CRM for small business
Scale up your sales with a CRM for small business
Manage leads as your business grows, jump on deals at the right time and nurture long-term relationships.
Pipedrive’s CRM for small businesses gives you back valuable time by centralizing multi-channel data and automating tedious processes.
Full access. No credit card required.
Why Pipedrive is the best CRM software for small businesses
Customer relationship management (CRM) software lets small businesses focus on their most important internal and external relationships, including leads, prospects, existing customers and partners.
Here’s why Pipedrive’s CRM solution is the best way to boost your sales and grow your small business.
Visualize your pipeline
Get total visibility into your sales and track deals as they progress
- Organize your pipeline with a simple drag-and-drop interface
- See all your sales priorities and gauge momentum at a glance
- Analyze your sales pipeline statistics with sales dashboards and see which areas need improvement
Automate repetitive tasks
Spend less time on administrative work and more time selling with workflow automation
- Get performance tips and recommended integrations with Pipedrive’s sales assistant feature
- Automate time-consuming tasks, from creating new deals to sending personalized emails
- Automatically uncover valuable customer information with Smart Contact Data
Track sales conversations
Nurture leads and customers with robust messaging features
- View a visual history of all your calls, emails and activities with any contact
- Get notified whenever a prospect opens your email or clicks on a link
- Share availability and schedule calls for a time that suits you and your prospect
What is a small business CRM?
Customer relationship management for small businesses helps streamline your workflows and contact management. Use automated processes to spend more time on what matters the most, like personal customer support and deal closing.
Synchronize across multiple devices
Small business owners are incredibly busy. The best CRM software gives you access to critical data and customer inquiries on any device.
Keep tabs on cash flow
Your small business relies on predictable cash flow. Integrate your CRM with accounting software to automate invoices, schedule payment reminders and forecast revenue accurately.
Collect valuable social proof
Generate feedback from your clients to build authority. Display gleaming testimonials on your social media channels and convert satisfied customers into referral generators.
Optimize marketing with segmentation
Small business CRM segments your audience so you can reach each customer with the right message. Create personalized, loyalty-building email marketing campaigns.
Elevate your project management
Delegate manual data entry to powerful automation processes. Brief sales teams, schedule follow-ups and oversee lead management on your online CRM for small businesses.
Harness data insights
Customize your dashboards for different sales metrics. Oversee the performance of individual products and adjust inventory and sales processes accordingly.
Why is a CRM important for small businesses?
Your customers are the lifeblood of your small business. As you close more deals and build relationships, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of customers and provide a stellar experience.
The right CRM solution for small businesses will create a centralized data hub, enhance the functionality of your workflows and supercharge your outreach efforts with marketing automation.
Streamline your pipeline management
Leads interact with your business via multiple channels. You can quickly become overwhelmed by queries, meeting requests and referrals coming from all directions.
Pipedrive’s CRM for small companies stores and updates lead information in a visual pipeline. Track progress in real-time and engage prospects as they navigate through your sales funnel.
Monitor leads and deals with Pipedrive
Automate workflows and finances for ease of use
Save valuable time for your team by building a cloud-based hub of records, invoices and insights.
Pipedrive handles repetitive admin and streamlines your finances with AI and app integrations. Spend less time agonizing over spreadsheets and focus on important sales activities.
Let Pipedrive optimize your operations
Run your small business from anywhere
The best CRM software for small businesses shouldn’t require you to be at your desk at all times.
Pipedrive syncs with your favorite mobile apps and empowers you to work remotely. Engage with clients through Gmail and Outlook, view your calendar schedule and get notifications when high-priority tasks are due, right from your mobile device.
Take your work everywhere with Pipedrive
How does a CRM for small business work?
With the right CRM platform for small businesses, you can keep customers engaged, harness pipeline customization and automate busywork.
