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The Good, The Bad & The Perfect:
Salesforce for Small Business
Salesforce for Small Business
• Date: May 2021 •
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Small businesses these days stand up to a lot of challenges to keep afloat. With face-to-face communication no longer a reality, CRM systems have become indispensable to retain, track and analyze customers. Nearly one in three SMBs with less than 50% of business flows automated before the pandemic said they had to speed up the digitization in 2020.
Out of all CRM (customer relationship management) solutions, Salesforce usually holds the first place in the rankings for its high customization capabilities, compliance to all possible industry standards, and high reliability. Google, T-Mobile, Amazon, Vodafone, American Express, Toyota, and Adidas have gone for this solution.
Given such an enviable customer portfolio with industry giants, it makes sense to wonder — is Salesforce a good option for small or midsize businesses and aspiring startups?
Small businesses consider their specific demands when they look for appropriate digitization technologies:
- Quick start & easy-to-use appSMBs look for an out-of-the-box solution that solves business problems of today rather than focuses on the long-term run
- Engaging communication with clientsSmall and midsize businesses grow thanks to successful lead conversion guaranteed by optimizing sales and service flows
- Focus on operational managementSMBs focus their automation goals on minimizing costs through day-to-day operations automation
- Fast growthSmall businesses scale up and require tools to adjust to changes
So let's examine if Salesforce has what it takes to meet these challenges.
Spoiler: yes, if managed correctly.
Spoiler: yes, if managed correctly.
What's Good about Salesforce for Small Business: great CRM solution for any SMB
Salesforce offers unique core functionality creating a foundation for any business to build on it an individual path. Small businesses are no exception.
- Salesforce has a vast array of licenses with powerful and flexible permissions management depending on the company size and goals. Essentials ($25 USD/user/month) and Professional ($80 USD/user/month) licenses are the solutions to consider for SMBs as a starting point for their cost/benefit value. You can learn more about the Essentials license here.
Salesforce Sales Cloud Pricing
- It is a cloud-based solution, meaning that a company doesn't need to possess costly server architecture to use the platform.
- It's great to have a chance to run a company or work with real-time data from one's smartphone or tablet, especially when it comes to field reps. The mobile app is available within all the licenses.
- Personalized integrations. Those running a small business understand the importance of a quick reply to client needs. Salesforce encourages smooth customer interactions through a large number of mobile apps that can be downloaded on AppExchange and integrated into the existing ecosystem: MailChimp, Dropbox, Gmail, etc. While some of the integrations are available at least with the Professional license, SMBs still may take advantage of AppExchange as a platform for showing and selling their apps to the owners of Salesforce instances.
- Statistics & analytics. No scalable growth is possible unless you work with data. A CRM in its core is a tracking tool providing you with analytics on your customers, helping you prioritize leads, find new opportunities and predict outcomes based on personalized reports.
- Learning & Community. Salesforce has created a free gamified learning platform as an easy and quick way to learn the platform features. Access to the professional community lets you receive up-to-date ideas and solutions directly from Salesforce partners, employees, and customers.
What's Bad about Salesforce for Small Business: why SMBs choose alternative solutions to this CRM
Even though Salesforce once pioneered the SMB market with its CRM, today it is overflowed with alternatives aimed at small and medium businesses. Why do SMEs around the world choose other options over Salesforce? Here are a few reasons:
1. Costs
Implementing a CRM such as Salesforce, at first sight, seems to burn a hole in your pocket. Subscription, customization, and add-ons costs can add up quickly.
Before returning to Excel sheets and sticky notes in the hope of saving money, try to sum up existing expenses on employee onboarding, implementation of the current systems along with missed contacts and leads due to data clutter.
2. Learning curve
Salesforce customization capabilities both attract and scare away. Given its numerous clouds and countless features, a regular end-user can be overwhelmed.
Large organizations solve this problem by hiring a consultant to provide user training or getting a qualified Salesforce admin on board. And only few small businesses are eager to invest time and money in their staff training.
Salesforce, however, offers a lot of free possibilities to leverage self-learning capabilities with the help of Trailhead and Trailblazer community. Plus, it ensures straightforward and quick onboarding and training. Any questions that might pop up, probably, have already been answered in trails, forums, or Google.
3. Implementation complexity
As mentioned, small businesses tend to focus on today, preferring temporary solutions to fix current problems rather than mapping out their growth strategy. In this regard, a CRM that may require weeks of implementation and further resources for upscale is likely to be excluded from possible options. Is it the constructive focus, though?
What's Perfect about Salesforce: how small and medium businesses upscale with the CRM
Many businesses often face the same barrier: they have a good product and team, but the ways to grow are usually unclear. So before counting the pros and cons discussed above, make sure to consider one more outstanding Salesforce feature - unlimited scalability of the data model.
Most package solutions provide you with a standard set of optimization tools that push digitization yet with little consideration of your company specifics and unique goals. Salesforce, in its turn, literally forces you to upscale your business thanks to its limitless configurations. Moreover, with Salesforce, you can save up by keeping all the data within one system to avoid expensive data migrations in the future.
Companies who implemented Salesforce claim to get:
+24%
Win Rate
+30%
Lead Conversion
+25%
Sales Productiviy
+25%
Increase in Revenue
To sum up, it is possible to automate the typical processes of a small business cheaper with smaller alternative systems. But considering long-term pros is wise for a reliable and sustainable business, even if it's small yet. And in this regard, Salesforce has no alternatives if properly configured.
Let's take a look at a basic configuration scope for a small business on the example of a typical Twistellar's case.
It will take about 100 hours and comprise the following elements:
1. Customer Database (customizable attributes of any format)
- Types of customers
- Statuses
- Statuses
2. Sales Pipelines (any number, any stages)
- Types of deals, attributes, validations
- Layouts
- Layouts
3. Basic Lead Capturing
- Website
- Email
4. Basic Activity configuration
5. Integration of email
6. Integration of phone system
7. Simple automations (notifications, emailing)
8. Custom Objects (any entities used by your business to track business processes, their interconnection)
This type of configuration amounts to $10.000 with the possibility to use iterative approaches and divide the implementation into stages, each going live separately and starting to bring value. Note that there are also different funds supporting digitalisation of companies.
Business goals achieved:
- Organized data from the beginning ensuring accurate statistics, forecasting, and continued growth
- Recorded opportunities, leads, and customer interactions lead to fewer chances of losing deals
- Better and more personalized customer service. Moreover, with the unified customer view, there are more upsell and cross-sell opportunities
- The basis for future automation expansion without the need to spend time and money on migrating data and implementing a new system from scratch
- Day-to-day operations are automated letting your sales reps dedicate more time to customers rather than data management
At the end of the day, a CRM is just a tool that has to serve your business strategy. What makes Salesforce unbeatable is that it has solutions to all strategies, no matter company's size, industry, or resources.
We recommend considering these factors in advance so that the CRM implementation meets your expectations. In short, before choosing a tool, make sure to map out your strategy together with your team or an expert consultant to create a realistic outlook for your business.
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We at Twistellar provide Salesforce related services, including consulting and custom development, for small business, helping SMBs boost their sales, improve customer satisfaction and grow.
Our company boasts a strong team of first-rate CRM professionals proudly specializing in Salesforce. Whether you need to customize Salesforce to the needs of your SMB company, integrate it with a third-party app and ask for advice on Salesforce adoption, feel free to get in touch with us.