CRM for tech startups is one of the major factors of success; a secret weapon you can rely on in Silicon Valley.
Those entrepreneurs daring to embark on a path with an over 90% failure rate are guaranteed a total absence of life/work balance, sleep, and peace of mind for years to come.
In this ocean of uncertainty, tech startup CRM is the one lifebuoy in the dark waters, that ensures some sort of normalcy, stability, and order in the chaos of a new business venture.
Nimble has walked in those shoes and has reached its goals in the extremely competitive league of the best CRMs for small and medium businesses. So, when we talk about the tech stack for tech startups, we know exactly what we mean.
We are thrilled to share some of the best practices crystallized by the road laid by trial and error so you don’t have to stumble and fall just as many times.
What is CRM, and why all the fuss?
A shorthand definition of a CRM:
CRM is a software solution that is designed to manage a company’s contact database initially. At this stage of SaaS development, many Customer Relationship Management tools have evolved to also take care of task management, emailing, planning, and scheduling functions.
As with any cloud-based SaaS instrument, such services are available anywhere with access to the internet. Due to their universal appeal to a gigantic addressable market, CRMs are also an affordable system with per-user rates hovering as low as $20-$50 per month.
Importance of CRM tools for SaaS and tech startups
An island of normalcy in an ocean of utter chaos
If you have ever been in a room messy enough that you find a pair of socks in the fridge and noodles hanging from the crystal chandelier, you have a vague idea of what starting a tech company feels like.
As the legendary Mike Tyson states: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
This is why having a plan beforehand is important, but having the flexibility to adjust to changing reality is a life-and-death skill.
This is where a Contact Management tool becomes a Chaos Management tool and works as a lifeline between the dream and reality.
A time saver & efficiency booster
Time is the most precious asset, specifically when you are in the waters with a proven quarter of the tech startups failing in the first year.
The best CRMs will have several tools that save you time: from mass emails to the ease of working in the system where emails, calendars, task tools are integrated and defy any double-work.
Efficiencies work side by side with order and discipline. A client relationship management tool allows just that medium, where contacts, deals, tasks, events are interconnected and orderly flow along the pipeline.
Nimble CRM, for example, saves 90 minutes a day for its users.
A heart rate monitor in the emergency room
When in the heat of pitching to investors, working on MVP, and trying to get some traction, processes get random, confused, and baffling.
Having a dashboard with all team’s tasks for a day, week, month, getting pipeline reports, seeing sales agents’ achievements in nicely structured graphs allows to quickly diagnose any potential looming catastrophes and take preventative measures before it’s too late.
A no-nonsense prospector tool
There are so many contacts you need to reach out to as a startup entrepreneur: potential partners, team talent, investors, influencers, and press to name a few.
Top CRM software for tech startups, like Nimble, will take prospecting to another level with tools like Nimble Prospector browser extension, which is integrated with social media and allows for the reduction of manual work with profile enrichment features.
The mission control center for your turbulent flight: insider tips on how to use CRM for Tech startups
In one of the most popular videos about personal experiences learned when building a million-dollar tech startup, Utsav places the right team and right tools on the second most important lesson learned while on the journey. No wonder though; these are the main ingredients of the success of pretty much anything, leave alone such a talent-dependent mission as building a successful startup.
Let’s see exactly how a CRM can help a new tech company survive its first year:
5 Lessons I Learned Creating a Million Dollar Tech Startup
Grow your contact base tirelessly and keep them organized
The million-dollar Rolodex is not a thing of the past; it just transformed into a neat list of contacts in your Customer Relationship Management tool.
There are more than 40 fields in a contact profile of Nimble; you can use Nimble Prospector credits to enrich your existing profiles with the least manual work.
While many of the default demographic segments, like a city, state, gender, and company, fields will help you search for the right contacts, adding tags to contacts is what can truly take contact segmentation to another level.
You can add any custom tags that will help you recognize and find the contact quicker to mass email or search for deals and notes, for example, you can use similar tags as long as all of your team is on the same page: “series A”, “Conference XYZ”, “angel investor”, “Venture fund”, “GoLang expert”, etc.
Investor meetings: expect to fail to gain experience
Pitching is the art that takes talent, idea, and experience.
Suppose you have the talent and idea; you will need to gain experience anyway.
Bringing the system to the process is one way to keep your mental health in top shape and move closer to your success in the first investment round.
We advise it’s a healthy habit to plan for failure for the first few pitches. To ensure your CRM has some smaller investment funds and beginner angel investors on your schedule earlier on. This will allow you to gain confidence, much-needed experience, and not take rejection personally.
The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed | Bill Gross
Influencer marketing: systemize to monetize
Influencers take all shapes and forms in the Silicon Valley and the tech domain.
With all the glitz and glam of Instagram, Stackoverflow or Reddit may be more appropriate platforms to mix and digitally network for a budding entrepreneur looking for talent and investment.
When deep-diving into channels and events, that can help you gain high ROI connections, ensure to plan these tasks to your CRM for a tech company:
- Research other similar projects with successful funding
- Research other similar projects who failed recently
- Research the preferred communication channels & platforms of your investors
- Ensure an active expert presence on local forums and social media groups
- Reach out to the target audience via LinkedIn, working from bottom to top. When a top boss is considering to accept your request or not, you have many common connections.
Prevent burnout by scheduling time off
Founder burnout is soon to be added to the list of official WHO medical conditions. This is only a joke, but it’s based on many true stories.
There’s always work to do for a tech company only finding its way to recognition among users, talent, and investors.
Unless you purposefully set aside time in your schedule for leisure with your family and friends, burnout will catch up with you sooner rather than later. Plan to rest, it’s a long way and your company needs you in top shape.
Regroup and reframe: pivot company based on A/B tests
Some of the biggest names out there started as something else; for example, YouTube was supposed to be a dating platform.
The trick of many multi-million-dollar companies is that they were good at testing new formats and changing direction based on results.
Clinging to your original perception of the company is detrimental to your company. Keep an open mind and be ready to adjust the course.
Naturally, CRM software for tech companies have every tool to help you steer towards your renewed goals:
- Channel old meetings and create new ones
- Send a mass email to your team with a policy update in a few clicks
- Reassign tasks to new team members
- Update your company’s Twitter from inside your CRM with new goals
To name just a few!
Nimble CRM software for a tech company: your comfort, refuge, and support
Best CRMs for tech companies feature some of these qualities:
- Use-friendly, as nobody has time and patience to master new complex tools;
- Affordable, as no one has money to waste when developers cost what they cost;
- User-approved, as no one can fake 1500+ genuine positive reviews on independent review sites, like Capterra;
- Multi-functional, as you want a single mission control center with calendar, emails, pipeline, task management, reporting, contact database all seamlessly interconnected with each other;
- Social-media focused, as this is the new norm.
Nimble CRM only costs $19-25 per user per month depending on if you choose to pay monthly or annually.
It has garnered recognition on major software review sites like Capterra and GetApp as one of the top solutions, specifically in the categories like “CRM for business growth”, “CRM for SMB”.
This contact management tool is integrated with major social networks and has a handful of features to drive your business.
We know what it feels like when you’re just starting your business, which is why we’re happy to provide a 14-day free trial so you don’t waste money till you know it’s so worth it.
