Close for Small Business: Features + Workflows to Boost Win Rates

Small business does it different. The tools and processes larger competitors use won’t translate directly into your world. Your needs are different, your team is different—and your budget is different.

At Close, we understand the challenges and triumphs of bootstrapped and scaling teams. How? That’s who we are, too, and we’ve been growing through the ups and downs alongside you since 2013.

Close was built for startups and small businesses—so today, we’d like to share how you (as a small business) can get the most out of our CRM system.

What Should Small Businesses Look for in a CRM?

In a moment, we’ll get into the features that make Close an excellent CRM for your small business. But first, what should you be looking for in a CRM?

Every small business we know needs streamlined workflows, reasonable pricing, and scalable processes as their team and company grow. So, when selecting a CRM, consider:

• Flexibility: Your CRM should work with and respond to your unique business needs and workflows. This means adaptable features, customizable reporting, and flexible outreach processes. And as you scale, make sure your CRM can keep up.
• Limited tool-switching: Your small business makes magic with limited resources. And your CRM should offer various functionalities in order to curb tool-switching and keep your team on-task—including in-app reporting, automation, and communication features.
• Great support: Onboarding and ongoing support should complement your pace and efficiency—rather than slow you down.
• Ease-of-use: Your CRM is central to daily operations. So, invest in a system your team can quickly understand, adapt, and use effectively. Reduce training, increase productivity.
• Transparent pricing: Working with a limited budget means you really need to know the pricing structure of your CRM. If you onboard to a new system, only to find that the features you want cost an extra grand? Yikes.
• The right integrations: Select a CRM that integrates with the rest of your tried-and-true tools. This will help simplify your workflows and avoid future headaches. (Psst: Zapier is great for this.)

Spoiler: Close offers all of these (and more). Since 2013, we’ve been building a CRM as a small business, for small businesses—that focuses on better communication and an exceptional user experience. Our free data migration, simple setup, and speedy onboarding help founders to close more deals right away, and our ongoing support & powerful integrations get you more mileage than any other CRM in the space. Plus,

In fact, we’re ready to dive into the reasons why Close is, in our humble opinion, the best CRM solution for your small business.

We know time is of the essence, my friend. In this free, on-demand demo, you'll see how Close's sales automation tools help thousands of reps double their revenue today.

7 Reasons Why Close Is an Optimized Solution for Small Businesses

Close was designed for small businesses—so we’re intentional about providing what you need, in the way that you need it, and exceeding expectations. We strive to optimize your sales process so that you can close more deals ASAP.

1. Small Business Has Always Been Our Focus—And Always Will Be

We aren’t interested in moving upmarket like other CRMs. We want to enable small businesses—always. Our product roadmap reflects that. And we’ve never taken any funding, which leaves us free to do what’s best for our customers.

Did you know that Close itself is a small business? We have just about 90 people on our team. So, we understand first-hand the challenges and concerns faced by a scaling organization.

Our passion for supporting early-stage orgs extends to our Close for Startups program, which offers discounted rates to qualifying small businesses. We received similar support in our early days—and now, we want to empower fast-growing, customer-focused companies with the same powerful sales tools used by established businesses.

2. A Comprehensive, All-in-One Solution

Our tools double the productivity of every sales rep. And it’s done via our all-in-one CRM.

Communication lives in Close, with built-in global calling, email, and SMS—and that’s just the beginning. Organize notes on your leads after the call, and set tasks for your team members. Segment prospects based on data-backed criteria and enroll them in automated outreach. Track KPIs and rep performance. Look over your sales pipeline.

In short, opportunities, reporting, and outreach are all there—in one platform, accessible across your entire team. This all-in-one approach mitigates the need for various platforms, allowing small businesses like yours to consolidate resources, saving time and money.

And they aren’t just your average tools, either. Check out our:

• Power Dialer: The Power Dialer burns through lead lists automatically, without switching apps—increasing your reach in less time.
• Sequences: Create sequences to automate lead assignment and outreach. You can use templates, and track your success to iterate your approach.
• Opportunity Funnel Report: Track sales velocity and conversion rates, and analyze variables (such as industry or source) to predict closing probability.

Context, communication, and collaboration are united in Close. And for a small business? That's an invaluable convenience—and one of the top reasons SMBs and startups choose our CRM.

3. Onboarding at the Speed of Light

As a small business with limited resources, you can’t afford to waste time on onboarding. You need quick adoption across your team in order to scale productivity fast.

Close is the Geico of CRMs. We can get you up and running, from trial sign-up to first sales call, in about 15 minutes. And for the entire onboarding process, give us a few hours—not weeks or months. This is possible thanks to an intuitive UI and the hands-on approach of our team.

Free data migration, simple setup, and customized onboarding will have your sales reps closing more deals in no time.

In fact, Close is ranked #2 in G2’s list of CRMs that are easiest to use.

4. Top-Notch Support

One of our core strengths at Close is our support team. Their dedication to ensuring our users receive the best possible experience is central to our success and customer retention strategy. (Seriously, just check out all the glowing reviews on G2.)