- Nurture qualified leads and establish brand loyalty
- Capture and feed multi-channel data to your e-commerce platform
- Monitor the efficacy of your marketing and social media efforts
- Import buyer profiles with custom fields
- Integrate your payment workflows with accounting software
- Store valuable company data safely in the cloud
- Send personalized messaging designed to delight
- Create reports with detailed analytics and insights
- Make critical decisions based on report data
- Build visual pipelines for all your communications and lead management
What to look for in a CRM system for small business
When assessing potential CRM tools for your small business, ask these four key questions.
- 1. Is it easy to use?
If a CRM is too complicated, it won’t get used. The right CRM will make optimizing your sales process a breeze, from initial setup and importing data to logging sales activities and analyzing results.
A user-friendly CRM means you can spend less time training sales reps and more time on high-impact sales activities.
See how Pipedrive’s ease of use makes it an ideal Salesforce alternative.
- 2. Is it customizable to your business?
Don’t change how you work to fit your CRM. Instead, look for a flexible CRM that can be tailored to the specific way you do business.
Capture custom information, edit your pipeline and further expand functionality with Pipedrive’s API.
Learn more about how Pipedrive’s advanced customization options make it a good Monday alternative.
- 3. How much does it cost?
Some providers offer free CRM plans but keep critical features behind paid plans. Others justify high costs by including features you’ll never need.
Look for transparent pricing, where you only pay for the users and add-ons you need.
Find out how Pipedrive’s cost-effective pricing makes it a popular HubSpot CRM alternative.
- 4. What’s their customer support like?
Even if you never need to use it, it’s good to know you’ve got access to reliable customer support around the clock.
Some CRM providers charge extra for support or only offer it during the week. With Pipedrive, 24/7 support means just that in many regions: access to our help desk any day, any time and on any plan, with an average response time of just two minutes.
Discover why Pipedrive’s customer support makes it a great Zoho CRM alternative.
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How to set up your small business CRM software
- 1. Use custom fields to import customer data
Your small business will generate large quantities of lead information at various touchpoints. Without a centralized hub, you may run into difficulties searching for crucial customer information.
Map out CRM functionalities to your current processes when you set up Pipedrive. You can import your existing data and create unique segments using custom fields. Analyze buyer behavior and purchase history to group your customers and construct your outreach strategy.
- 2. Log your communications in your SME CRM solution
Manual data entry and communication tracking can slow down the growth of your business.
Connect every contact point customers have with your business, both online and in person. Integrate Live Chat history, Chatbot queries, emails and Web Forms with your CRM to obtain an aerial overview of your communications.
- 3. Isolate important departments with dashboards
The best CRM for small businesses is one that’s customizable to your company. With our insights and reporting features, you can create custom dashboards for different operations in your business.
Whether you like to separate one-off purchases from loyal customers or keep seasonal promotions apart from regular sales, Pipedrive enables granular reporting for the metrics you care about most.
- 4. Encourage recurring purchases
To build long-lasting, profitable relationships with clients, target them with relevant offerings.
Pipedrive’s CRM for small companies uses workflow automation to remove the hassle from post-sales communication. Automatically follow up with similar products and make suggestions based on past purchases.
The challenges and benefits of using a CRM for small businesses
Common obstacles to a small business CRM:
- Getting stuck in outdated legacy systems
- Worrying about the time-cost of switching
- Concerns about adoption within the team
- Struggling to find a suitable pricing option
How a CRM can boost your small business:
- It focuses your efforts on qualified activities each day
- It personalizes every interaction and nurtures relationships
- It backs up every business decision with data unique to your company
- It brings sales opportunities front and center
Finding the right CRM provider
It might feel like a big jump from your old legacy systems to a modern CRM. Pipedrive’s intuitive user interface was designed to seamlessly slip into your business processes. Once your salespeople don’t have to worry about manual admin tasks, they’ll have more time to grow your bottom line.
