Maybe you have heard the term CRM thrown around, but aren’t exactly sure what it means.

Or perhaps you’re kinda familiar with the concept, but don’t really understand why you need one when your business is running just fine.

Let’s break down the benefits of using a CRM in your business, so you can understand how these powerful platforms can quickly become your business BFF!

CRM – What Is It?

CRM stands for Client Relationship Management, and essentially it is the hub for anything and everything related to your clients.

It is also the best way to create a seamless white glove client experience.

What makes a CRM so great and easy to manage is that you no longer have to keep track of 4+ different sites and platforms for contracts, payments, emailing, scheduling, etc.

Having everything in one place allows you to seamless run and manage your business and the life cycle of your clients, without having to wonder, double check, or forget anything you want to happen!

And the best part - even if you go offline for a few days, you can still have your business run in the background welcoming new leads, and moving projects along as needed.

Hello time-freedom, population you!

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Client Management

A CRM makes it super easy to see where you client is in their life cycle, through what is usually referred to as a project pipeline.

Track where your clients are in the process from on-boarding to off, and any follow up in between.

Instead of using a separate platform to send contracts, invoices, follow up, send files, onboard, leads, emails and follow up (phew!), your CRM makes it super easy and seamless to do this all IN ONE PLACE!

And the best part? It’s time to say goodbye to emailing your clients manually from your email account. You can automate these emails, AND see if they have been read or remain unread, and follow up accordingly!

Contracts & Payments

Instead of using one platform for e-signature, another for payments, and then having to manually send payment reminders each month, a CRM makes it super easy to house all of the backend stuff in one place.

My two favorite CRM platforms for service providers are Dubsado and Honeybook. The benefit of both of these amazing platforms is that they have the option to send a client a contract and invoice together in one clean and easy to follow package. Faster process for you, and more convenient and streamlined for your client.

Plus, if you want to have re-occuring payments, you can set them up with auto-reminders at the same time you send the proposal, and never have to worry “oh crap, did I sent that invoice?” ever again.

Automations

The best part about using a CRM is you are actually able to automate part of this client experience, so you can take a lot off of your admin "in the business" every day place, and move that to an automated system that allows these things to happen streamlined and seamlessly behind the scenes.

Let me paint a picture for you...

Imagine that you send a new lead their project proposal, contract, invoice - all the goods to get started on a new project. But it's a Friday afternoon and you're going offline for the weekend.

So, you send somebody this information and they sign it, they pay...and then crickets. They don't hear from you until Monday when you're back online in front of your computer.

How would that make them feel?

How would that make you feel if you were in that experience?

VS - if you have a CRM set up behind the scenes, you can have something that will trigger automatically when they sign their contract or pay their invoice and welcome them into your sphere and let them know what's happening, how to onboard, what the next steps are, when the project will kick off, etc.

No matter if they are in a different time zone, or if they're working over the weeknd when you're not in front of your computer, it's still moving the project forward.

And the client is having an amazing white glove experience and you're not having to do anything or lift a finger to make sure that's happening.

What Is Your Time Worth?

Can you do these things manually?

Could you save some money and just use spreadsheets or PDF documents?

Of course.

But you also want to ask yourself, what is your time worth?

The joy of running your own business is getting to decide exactly how you want things to work, and then being able to set things up in the most streamlined and efficient way as possible, so future you can grow with ease.