One of the key indicators of an unstable (but granted, not always unsuccessful) business is a sine wave of marketing and sales efforts. And why not? In many cases it perfectly acceptable to be season with your sales pushes, however, for those who don’t run ski resorts, we can’t let success one month distract us from continuing to drum up new business.
Especially for small business where you’re wearing a million different hats to get and keep it running. We can’t all have a marketing and sales staff. In the beginning, we’re doing it all on our own. For this reason, having marketing tools and technology and drive your efforts, and act like another “manager” in your business to keep your marketing on track and always active so that when your customer boom starts to wane, you’re not left without new customers to keep the revenue coming in.
The most common is a customer relationship management (CRM) system. It keeps you in touch and manages customers through their entire life-cycle. CRMs are excellent tools for small business for the manner in which they are intended: manage their customers. However, they are also excellent tools to manage yourself and your staff: keep them involved, busy, and work more efficiently to work with customers – software can train us to have better business habits as well as be tools of the trade.
As such, I cannot over-emphasize the importance of such systems, and from day one of your starting your business. They are the extra manager you need to stabilize and be consistent in communication and income. When seeking out what kind of system to use, keep that aspect in mind: will this not only help me manage customers, but will it also help keep me on track when multitasking becomes the norm? A simple question that when answered can ensure you have all the right small business tools you need to be successful.
