If you are an SMB person, you must know it is highly challenging to look after the sales pipeline for different products/services, sales leads, and business data. Furthermore, you need to follow up with customers to keep them engaged with your offerings or services. To address all the issues in one single package, software as a service (SaaS) providers have developed on-premise or cloud-hosted customer relationship management software, CRM. But, all CRMs are not suitable since SMBs require usability, ease of use, and affordability. To fill this vacuum, Zoho CRM has rolled out a small business-centric sales pipeline and leads management app known as Bigin. Read on to learn how easy is sales pipeline management with Bigin by Zoho CRM.
What Is Sales Pipeline Management?
The sales process is a complex set of events. Hence, sales leads or managers divide all the stages of sales and put them on a spreadsheet or whiteboard for easy visualization. Such a flowchart of sales events is known as a sales pipeline. A sales pipeline will mainly include tasks like incoming sales options and guiding them through various stages to either close the deal as won or lost. The process of managing all these tasks along with the salesperson involved in this cycle is known as sales pipeline management. Before the digital era, sales teams usually used sticky notes on whiteboards to visualize and manage the sales pipeline. But, as digital technology advanced and spreadsheets came into existence, businesses started using tools like Microsoft Excel. However, managing various sales pipelines is troublesome on spreadsheets, and you need more robust software that will automatically put the leads into the sales pipeline. This enables you to put manual effort into reaching out to the customers and convincing them rather than managing spreadsheets. Various CRM software developers tried their best to create complex tools for sales pipelines. But most of these are so ambiguous that you need multiple operators just for the tool. But, Zoho has created a simple CRM for sales that is truly intuitive and easy on your pocket.
Meet Bigin by Zoho CRM
Bigin is a new pipeline-based sales CRM built on the Zoho CRM platform. Zoho has developed the CRM keeping in mind the needs of micro, small, and medium businesses that need to optimize their sales operations. The tool’s rollout is just in time since global businesses are going through a challenging digital transformation for which most companies did not prepare ahead of time. While enterprise-level businesses have the investment and resources to continue the business without losing revenue, that is not the case for SMBs. With the business transformation, SMBs need to re-configure the entire sales pipeline, which ultimately costs revenue. Instead, SMBs can get started for free with Bigin and upgrade to a subscription package that suits their sales operations. Since the Bigin app does not come with any learning curves, it is easier for the business owners or small teams to operate the app on the cloud and start seeing improved results. It has an intuitive user interface with various sales pipeline fields, visualization filters, and custom fields. The tool interface is highly organized, dividing the workspace into a left-side navigation pane and a right-side taskboard. Just above the taskboard, you will also find a customization panel letting you change the pipeline, deal, and due dates. The tool makes sales pipeline management a cakewalk since you get all the resources and data in one cozy workspace. You can easily switch to Contacts, Companies, Products, Activities, and Dashboards from pipelines to oversee the entire sales operation.
Features of Bigin
The following are the essential features you should look for in a sales CRM for SMBs. Bigin offers all of these:
#1. Engaging Business Prospects
Communication with the sales leads is the key to successful deals. Once you import leads from your source, you can manage them on Bigin for a 360-degree view of leads. You can seamlessly contact clients through phone calls, emails, digital forms, and tweets directly from the Bigin app.
#2. Manage Sales Pipelines
Pipeline management is the core feature of Bigin. Sub features like multiple pipelines and pipeline view keeps your Bigin workspace clutter-free. Yet, you can access all the leads and their conversion to the sales process with a single click. It also offers customized CRM fields so that you can visualize sales data the way you prefer. Moreover, activity monitoring modules let you pick up any sales lead that is nearing a follow-up call soon and notify a team member to close the call.
#3. Business Data Security
You can control the CRM data access through roles and profiles. Hence, you can ensure only a specific person can access certain deal data. Should there be any data incidents, you will know who worked on the client or deal. You can also perform an audit of the entire CRM to visualize who performed which activity that led to issues with a deal closing. Moreover, your business automatically complies with GDPR since Zoho hosts Bigin on its platform.
#4. Third-Party App Integrations
Bigin easily integrates with more than 100 apps from Zoho and third-party vendors. For example:
Integrate with Zoho Forms and Zoho Analytics for business intelligence.Sync with Mailchimp for effortless email marketing.Schedule client meetings through Zoom right from the Bigin app.Setup RingCentral or Constant Contact for telephony services.
#5. Mobile Apps
Bigin is a mobile-ready CRM. You can install Bigin by Zoho CRM from App Store or Play Store for compatible mobile devices. The mobile app enables you to perform almost all the tasks from a smartphone. Hence, you can run sales operations while traveling.
How to Close More Deals With Bigin
Multiple pipeline management is the key element in closing more deals than before. You can create different sales channels for varying clientele and efficiently manage the workflows. It also lets you customize the phases of the sales manually so that you never miss out on any customer experience insight. You can simply create multiple deals for different leads and products. Then, assign the deals to one or more employees of your sales workforce. The deals will contain Kanban-style tasks that the sales workforce needs to complete on a timely basis. You can view sales pipeline events from the Activities screen to verify whether your team is working on schedule or not. You also can view the overall sales status by watching the Bigin Dashboard. Here, you will find key performance metrics like Deals Won, Deals Lost, Open Deals, Calls Completed, etc.
