When you’re a small business, building customer trust is vital. Every new potential that comes your way wants to know if you’re going to be there for them. Don’t let them slip away because your current CRM platform isn’t helping you reach everyone you can. Just one hour can make the difference between a hot lead and a lost lead.

Zoho CRM has already made a name for itself in the CRM industry as a leading cloud-based solution. Now, the company is unveiling a new program, Zoho Bigin, geared specifically toward small businesses like yours. With Bigin, you can access all of your customer relationship data in one seamless platform so you can close deals with ease and confidence.

Bigin, powered by Zoho CRM, is a simple CRM developed with small businesses in mind. You can only do so much with a notepad and sticky notes. You shouldn’t be relying on a million pieces of paper that may have incorrect or missing information. Eventually you’ll need a CRM that will help organize contacts, engage with leads, manage pipelines, and analyze where you are succeeding or failing. That’s where Bigin helps.

Zoho Bigin is a great “starter” CRM for small businesses previously working off spreadsheets and a paper trail. The platform is a stripped-down version of Zoho CRM, eliminating some of the complexity reserved for larger organizations and focusing primarily on lead engagement and pipeline management.

Bigin allows you to engage with leads in a variety of ways. With access to email, Twitter, Webforms, and built-in telephony features, you have the flexibility to reach your leads in a way that’s comfortable for both you and them. Start by capturing leads through Bigin’s customizable Webform components and convert high intent website visitors into contacts.

Once you have a few leads, try connecting your business email to Bigin. This is a great way to send mass emails to your customers, save time with email templates and signatures, and view insights and reporting. Bigin also has access to Twitter, which allows you to get a complete history of your contacts’ tweets, follows, and likes. You may also reply to their tweets to keep the conversation going without leaving your CRM system.

An important feature of any CRM platform is a visible pipeline. Bigin’s pipeline management tool lets you view all the information about your deals at a glance; manage individual deal pipelines for different processes in your day to day sales cycle; customize data by adding smart filters to find what you need quickly; and maintain a clear overview of activities like tasks, calls, and events.

Other features of Zoho Bigin include:

• Industry-specific templates
• Task workflows and automation
• Pre-built dashboards
• Real-time notifications and sales signals
• Custom roles and profiles
• Mobile optimization
• Integrations with Google Workspaces & Microsoft 365

Which Zoho platform is right for you? Both tools will give you the powerful data you need to make smart sales decisions. However, there are a few differences.

Storage
If you’re worried about storage, Zoho CRM and Bigin both give you 1 GB of storage to use freely.

Price
You can access most features that Zoho CRM offers but at a slightly cheaper price. For comparison, Bigin Premier is $12 billed annually, while Zoho CRM Standard is $14 billed annually.

Features
Zoho CRM may have access to a few more features compared to Bigin Premier. If sales forecasting, marketing campaigns, or lead scoring are things you are worried about, then Zoho CRM is more up your alley. Bigin is essentially the “lite” version of Zoho CRM so you’ll get access to most features but not all.

The verdict? If you’re a brand-new business owner trying to get established and bring in new customers, use Bigin to get started. For those who are established and want to grow their businesses further, use Zoho CRM.

Whether you’re looking to bring down the cost of your annual spending by switching to a more affordable CRM, or you’re still working in spreadsheets and want to make a digital transformation, contact KDG’s team of Zoho experts. We’re here to help you build the customer relationships your business needs to grow.