When you’re running a small business, time is money. You are often short staffed, and your margins are very tight. You can’t afford not to have everything you need to get the job done. Your primary focus should be on growing your business, but if you are stuck doing repetitive tasks, managing your team, or traveling to meetings, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for anything else.
Luckily we live in the age of the internet. There are a variety of tools available that will make those tasks easier. Some are more important than others, however. Here are 6 must have tools for businesses in 2023 so you can spend your time making as much money as possible.
CRM
CRM stands for customer relationship manager. It tracks every interaction you have with each customer so that you know where things stand. Sales, communications, and special interests are all placed into the CRM, and you can make judgements based on that information. A CRM allows you to enhance your relationships with your customers, which improves customer retention.
CRMs now have sophisticated algorithms that make it easier for targeted marketing. It will guess based on their buying patterns what ads to direct to them. Bulk communication is also a breeze with a CRM’s built in communication functions.
Lead generation and scoring have never been easier, and it provides real-time updates so you are never out of the loop. It’s much better than the old CRM software that simply held the data and you would have to extrapolate.
Communication
Communicating with your team has always been important, but it has never been more important now that so many people are working from home. The Covid-19 pandemic changed the very nature of the workplace. A lot of employees want the option to work from home, and it might benefit you to offer that.
However, you need to keep in touch as best as possible, and phone calls won’t do it. There are many communicating tools that incorporate streaming. You can share your screen and present, break off into working groups, or simply have a meeting.
Even if your team is all together in the office, other workplaces that you communicate with might be remote. Having these tools at your disposal means that you can quickly and easily connect and save yourself time.
SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, should be a vital part of your marketing strategy. At its most basic, it is the designing and optimizing of your website so that you appear high on the rankings. This will bring in organic traffic consisting of motivated buyers.
These visitors are so valuable because they are already showing an interest in your product or services. The best SEO tools help you manage every aspect of your strategy.
You can track backlinks and monitor content. It will also give you advice as to what’s missing to make your SEO more effective. On top of that, you can have analytics to track performance to make sure you are getting the most out of your SEO.
Project Management
Gone are the days when you used a paper and pen to manage products and delegate tasks. Those are the old ways, and now you can take your product management to another level with these powerful tools.
Keep all your tasks in one place, and collaborate with your team. You can delegate, check progress, and communicate all within the app or through a web-based platform.
For more of the tools, you can share documents and make edits. They are cloud-based, which makes them absolutely vital for remote teams. You can keep track of progress, ask questions, and give feedback.
All of this as well as task management and delegation. A project management tool is crucial if you have a team, or even if you’re working on your own but have several clients.
Accounting
Accounting and bookkeeping are necessary evils, but they are not for everyone. To make it easier, there are lots of accounting tools on the market. Accounting software isn’t necessarily just for tracking your finances.
Now, you can do so much more. For example, you can automate certain functions, like invoicing. You need to invoice your clients, but that takes time and effort that you can’t spare. Not only that, but it means your invoices are going out in a timely fashion with fewer errors.
Of course, you will get the financial tracking that is a must for any business. Get a tool that will integrate with your CRM to make it even easier. Many of these tools will give you cash flow forecasting and other functionality to make your life easier.
Customer Service
Your customer service is important to your business, but it can be time-consuming and take you away from your core tasks. You can automate much of your customer service, however, making it easy to respond to clients if there are simple requests.
A customer service tool will give you 24 hour service coverage, and for any questions it can’t answer they are directed to the appropriate employee.
Your clients are important, but you don’t always have time to answer simple questions or perform menial tasks for them. When you are running a business, there is a lot to do, but only so many hours in a day.
You need help with repetitive tasks or for performing vital functions of your business. With any or all of these tools, you will find that you have more time in the day for growing your business.
Accounting tools
Sales Analytics