At Tenacre, we like startup businesses, and in Dubai, there are thousands of you every month!
Its striking that there are so many startup businesses that contact us before the company starts trading to get their systems in place. This shows that entrepreneurs recognise the value of starting a business in a way that organises data, gives the sales team the best possible chance of succeeding and brings the entire team together on a single platform.
So what does a startup business get from Salesforce, and why should they spend precious capital on a CRM?
1. Eyes on the prize
The dashboard on everyone's homepage that shows the actual sales to the sales target ensures that everybody across the business understands how important sales revenue (and cash collection!) is to the short-term viability of the business.
When Tenacre implements the platform for an SME we make sure that everybody in the business can view the key metrics in the business; closed sales, sales pipeline and other marketing KPI's
2. Create a culture
Every company develops its own personality, culture, and ways of getting the work done. Salesforce is a platform that helps the business owners to put in place the building blocks of the culture so that it reflects the standards, targets, and accountability that is likely to see the business succeed.
The dashboards and reports in the system can ensure that from day one everybody in the business is tuned in to the need to achieve specific targets in specific timelines.
3. Teamwork and sharing
Start-Ups move at the speed of light, and rarely have the time for the formalities of more established companies when it comes to meetings, presentations, and reports. When Tenacre Group works with a startup, we ensure that your CRM is set up for easy access to data and sharing of information.
Chatter provides a social media like feature for communication and data sharing. Dashboards and reports are always up to date, and everybody that needs to see how the company is doing in one or much specific area's can see the information simply by viewing their dashboard. The Files feature is similar to an FTP app for storing, sharing and controlling the version of any document.
4. Make every ad dollar count
Start up's don't have the luxury of wasting money on advertising. Each of your campaigns has to generate leads, opportunities and closed sales.
With Salesforce and Tenacre as your partner, you'll be able to see the statistics of each of your online campaigns, including the return on investment calculation.
5. Keep your investors in the loop
If you have external investors in your business (congratulations!), you'll be used to having regular, formal meetings where you share the company performance information. Some of our clients use the dashboards and reports to send weekly snapshots of how the revenue, marketing and service aspects of the business are performing.
These reports are without exception welcomed by the investors in the external businesses and make the investor more information and in-tune with how the business is going. This also has a positive impact on the board meetings, as the people attending are not seeing the performance data for the first time due to the weekly updates.
6. Build it to scale it
Our mantra with our SME clients is 'crawl, walk, run, fly'. In the early stages of your startup it's unlikely that you'll have unlimited funds or time to develop a CRM platform with us that incorporates all aspects of your business. Typically we start with sales management, marketing reports and shared diaries, tasks, and documents.
Over time, as cash flow permits, we add develop new applications ourselves or add third-party apps from the appexchange. The ongoing development of the platform means that your CRM system is keeping pace with your business's growth and that it remains the central source of company performance data.