Customer relation management (CRM) is all about keeping track of business contacts and building mutually fruitful relationships with clients. The two aspects are interconnected, and there are numerous CRM tools out there that are designed in various ways to essentially keep contact information at the business fingertips, ensuring that nothing is ever lost and that all information about clients is instantly accessible.
Here we take a brief look at 10 software tools that are easily downloadable and can especially assist a small business with all of its CRM needs.
Salesforce
This is a great CRM tool for entrepreneurs and freelancers. It uses a sales cloud for quick and easy information storage and retrieval and focuses especially on social media. Pricing levels and email can be integrated according to the number of users.
ZOHO CRM
This integrates with a number of other software tools and allows for the easy tracking of prospects, leads and corporate opportunities. It has a range of pricing levels depending again on the number of users, and there is in addition a mobile version of the application available.
Highrise
This one is especially efficient at keeping track of prospects and clients. It has a smooth interface with many other popular types of CRM software, and several service levels are available. Currently, Highrise is pay as you go, and there’s an iPhone app available for it.
Big Contacts
Big Contacts is especially aimed at small businesses and has an unusually intuitive dashboard with mobile access. Contact information from other software applications is easily imported at the touch of a button and there are several scaled versions available for handheld devices.
Infusionsoft
This small business tool focuses on marketing, CRM and e-commerce and is especially strong on email marketing tools which can be used cost effectively in a start-up marketing campaign.
Landslide
This is another CRM cloud-based tool, and was acquired just recently by j2Global, responsible for many of the initiatives in this industry sector. Mobile and social tools are highly integrated to provide the ideal CRM solution for the small business community.
OnContact
This is an excellent piece of CRM software for improving client support services, crucial to the successful ongoing development of any small enterprise struggling to build its client base. It has three levels of functionality and so up-scaling as the business grows is not an issue.
Daylite
This application has been especially designed for the Mac and incorporates mail integration and a calendar. There are iPad and iPhone versions available, making it particularly attractive to freelancers.
Sage ACT!
This one, also popular with freelancers, includes accounting integration software and has easy integration with other popular CRM tools.
SugarCRM
SugarCRM is a hugely popular web-based, open source tool that uses the cloud for storage and retrieval of client data. It can be accessed by any smart mobile device and effortlessly integrates with a great range of social media. The address book can be fully automated using email accounts and there are several versions available for different smart phones.
Other tools that you may want to consider for your business are accounting software like QuickBooks by Intuit and social media management tools like HootSuite. It is a matter of fact that technology is helping us in speeding up our tasks and ensure maximum results. It is our responsibility to integrate old management processes with these new software to succeed in the business.
