Often, when we start our small businesses, our biggest clients are our friends, family, and acquaintances. Maintaining a personalised relationship with our customers at this stage is usually easy. We are usually able to maintain great connections with our customers and therefore receive referrals and amazing reviews as a result of our personalized services. However, as your businesses grow, customers multiply, and it becomes more difficult to keep tabs and feedback from every single client. This is why most growing and successful businesses require a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

What Is A Customer Relationship Management Tool?

Customer Relationship Management systems are automated to manage all details and contacts of your customers and potential clients. Information stored may range from their contact details to their preferences, former communications, emails, previous purchases, sales details, follow-ups, deadlines, and any other notes collected from your customers. There is no limit when it comes to CRM.

With a CRM tool, you can centralize all your data and the data collected by all your team members in one place. Holding everything in one place lets you maintain meaningful personal connections with unlimited clients. While additionally allowing for the scalability of your business, the generation of analytical reports, and collaboration with your team members.

Why Not Spreadsheets? 

According to a study by HubSpot, about 40% of salespeople still use informal tools such as spreadsheets for CRM. While using a Spreadsheet has its perks, such as affordability, as your business grows, spreadsheets will just not cut it if you’re aiming for efficient and productive relationships with all your customers.  

For instance, spreadsheets limit your entries for each client’s information. When working with a spreadsheet, you might find it easier to only record the customer’s basic contact information. On the other hand, CRMs allows you to track every detail of the customer’s information across the sales funnel. 

Additionally, as you hire more people in your team, you will require a system that allows all team members to access the information in real-time and collaborate. Research has shown that 65% of businesses adopt CRM in the first five years of operations. The rate of adoption has also been proven to get higher as businesses employ a larger team.  

Furthermore, Spreadsheets do not offer automation, marketing campaign options, or integrations with other apps, such as emails. Moreover, they do not generate useful insights and comparative reports on your customers. Therefore, it might be time you consider upgrading to a CRM system.

Let’s Cut To The Chase

Small businesses find a challenge moving from spreadsheets to CRM due to fears of complexity, integration, or cost. However, you can leverage the many user-friendly and free CRM tools for small businesses, such as Trello or Hubspot, to get you started. As you grow your customer base, you may invest in a premium subscription with more advanced features.

If you’re still unsure whether a CRM is a great fit for your business. Or if you need any help getting started with CRM for your business, you can consult a Virtual Business Manager to set up an automated CRM system. We’re here to help you grow your operations, manage your current & potential customers, and maintain a personal relationship with each one of them, no matter how many they are.

CRM software is a powerful tool to have in your arsenal. With it, it’s much easier to sell as you have all your customer data accessible in one place. Additionally, you can streamline the process and make automations. However, when it comes to the extensive list of features, many small business owners seem not use CRM segregating or tagging as effectively as they could.

So, exactly is CRM Segregating, and why is it so important? Stay tuned to find out.

What Exactly is Customer Segmentation?

Let’s start the blog post by defining what customer segmentation is! To put it simply, it’s separating your customer base based on some traits. It’s that simple!

However, you could segregate your customer base in multiple ways. Here are just a couple of them:

• Geographic Segmentation Model – You’re separating your customers based on their location with this model. That could be generic, like which country they are in, to more specific, like the neighbourhood they are located in.
• Demographic Segmentation Model – In this model, you’re separating them based on various characteristics. That could be anything from gender, age, profession and that sort.
• Interest-based Segmentation Model – With this, you’re separating your customers based on what they show interest in. For eCommerce businesses, that usually means which product they like the most.

And many more!

Why is CRM Segregating/Tagging so Powerful?

Now that you understand what CRM tagging is, you might be thinking: “Why should I do that?”

Well, there are a couple of reasons for it.

First, if you don’t do it, you’re losing many potential profits. With segmentation, you can serve your customers better by providing them with customised content and specialised deals.

But that’s not the only reason why you should do it. Additionally to that, segmentation is excellent for market research. For example, you can understand who most of your clients are and what they value.

Furthermore, you can also identify who is your ideal client by finding out the most profitable clients.

The Strategy for Segmenting Your Customers

So now that you understand why segmentation is so powerful, you probably want to know how you can do that yourself.