Why Bigin for Sales Pipeline Management?
Startups, micro, small, and medium businesses must focus on sales with balanced customer service. Additionally, these businesses need to focus on in-house sales operations rather than out-sourcing. While automation is a key advantage for such scenarios, you also need to prepare for do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions. Bigin gives you all of the above. You can skip the CRM settings phase and get right into selling. Thanks to ready-made and editable templates from Bigin. Also, you can change the sale pipeline anytime when there is an alteration in the sales strategy or client type. You can choose from real estate, software consulting, legal, insurance, etc., templates for sales management. You can also set up different teams like customer onboarding, order fulfillment, website launch, startup fundraising, etc., if you want dedicated groups working on different business verticals. That is not all! There are more reasons for using Bigin, and they are:
Spreadsheets consume a lot of time for setup, formatting, and maintenance. The time you invest does not yield any value for your business since it is mostly manual and offline.Spreadsheets could go wrong anytime, like someone making irreversible changes, a client unable to understand the numbers, etc.Kanban boards could look like a CRM alternative, but it does not help you with an automatic customer or lead management.Kanban boards also do not offer any sales workflow automation.
Benefits of Bigin for SMBs
While enterprises need a complex sales CRM, SMBs need the opposite. They need a simplified tool that does not require a specialized team for operation and is also cheap. Bigin is just the sales CRM that your small or medium business needs. Here are the advantages that you will enjoy:
#1. Appropriate Functionality Packages
Bigin comes with all the features you need to efficiently manage sales operations. It does not contain unnecessary modules or complicated workflows that force you to hire a dedicated executive for tool management. It has built-in emails, social media intelligence, voice calling, survey forms, data compliance, and audit tools. Thus, if you need to follow up on a CEO meeting with a prospective client, you can call the client or send an email right from Bigin. The tool processes all these data on the cloud, and you can easily download that in report form for investor or authority reporting purposes.
#2. Ease of Use
While the tool is not a spreadsheet, it has a similar look so that existing employees can easily catch up with it. Thus, you do not need to train your sales workforce for the app or hire a new team, which could impact the business’s profitability. In the beginning, you can simply choose a sales pipeline template that matches your business and start managing sales operations with ease. You can also customize the template fields as new requirement comes up. Thus, you can get started right from the first day of subscription. Also, you do not need to bear any sales lead losses due to tool setup and related downtimes.
#3. Economical for SMBs
Small, micro, and medium businesses can try the core features of Bigin for free. The free plan includes up to 500 records, one sales pipeline, three sales workflows, customer calls, Zapier integrations, Zoho forms, and Android and iOS apps. If you like the tool and want more features, you can subscribe to Express or Premier plans. There are also affordable add-ons that you can get to scale up operations, like additional records, file storage, and one-time data backup.
Alternatives to Bigin by Zoho CRM
#1. Salesmate
Salesmate is one of the popular alternatives to Bigin. It helps you transform leads into happy customers and close more win deals than lost ones. Also, it enables you to personalize each sales pipeline journey according to the customer. Moreover, its user interface is simple yet productive for your sales pipeline management team. At its core, there is a Sales Pipeline module for streamlined sales operations, managing multiple sales channels, deal statuses, automated tasks, and notifications. Around it, there are other standard functionalities like sales activity tracking, contact management, product management, meeting scheduler, and shared team inbox for collaborative work.
#2. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is yet another sales pipeline management CRM that you can check out without paying for the actual product. It only takes a few minutes to set up the CRM according to your business’s sales operation. Once done, you can easily focus on actions that get you to a successfully closed deal instead of visualizing it virtually. The Pipedrive app is suitable for all sorts of sales-linked businesses. Whether you sell computer applications or car accessories, it is the right sales CRM for you. The core sales feature is the Pipeline and Deals. Around this, there are other advanced features like drag-and-drop pipeline designing, custom pipeline fields, a chatbot for lead generation, mobile apps, and many more.
#3. Keap
Keap is a sales and marketing automation tool that offers a host of functionalities for SMBs. For example, CRM, text messaging, landing pages, email marketing, payments, eCommerce, and sales pipeline in one intuitive application. Its sales pipeline management functionality gives you a big picture of the business operations without clutter. You can use the drag-and-drop feature to move the leads to different statuses like qualifying, won, etc. Additionally, until the deal is closed successfully, Keap will automatically remind your team for follow-up calls or emails.
Final Words
So far, you must have found out that Bigin has slick tools and a simple interface yet is capable of multiple sales pipeline management for different services or products. Furthermore, it comes with a chronological interface that enables you to easily determine how the clients are engaging with your business. Moreover, Bigin makes it easy to manage records, files, products, services, and data. And the ultimate punch is that it is highly economical than alternative options that SMBs can go for. In a nutshell, Bigin by Zoho CRM is suitable for smaller businesses since it offers complete control and delivers the sales pipeline processing power that basic CRMs or office enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools can not provide.
