This blog post has been authored by Stand Out Online Member Mary Sue Dahill, Work Smarter Digital

How do you know you’re ready for CRM? You know it’s time when you feel like this:
– Your sticky note process is no longer working, and you’re losing leads.
– You miss following up in a timely fashion because you are doing everything by hand.
– You feel like things are getting out of control — because they are.

Missing data = lost relationships = lost sales
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is both a philosophy and a digital solution that manages business relationships with clients, prospects, partners, and contacts.
Think of the CRM as the heartbeat of your business relationships. It is the hub of information for your business data as well as the engine that runs your business systems. As a micro-business owner, our contacts are our business, and our service is our biggest advantage, which is why the CRM is your business.
If Customer is Queen, you need a good CRM.

A CRM helps your business grow by…
Send the right content to the right audience at the right time
Engage responsive audiences
Responsive to purchase, downloads, and messages
Segment your audience and send them only the content they want and need
Engage the content where they are right now and nothing more
Generate good leads
Makes you a follow-up goddess
Frees you up so you can spend time finding new leads, creating value, and serving clients personally when needed
Client journey that is high-touch and builds the trust
With the right CRM, you’ll be more relaxed and free to focus on what matters most in your business.

Get off that hamster wheel of to-dos!
1. You’re growing but can’t hire more help.
Congratulations on your success! Your business has moved from startup to growth phase, and now you are feeling overwhelmed from too much to do. Like most companies, you’ve grown your systems and use of digital tools organically without a streamlined plan.
Maybe you are already using a VA and know the huge positive impact they can have on your business, but adding even more support will eat up all of your profit. When the cost of hiring is more than you can afford, but you still have a lot of work that needs to be done, that is when you know you need a CRM.

More Clients + Checklists = Time For a CRM

2. You have so many notes squirreled away in so many places that you can’t find them all…
Does this sound like you? You have a spiral notebook where you take notes of all of your conversations organized by date. You have a Google Doc for each client to track tasks. You have a Google Folder with documents you’ve shared with your clients and they have shared with you. And you send follow up emails to document decisions and actions. So where do you look when you need to find information about a client?
Everywhere!!
That’s when you know you need a CRM. You need one centralized location to keep notes, tasks, documents, and conversations.

3. Trying to keep track of follow-up is stressing you out.
The number one reason sales fall through is because we don’t follow up. There is a one-in-four chance that when you follow up, you will close a sale. Imagine if your business grew by 25%!! That’s huge.
A CRM can help you with follow-up in several ways:

Schedule follow-up tasks associated with a contact
– Automate your follow-up
– Create a follow-up action list based on a certain amount of time that has elapsed since your last meeting

4. You don’t have a consistent way to track anything in your business.
Imagine you’ve paid for a signature transformational business program. Every time you meet with the business coach, they ask you, “What should we focus on?”
Um, that’s why you paid for their signature transformation program, isn’t it?
As the business, you’ve got to define your program workflow and keep track of which clients are in which step. You want to be the guide and expert who has a plan.
With a CRM, you have the ability to track your clients through their journey with the Pipeline feature. This is also very useful to track the following:
– Leads in your sales process
– New client onboarding
– Client appreciation activities

5. You want to uplevel your client experience.
When your business is booming, and your services are sought after, you can no longer get away with a disjointed client experience. Everything about how you handle relationships in your business has to work smoothly.
To uplevel your client experience, you will want to think through the steps they take from attraction to decision and beyond. To do this, you will want to ask yourself, “And what happens next?” again and again, until there isn’t anything else.

Mary Sue Dahill loves to see her hometown heroines make it to the big leagues.
Nothing warms her heart like incredible coaches, creatives, and one-[wo]man bands sharing relevant content, engaging responsive audiences, and generating good leads, creating the profitable business they so deserve. (Bonus points if everyone can avoid the pitfalls of entrepreneurship that can suckerpunch us all: endless checklists, miscast digital tools, and burnout/self-doubt.)
Mary Sue believes that if you think smart(er), use the right tools, and go after your goals, you can have the life you want.
Take it from the “overwhelm detective,” this seasoned entrepreneur, marketing maven, and automation expert knows a thing or three about calming the chaos and scaling a business beyond the 1:1. Mary Sue Dahill is on a mission to eliminate complexity and automate everything.
If you need help to stop drowning in tech that is sabotaging your success and start creating ideal clients who bring more profit, reach out to Mary Sue here and the good folks at Work Smarter Digital, because building a boutique business is a tough job, but you don’t have to do it alone.