The small business is notorious for demanding a lot from a limited group of people. Possibly, as a small business, you are a less than 10 people or even a group of only one. Being a small business often means that you have to drive the boat and do the fishing simultaneously. Investopedia explains that “running a business is not for the faint of heart.” You are juggling risks while at the same time trying to bring your product, offering, or service to the marketplace. Here are 5 challenges small businesses face and what you can do to fix them.
1) Telephone Time
As much as we live in an online world, the telephone is still a primary communication tool. For a small business, it can be a challenge getting to the phone on time. Some phone calls are missed, maybe some are answered, but when you’re in your car with no possibility of following up, you potentially miss an opportunity. You may even be keeping track of important messages on Post-it notes. Before you know it, there is an uncategorized, unprioritized sea of notes floating around your workspace, most of them with only partial information.
Maximizer can help get you organized. It will manage and store all your contacts and track absolutely everything, including notes (no more “Post-it’s”), key documents—any vital information for you to have at the push of a button, available when you or your team need it. You will be able to search by company affiliation or case number (depending on what is essential while tailored for you). All your emails exchanges and phone calls, too, regardless of who responded last—you will have the up-to-date information available immediately and even be able to recall favorite searches at a click. The more efficient you are in tracking and responding, the better you will be at maintaining good relationships with your customers, and the faster you will achieve your goals.
2) Always on the go
Currently, many people are no longer working directly from an office. Either we are working from home or on the road. Accessing customer information needs to be easy and immediate. Mobile applications allow us to stay connected to the office while not being in the office or without a laptop. Without direct access to your business data, you risk having dissatisfied customers, inaccurate orders, and lost opportunities. Equipping yourself and your team with the tools to work from anywhere is no longer just a wise investment; it’s a necessity.
Maximizer installs on your desktop, smartphone, or tablet for easy access in those critical moments you need it most. Maximizer also plug-ins to other essential business applications so you can access the data you need, tailored to your needs, at any time, from anywhere.
You have a small business, and rather than focusing on the beautiful product or offering you have for the world—you find yourself increasingly hemorrhaging time and energy as you attempt to respond and maintain the excellent customer relationships you dream of having. And let’s face it – they are your bread and butter.
3) Customer Acquisitions – Getting Clients
One of the main struggles small businesses run up against is finding customers, certainly in the start-up phase. This struggle is widespread for companies, as a staggering 49% report that gaining new customers is their top marketing priority. The costs related to acquisition can also be enormous. Understanding the marketing side of it all is not every small business owner’s forte. Let alone knowing which tools to use or how to execute the marketing ideas you have.
Having a website is crucial but having a lead capture is even more critical. The ability to create a web page on the fly, with simple form fill and a compelling reason to fill it out (we refer to this as a CTA – Call To Action), will help increase your capture of new client opportunities from web visitors. With Maximizer’s Web Form Builder, you can put your lead capture on autopilot using a powerful “web-to-lead” form builder. Easily create an HTML form and embed it in any website, automatically entering new contacts into your database. Designed so that the small business owner can tackle a lead capture, no coding or web building experience is required, just a little bit of your time and creativity.
4) Customer Retention – Keeping Clients
Once you’ve acquired new clients, keeping them is just as important. Understanding how your customers buy, what promotions appeal to them the most, which messages drive more traffic to your website, and ultimately having a deeper understanding of what you are doing right that is selling your products?
Email marketing, newsletters, and promotional messages with drip campaigns may sound a little more complex than they are. To put it in a more digestible way, one of the best efforts you can make to stay top of mind with your clients is using a CRM like Maximizer. Not only will Maximizer help you intelligently acquire new customers—but even more importantly, help you retain them. It provides an easy, user-friendly experience to support your most important asset, your customer. Maximizer has made their software available for small business needs like yours and at a price that small businesses can afford. It will assist you in automating your marketing and sales force, easily manage customer service needs, provide email tracking, and a lot more.
5) Managing Small Business Workflow
Having the right tools in place is a great start. Now that you know how Maximizer can help in some of your small business challenges, how do you “maximize” the use of this CRM? Implementing the use of the Maximizer’s functionalities into your day -to-day business will allow you really benefit from your software investment. Put some of these practices into your client retention and client acquisition efforts with Maximizer’s rich feature set.
The right tools should enable you to do things like:
- Create customer satisfaction surveys
- Have frequent important staff and meetings with access to direct reports
- Inform yourself on threats to the business and issues that make unhappy customers
Find commonalities in the projects and workflows, see what is working and what are bottlenecks or roadblocks
Knowing what creates struggles for your employees, and what results in dissatisfied customers makes investing in a solution like Maximizer an asset. A good CRM will allow you to implement time-saving and stress-reducing strategies. Over the long or short run, it will culminate in saving overhead costs, improving performance, and achieving your business goals. Your business will thrive with a functional environment for all. A well-managed environment will benefit both employer, employees, and consequently—customers, which leads to more revenue.
Maximizer for Small Businesses offers a ton of value. Contact us to talk about how Maximizer could be a good fit for you! If you see yourself and your business struggling with some of the same challenges in this post, contact us and learn more about how we can help you.