However, before I reveal how you can start doing it, I’ll have to tell you one thing. This strategy isn’t going to tell you the exact steps. That’s because, unfortunately, each CRM software is different, with unique ways to segment your clients.

And with that out of the way, let me show you the strategy:

Step #1 – Determine Your Segmentation Goal

Before we start creating tags to group our customers, we should first think about why are we segmenting in the first place! 

• Is it to create customised content and offers to your customers?
• Maybe you’re doing it for market research?
• Or something else? 

Whatever it is, make sure you write it down as it will become helpful in the next step.

Step #2 – Filter Your Customers Into Groups

Now that you know your objective, it’s time to sort your customers. You can do that by creating tags for it. 

However, when you do, make sure these tags are actually helpful! If they aren’t, then you would’ve wasted your time. So instead, remind yourself of the segmentation goal and brainstorm all the tags that would be useful. 

Then just go through your customer list and start filtering them.

Step #3 – Test Your Segmentation and Analyse

Now that you’ve got your clients segmented, there’s nothing else to do but test your segmentation out. So try them out and see if you see any improvements. 

If not, then go back to the drawing board and look at what could have been the problem. You can fix your issues and then grow your business to the next level. You should also do that even if you see improvements.

You can never run out of ways to improve!

Conclusion

So as you can see, segmentation is quite a powerful tool. With it, you can serve your clients better while also learning more about your clientele and what they value. So instead of letting this knowledge collect dust in your head, why not take action? 

That’s the only way you’ll get any value from this article. However, if you find segmentation too tricky or have any other problems, don’t be afraid to ask for help. I’d love to help you grow your small business to new heights. 

So, schedule a call with me, and let’s see how I can help you out.

Often, when someone starts a new business, their biggest clients are their friends, family, and acquaintances. Maintaining a personalised relationship with these customers is usually very easy. The small number of contacts and existing relationships make it easy to maintain great connections. These connections often result in referrals and fantastic reviews as a result of our personalized services.

However, with time, the businesses grow. Customers multiply, and it will most likely get difficult keeping tabs and feedback from every single client. It is for this reason that most growing and successful businesses require a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

What Is A CRM Tool?

A CRM system is an automated system for managing all details and contacts of your customers and potential clients. Data stored is often determined by the business or industry. It can range from merely their contact details to:-

• their preferences,
• former communications,
• emails,
• previous purchases,
• sales details,
• follow-ups, deadlines, and
• any other notes collected from your customers.

There is no limit when it comes to CRM.

With a CRM tool, you can centralise the data collected by all the members of your team, in one place. Therefore enabling you to maintain meaningful personal connections with an unlimited number of clients. While additionally allowing for the scalability of your business, generation of analytical reports, and collaboration with members of your team.

Why Use A CRM And Not Spreadsheets?

According to a study by HubSpot, about 40% of salespeople still use informal tools such as spreadsheets for CRM. While using a Spreadsheet has its perks such as affordability. As your business grows, spreadsheets will just not cut it, especially if you’re aiming for efficient and productive relationships with all your customers.

For instance, spreadsheets limit your entries for each client’s information. When working with a spreadsheet, you might find the need only to record the basic contact information of the customer. A CRM, on the other hand, allows you to keep track of every detail of the customer’s information across the sales process.

Additionally, as you hire more people in your team, you will require a system that allows all members of your team to access the information in real-time and to collaborate. Research by Capterra has shown that 65% of successful businesses adopt CRM in the first five years of operations. The rate of adoption has also been proven to get higher as companies employ a larger team.

Furthermore, spreadsheets do not:- 

• offer automation, 
• marketing campaign options, or 
• integrations with other apps such as emails. 

Moreover, they do not generate useful insights and comparative reports on your customers. Therefore, it might be time you considered upgrading to a CRM system.

Bottom Line

Small businesses find a challenge moving from spreadsheets to CRM, due to fears of complexity, integration, or cost. However, you can leverage the many user-friendly and free CRM tools for small businesses to get you started. As you continue to grow your customer base, perhaps you can invest in a premium subscription with more advanced features.

If you’re still not sure whether a CRM is an excellent fit for you, or if you need any help getting started with CRM, get in touch. As a Virtual Business Manager I can set up an automated CRM system that fits your business needs. Helping you grow your operations, manage your current & potential customers, and assist you with maintaining a personal relationship with each one of them, no matter how many they are.