Don’t let your Startup fall behind on the CRM game

Launching a startup is hard. Those who have done it will tell you that it entails working around the clock, often seeing your co-founders more than your family, and learning how to wear many hats. A typical startup founder needs to both set the vision for the company and execute it.

With so many factors to deal with, who has the time to invest in something that does not drive an immediate ROI?

Often, startup founders will focus more on the little victories than the long-term goals, which leads them to put off things like implementing a CRM until it is desperately needed. Not every business needs a big sophisticated CRM with marketing automation and sales tools right off the bat, but if you aren’t familiarizing yourself with the different tools and opportunities, and taking the time to learn how to use them, you can end up losing a lot more money in the long run when you need it.

Scenario

To understand this idea clearer, let’s give a made up example - we’ll call it MechanicAI.

They start off as a small 3 person team and a handful of prospects, As they begin interacting with customers, since it's just a 3 person team, they CC each other on all emails. When they begin seeing inbound traffic to the website, they add a lead form which sends the prospects email directly to their email addresses.

As time goes on, they decide to add a newsletter to keep in touch with their prospects so they get a simple mail sending solution.

Next, they hire their first official sales representative. Since not everyone will be cc'd on all emails anymore, they decide to invest in a simple CRM system so that management can check in on the status of sales prospects as they are proceeding down the funnel.

In order to supply that Salesperson with leads, they hire a marketer to manage social media using a social media management tool and run ads on various platforms.

Finally they close their first deal!

Now, they need a digital signature platform and Sales teams need to start filling our sales information and sending out the SOW’s.

And on, and on, they go.

Analysis

While the above scenario seems common, there are a number of challenges this company will already face. Let’s dive into them:

1. For such a small company their tech stack is out of control. They are using 5 different systems to turn a prospect to a client.
2. Since Sales and Marketing have different systems, there is no proper communication and analytics connection. What does that mean? Sales doesn’t know where the leads came from, and marketing doesn’t know which leads are successful and which aren't.
3. Since the prospect jumps from platform to platform creating a report on growth and tracking a journey is nearly impossible.
4. Seed through A stages are usually meant to help develop the product and the market fit. A/B rounds and up are usually pouring money into a well oiled machine that will quickly be able to bring in a large amount of leads, and has the ability to handle them. With so much disconnect between the systems, the process is far from optimised, and that can raise red flags with investors.
5. When your product is ready for the mass market, your business processes will not be. This will require you to invest a significant amount of time, money. and resources to migrate and train in new processes and technology.

So Where Should You Start?

• Think long-term- When building a tech stack, it's important to approach it with a long term vision, and take actions with long term benefits, even when there is minimal immediate benefit now.
• Experienced partnerships- Make sure you have an experienced partner (or BE the experienced partner) who has a better sense of what to anticipate long term. Someone you can discuss your vision with, and get feedback on the right options to build your tech stack.
• Speak to a Certified Provider- Certified service provider will present you with the experience, and the support you need in order to build a CRM system that will provide for your needs both now and in the future as you scale.

While we at Penguin Strategies are known for our HubSpot partnership, we are proud to be fully certified Salesforce admins as well. This combo puts us in a unique position to implement the right technology for both the sales and marketing teams to create an effective synergy and integration between the needs of both departments and their services.

If you need help with choosing the right tools or setting up your tech stack, contact us and we'll be glad to walk you through the process. Book a 15 min consultation below or ask for a Salesforce audit.