If you’re a small business owner you may ask yourself why you need a CRM software. When you're setting up a business, is just you or you and a partner. You think you can take care of everything just fine.

You may have a few customers that you can handle on your own. It’s not difficult. As your business grows, more customers come your way.

Sure, that method may work until your clients start hitting double digits. Then, they start to have three digits. Still, you make it work.

You may wonder why you should spend money on something that you can manage without help. But the truth is, managing your inquiries through your email client alone isn’t enough. Neither is organising information with spreadsheets.

Sometimes you get an email and reply right away, but don’t hear back from the person who sent it. Maybe you didn’t get a reply. Or, it got lost in the barrage of more recent inquiries. What matters is: you’re losing potential sales.

What about all the customers you lost without noticing?

You mark emails you need to reply to with visual aids (stars, colour tags). But after a while, you have a never-ending list of marked emails to respond. Some aren’t a priority, others were replaced by recent emails from the prospective client.

That is very inefficient.

You start to feel the strain of keeping up with all those emails. You think maybe you need to hire someone to help you with this. For that, you’ll have to spend the time of your busy schedule training that person. Not to mention, you have to pay them.

You need precise information to make good decisions. Finding new business opportunities and revenue streams. Only that will help you grow the business.

Your business can’t afford missteps.

Tracking data across various spreadsheets is a hard task. Even harder to get an exact picture of your business.

Before you realise, you’re overwhelmed. Your information is scattered across spreadsheets, sticky notes and other reminders that seem to be impossible to find.

Wrong or outdated information is not the way to go. Consumers are getting more demanding. They want you to know everything about them: their names, buying history, their likes and dislikes and a lot more.

About 92% of retail executives say that customers are demanding personalization in online shopping, according to a report by Drapers and RetailWeek.

Consumers want a personalised service now - not in 10 minutes. And if you can’t give it, there are plenty of other businesses that can.

People will stick with a business that gives them what they want. It’s that simple. Give them what they want and you’ll have a customer for a long, long time.

Stop trying to do everything on your own. You think you’re saving money, but in reality, you’re wasting time and money.

Invest in a system to help you now and avoid losing money in the future.

A CRM allows you to track interactions between you and your customers and prospects. It can save you time and give a better experience for your customers.

Long-term accounts are valuable and need to be managed. Your customers aren’t all the same. Some need special attention, as they bring the most revenue.

Business relies on a certain amount of repeat customers, so a relationship with them is paramount.

A contact going through CRM is not lost in the middle of other emails. When someone contacts you, the CRM will automatically create a contact form for that person: name, email (and any other fields required in the contact form) and the message sent. You can also manually add a contact.

The interaction history will let you know what it was already done and what are the next steps to take. This is available to all employees.

If you have employees, a CRM will make sure everyone follows the same process. This means that all information in the system offers exact reports. Information is recorded the same way and accounted for.

With a CRM system, you can get insights that’ll help you make better decisions. Your business can grow at a faster pace that you can keep up with.

Software exists to make your life easier. It’s here so you can keep your customers, increase your sales and revenue. There are a lot of choices available for CRM systems. Proprietary or Open Source software, Free or Paid solutions.

Every one of those has its advantages and disadvantages. It’s up to you to decide which one is the better fit to your business.

We obviously recommend Odoo: it’s versatile, user-friendly and works with businesses of all sizes. Odoo is a great solution for your business.

It’s one of the best open source CRM, according to Computer World UK.

As your business grows, you can easily add new apps to cover your needs. No need for expensive integrations. All apps work together as one unique system.