The best CRM software for small businesses will deliver solutions that outweigh the costs. The top small business CRMs offer pricing options based on the size of your organization, like pricing per user and reduced annual subscriptions.
Find out exactly how much a CRM can help your business by weighing the cost per user against the extra revenue you’ll generate with more time and a better follow-up process.
How Pipedrive CRM helped Accentuate 10x annual revenue
Originally, Accentuate used spreadsheets to manage new leads and customer data, but this led to missed opportunities.
Switching to Pipedrive was quick and easy, and provided them with a CRM system that could scale with the business’s needs. In the four years since they adopted Pipedrive, Accentuate has significantly grown their team and increased revenue by 1000%.
“You need to be able to scale and manage your client base effectively if you want to be serious about competing in a modern business arena. And if you want to scale and manage your client base effectively you need a CRM, like Pipedrive, simple as that."
Read the case study
How to adopt your new small business CRM
To create a path of least resistance, involve your team in your CRM adoption. Here are three things you can do to ensure your transition to a small business or startup CRM goes smoothly.
Communicate the benefits of using a CRM
Explaining the direct benefits a CRM will have on your team’s day-to-day operations increases the chances of a positive reaction.
For example, focus the message on the effect a CRM can have on your team’s sales quota and job satisfaction.
Involve your team in the CRM selection
Once you’ve narrowed down your options, ask your team for input. Take advantage of the free trial and collect feedback on how they would use the system.
Include your team’s opinions in the decision-making process to get them invested in its adoption.
Map out the improvements
Show your team examples of how a CRM can replace their existing processes and tools.
For example, show them how a CRM like Pipedrive automatically imports lead information so they don’t have to go looking for it.
Make your small business more efficient with integrations
Simplify your internal operations with communication and data management tools. Supercharge your workflows with powerful automation.
Here are some essential third-party integrations for small business sales tracking and more.
Outfunnel
Align marketing and sales, and sell smarter. Record website visits, emails and forms to your CRM system and convert casual browsers to loyal customers.
Never miss an opportunity with Pipedrive and Outfunnel.
Zapier
Reduce the time spent switching between your small business tools. Pipedrive integrates with Zapier, connecting you to over 3,000 other apps and platforms in one central hub.
Automate your workflows with Zapier and Pipedrive.
CallMate
Record calls, set up voicemails and implement call queues inside Pipedrive. CallMate provides small businesses with a virtual phone system at affordable pricing.
Simplify your communications with CallMate.
Dryrun
Support your accounting department and plan your next move. Import valuable financial data to your CRM and forecast cash flow, budgeting and sales.
Discover how Pipedrive and Dryrun manage your money.
Maileon
Design newsletter campaigns, schedule emails and deploy powerful landing page editors. Maileon removes the errors associated with manual admin and saves valuable time.
Take your small business to the next level with Maileon.
Zoom Meetings
Schedule, start and manage Zoom calls directly from Pipedrive. Have the latest contact and deal information on hand while you’re on the call.
Level up your video calls with Zoom Meetings and Pipedrive.
CRM for small business FAQs
- What can I achieve with a small business CRM?
A small business CRM helps you manage every aspect of your customer relationships, enabling you to optimize your sales processes to better reflect your customer’s needs.
Typical CRM features include contact management, deal tracking and sales forecasting.
- Do I need a CRM tool for my small business?
Every business, whatever its size, needs to manage customer relationships.
While some small businesses may initially try using notes, emails and spreadsheets, this can lead to missed details and lost opportunities.
With a dedicated CRM solution for your small business, you can be confident that you have all the information you need to deliver the best possible customer experience.
- What types of CRMs are available?
CRMs can be broken down into three categories: operational, collaborative and analytical.
Operational systems are designed to optimize processes. Collaborative CRMs help align your sales, marketing and support teams. Analytical CRMs are built for gathering and analyzing data.
For small businesses, a CRM with strong operational features – like Pipedrive – is ideal.