solution is next to impossible. On top of that, you will get all of this in the entry level platform i.e. Essentials. In case, you chose to update then you will get even better features.
Pros of Salesforce
- A huge arsenal of business applications including CRM products means you can stick to the Salesforce ecosystem even if you are scaling.
- Using Salesforce, all departments within your company will be able to communicate better and this improves the overall customer experience.
- Salesforce focuses on small business CRM products and keeps developing new products too.
Cons of Salesforce
- Large enterprises with thousands of employees have to pay a huge amount of money to use Salesforce successfully.
- Though the Salesforce pricing model shows monthly pricing, you need to pay an annual amount upfront.
- Salesforce has not done a great job in providing immediate technical assistance.
The Bottom Line
Salesforce for small businesses is a great choice because they are new businesses looking for an affordable yet powerful solution. Small companies usually look for an all-in-one packaged solution and Salesforce Essential manages to deliver it to them. Another thing that small businesses want is scalability. If the software is able to grow with the company without wanting them to spend much then it becomes an ideal solution.
