When is it time to move my small business to Salesforce?
As our team at Idealist Consulting expands our services to the private sector, some common questions we have received from small business owners are: “Salesforce seems geared toward larger enterprises - is Salesforce scalable for businesses of every size?” and “Are there various levels of Salesforce packages that are tailored toward the needs and budgets of smaller clients?"
The quick answer to these questions is “Of course!” One major advantage of the Salesforce CRM is that it can be scaled for any business size. In fact, Idealist Consulting is a perfect example - the way we utilize Salesforce has expanded as our company has grown from a one-man operation to a sizable firm with team members across the country.
Here’s how you can make Salesforce work for your small business.
First things first - what do we mean by “small business”?
We define the size of a business based on its revenue, number of employees, and the number of business processes that company needs to track. That said, we consider a “small business” as one that earns $5 million or less in revenue, is 1 - 10 years old with ten Salesforce users or less, and is primarily focused on two business processes - sales and marketing.
OK, I’m a small business owner - why should I invest in Salesforce CRM?
As your business grows, you’re going to need more than just spreadsheets, address books, and rolodexes to keep track of your customers, vendors, and business operations and performance. A CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, system helps you do exactly that. But what makes Salesforce stand out from the crowd is that it can be tailored to fit the needs and budget of businesses of all sizes, without compromising essential features.
The fundamental functions of Salesforce are the same for Fortune 500 companies and for fledgling start-ups, just on different scales. And Salesforce is highly and easily customizable so that you can configure your Salesforce database to work for your small business, not the other way around. You can easily integrate Salesforce with existing applications, like email and Google apps, and all your business data will be centralized in one system. As a bonus, with Salesforce’s mobile apps, you can take that data anywhere and access it on-the-go.
How do I know when it’s time to move to Salesforce?
Ideally you’ll want to transition to Salesforce while your company is still in the start-up phase so that you can have the basic foundations of your CRM established and scale your CRM up as your business grows. However, if your company is making at least $500,000 in revenue, it’s definitely time to upgrade to a CRM. It’ll just get more painful the longer you wait.
I’m ready to purchase Salesforce, but which edition is right for me?
Salesforce offers three tiered editions for small businesses - Group, Professional, and Enterprise. Group, the most affordable of them all, is best for start-ups with less than five users and whose focus is on basic sales and marketing. The Professional edition is a complete CRM with greater capabilities for more proactive marketing, like mass email campaigns. Lastly, the Enterprise edition, the most expensive of the three, is best suited for a mature small business, and it allows integration of all business processes so that the CRM becomes the hub for all the departments in the company. Idealist Consulting started with the Group edition in our early years and have since upgraded to the Enterprise edition as our business has grown.
Are they any additional costs associated with getting Salesforce? How long does it take?
Once you have purchased Salesforce for your business, you’ll probably want to customize the out-of-the-box system to better suit the needs of your company, and that’s where Idealist Consulting can help. The deployment process includes configuration, data migration, training, and integration. Typically, the process takes between three to six weeks, and the cost of deployment can range from $10,000 to $40,000, though it varies from client to client, based on needs. While you or someone on your team can certainly take on the task of deployment, if your company is like most small businesses, your precious time and energy is better spent growing your business, not transferring data into Salesforce.
