Here at SaleSource we often get questions like: “Is dropshipping legal?”, “Is dropshipping dead?”, etc. It’s important to get it out of the way first – the short answer is no, dropshipping is not dead and yes, dropshipping is absolutely legal.

Next off, what is a CRM? Well, CRM stands for customer relationship management. Essentially what that means is your CRM is your customer database and your leads database,  and also your business management software. So it’s really important.  If you want to effectively manage your business  and scale your business, you’re going to need a great tool to do so and that’s a CRM. And that’s why it’s so important to have the right CRM. So if you’re not using a CRM, if you’re using yellow pads or spreadsheets, it’s a no-brainer, you need a CRM. And if you’re using a CRM that you don’t love, maybe this article will help you identify the right CRM to use to truly grow your business. 

So there’s really six points that I want to touch on  to help you determine if you’re using the right CRM  for your business or which CRM you might use that would be the right CRM for your small business,  so let’s go through those one by one. 

1. Lead management

So the first thing to look for within a CRM  is the appropriate lead management tools  you have for your sales team.  For any small business, such as shopify stores, to grow –  they really need a good convertible process  with regards to taking a lead  and turning it into an account, that’s your sales process.  And all of the leads that you have are your lead pipeline.  And so you need a sales team to be most effective to grow your business in terms of taking those leads  and turning them into accounts.  Well, your CRM really helps for that  because CRM will allow you to do things  like when somebody fills out the lead form on your website  or on social media, let’s say, like on an ad,  it will automatically build that contact within your CRM,  automatically assign it to your sales rep,  and also give them the process that they should follow  in order to close that deal.  Whether it’s an initial call and then seven days later  an email follow-up, and then another call;  you can predetermine what that needs to be  and you can build that template right into your CRM  so that your sales team can just follow that  and close more deals.  So a CRM is really, really valuable because it allows you to optimize that process  so that all of your sales people are following  the same process with the same piece of software system  so that you can have consistent performance over time. 

2. Account management or customer management

Customer management is really important  because you don’t want to have a bad customer experience  and you want those customers to keep coming back.  So a CRM allows you to do that  because it does such things  as when a lead becomes a customer,  it unlocks additional fields of information  that can be populated by your account managers  and your customer service reps, et cetera,  so that you have all the information you need  for all of your customers.  It can also do things  like send email communications automatically.  So as that customer moves through their life cycle,  at key points when they need  certain information sent to them,  instead of counting on somebody  to do this manually all the time,  your CRM can serve as an automated worker for you,  basically, and send this messaging out  in an automated way to your customer base,  which is really, really powerful  if you create these journeys in the right way.  The CRM also has all the notes and history logs  that you might have had on a client,  and it pulls in all of the data and all the pieces  so that you can see the full story of each customer  within a CRM.  So if you don’t have that right now,  definitely take a look out there  and see if there’s a CRM software that fits what you’re looking for  with regards to customer management. 

3. Task management tools 

So task management, really important.  Basically everybody in your company has tasks  that they’re trying to accomplish every single day.  And so a CRM is a great way  to have that basically streamlined in a more automated way  to where as certain tasks are completed,  other tasks are unlocked.  So it really helps you  to identify the things that need to get done.  I found over the years  that if somebody doesn’t really have their day planned out,  they’re not very efficient  because they’re always spending a lot of time  thinking about what to do next,  instead of just having tasks organized for them  so they can come in  and just start knocking them out one after the next.  So a CRM allows you to think proactively  because you can create these tasks  for different leads you’re talking to,  for different customers you’re working with,  you can schedule them out  so that you’re always building out your future plans  of what needs to get done proactively  so that when that day comes into today,  I have the things that I need to do right in front of me  and it keeps a log of all of this for me automatically  within the CRM so that I always have a history  of what’s been done. 

4. Project management tools

The fourth thing to look for within a CRM is the appropriate project management tools that you might need. So you always have  these little side projects going on, right? Whether it’s something you’re personally doing, or something for a customer, it could be a project you’re doing for a customer,  it could just be something you’re doing yourself  because you just want to do some self-development or something like that. Within a CRM, you should be able to create a project  with different stages within it  and tasks that need to be accomplished  within each of those stages. And then you can use those templates moving forward if you wanted to, maybe it’s a project that you typically do for customers over and over again, right. Maybe it’s like a kitchen remodel, you need to do these things whenever there’s a kitchen remodel,  it’s like a checklist, it’s a no-brainer. So if that’s a service that you provide, every time you have a new customer that needs a kitchen remodel, you just add that project to it  and then your team can start working on it. This is really effective because it allows you to streamline and make sure that you have all of the checklists or processes built out ahead of time for all of your projects. And then if you ever need to add a stage or add a step, when you do that, it immediately is added to all the other projects because it’s a template. And so it really helps your whole team make sure that nothing gets missed along the way. 

5. Company calendar

Company calendars are really nice because it helps you just see what’s going on at the company level  with regards to all the events,  things coming up, different customers  that you’re interacting with for the day,  that kind of a thing. So we all have our personal calendar usually in our email whether it’s in Gmail or those things,  and that’s really good.  What I’m talking about here though is a company calendar.  As a team, you want to be able to see  what the rest of the team is doing,  and so a CRM is nice because the calendar there  shows you from a business perspective  what’s going on for the day for not just you  but you can toggle and you can say,  hey, show me everything that,  all the events happening today for my whole team.  And that helps you identify what’s going on as an organization, especially if you’re a manager,  so you can make sure  that you’re effectively managing your team appropriately.