A Guide in Choosing the Right CRM for Growing Midsize Companies

If a company does well, it will eventually grow. But growth isn’t inevitable; in fact, growth is selective. It involves countless factors that go far beyond merely having good products and services. The economy’s condition at the time matters. The quality of the company’s staff matters. The vision of management matters. The willingness of the company to adjust to changing realities matters. The availability of cash/credit to fuel the growth matters.

It’s virtually impossible to cover every aspect of CRM for companies transitioning from a small to a midsize business. However, there are guidelines that will have value to you as you do this. Before you begin your search, keep in mind the far-reaching implications of the project you are about to embark on. When introducing new kinds of structured organization and procedures, the resulting cultural change is substantial — perhaps even greater than when growing from a midsize business into large enterprise.

The early days were hard work, but managing relationships with your customers was relatively simple. Your sales team was small, and you let them manage their day to day activities as they saw fit. They managed their own activities, and if you needed to know what they were working on, you simply talked about it, or reviewed a couple of emails or spreadsheets.

If your team needed answers, new products, flexible pricing or alternative packaging, they had a direct line to you or others who could respond quickly to customer needs and requests. You were small, agile and nimble. You moved more quickly than your competitors and earned business and grew your market share because of it. Most likely, your customers appreciated the response, cohesiveness and level of service they received from you and your organization.

But that growth has also brought new challenges that your organization hasn’t encountered before. You’re not quite as agile as you once were. You’ve probably expanded into new regions, opened new offices, hired more people, expanded your product or service offerings, and have a longer list of issues that you’re trying to solve internally, as well as for your customers and prospects.

What you’ve likely gained in revenues and profitability, you’ve likely lost in providing your customers and prospects with the same level of service and care that you were able to provide when you were just a few like-minded, hard-working individuals trying to build something big. So how do you continue to grow, while still providing the same (or better) customer experience that you did when you were a small business?

These are the things that we need to look for a CRM software:

1. Functional Silos

The job functions that were once performed by one or two people are now distributed across multiple functional groups with several people in each group. Each individual takes and performs his or her own sliver of the operational pie. The implication of this growth progression, as you may have learned, is that the potential for decisions to be made in a vacuum by each functional area has now increased. Accountability can be lost. Fingers can start to point. Marketing, sales and customer service aren’t quite on the same page anymore, and ultimately the customer suffers.

2. It should fit your needs

As your company grows, you also see a sprout of new needs arising. The best CRM will be the one that can eventually meld with whatever you throw at it. It should also be equipped with the best support team, when emergency arise, you can easily reach out – thus, reducing downtime for your business.

3. Topnotch technology

When choosing the software that you need, we must also check its features. We should never blindly choose one software over another, just because a sales person put you through it. It should provide you the features that will help you and your company grow along the way. It should also have the capability to make your agents or representatives more productive. By being more productive, it will eventually surmount to having more revenue.