Folks like Joseph, Mariah, Caroline, and Sven are accessible, knowledgeable, and quick to respond to your inquiries with full support—not unhelpful jargon. In SaaS, negative experiences with customer support are one of the main reasons for canceled subscriptions.

So, our average workday response time is just 15 minutes.

Great support is a hidden value gain. It may not initially stand out as a must-have when selecting your CRM. But when shit hits the fan and issues arise, you will want a reliable support team eager to get you back on track.

“I want to say thank you for making Close so personable and making it feel like there are people on the other side of a product. And I hope and pray that you continue to do because it's what makes you different than everyone else.” – Millisa Nwokolo, La Crown Logistics

5. Adaptable to Your Process and Your Business

Trust us, we know things are always changing inside every small business. The people, the workflows, the strategies—and we built Close to keep up the pace of rapid change.

Flexible fields allow you to shape Close to fit your unique sales processes. This allows you to organize and report on the most important prospect details (in just a few clicks) by using Custom Activities, Custom Fields, and Custom Objects.

Track exactly what you need to track—and nothing more—with leads, contacts, and opportunities. Follow only the most important KPIs for your business. And learn which features work best for your team and ROI—then forget the others. Too much info will only paralyze your process.

Close is simple, but flexible. We want to make sure we mold to you—not you to us.

6. Integrations With Your Favorite Tools

For a tech stack to function smoothly, your CRM needs to integrate with your other favorite tools. Close already offers tons of native and no-code integrations, and we’re always adding more.

Some of our standouts include HubSpot (for marketing), Calendly, Microsoft 365, and Segment. Our snazzy Zapier integration lets you connect Close to hundreds of additional apps, and automate your processes, too.

Your CRM is the central station of your sales team—so, you need to make sure the tracks connect from one tool to the next. With Close, they can.

7. Available On the Go

The Close mobile app lets you connect with leads and customers in real time, even on the go.

The app is available for iOS, and currently supports outbound calling, email, and SMS outreach (with more features to come). Get immediate context with lead details and activities so you can enter coffee shop meetings prepared. Plus, view and edit your Opportunity Pipeline from anywhere.

Later this year, we’re adding inbound calling, push notifications, improved SMS, reporting, and dark mode—as well as support for Android.

We know that small businesses crave convenience and require frequent customer contact. With our mobile app, you are in business—from anywhere, anytime you have internet.

4 *Hidden* Close Features for Small Business Growth

Because we’re built for SMBs and startups, we’ve baked in various features and efficiency aids designed to streamline your sales workflows—specifically. Here are some of the most underutilized and *hidden* Close features for small business growth.

1. Workflows

Once you know each step of your sales process like the back of your hand, you’ll probably realize there are steps you don’t have to take manually. Enter Workflows—your very own personalized CRM assistant, ready to help you complete those manual tasks on repeat, without skipping a beat.

Workflows are designed for busy salespeople who don’t have time to learn complex new tools. You can set up a trigger, then create a list of actions to be completed once that trigger goes off, including:

• Assigning a lead to a specific user or group
• Sending an email
• Sending an SMS
• Adding a task or call to a rep’s list

No muss, no fuss, just a smooth sales process running on repeat.

2. Send As

If you want to send a message on behalf of another Close user, use the Send As feature, available on our Pro and Business plans.

You can use Send As in manual, bulk, and sequence emails. This is useful for maintaining consistency in email campaigns, and building customer relationships with specific salespeople and support members—even when they aren’t available.

Replies to Sent As emails will go to the inbox of the user who allowed the sending on their behalf, rather than the actual sender.

And keep in mind: Close syncs with Gmail and Outlook, so you can continue using your email provider of choice, regardless of how messages are sent and received.

3. Custom Activities

Custom Activities allow you to create a custom action type to record and centralize off-platform interactions. These may include lead forms, support tickets, call outcomes, chat messages, and more.

CAs can be used to drive automation (via Zapier), act as calling scripts (for all types of sales, cold, and qualifying calls)—and much more.

This versatility is precisely what SMBs need to optimize their processes. In fact, one of our top partners drives his whole setup with Custom Activities.

4. Automated Follow-ups

The last thing your small business needs is to watch quality leads slip through the cracks.

With automated follow-ups, you can enroll folks into a multi-channel Sequence—or set a task in Close to follow up when a lead doesn’t reply. Turning on auto-pilot protects your lead interactions while freeing you and your reps to invest in other sales outreach and deal-closing activities.

Segment leads, develop templates, and tailor messaging—quickly and easily.

“The Sequences on Close have been invaluable. They have enabled us to streamline and more efficiently manage our workflows.”

—Conal Maguire, Head of Business Operations at TalentPool

3 Key Workflow Tips to Maximize Your Results With Close

We want you to get the highest possible ROI with Close. It benefits you, and it makes us look good.

So, to do that, follow these three important workflow tips:

• Maintain clean data. Your database needs to be up to date. Why? Clean data is the foundation of all client-relationship activities. So, make sure to properly import, clean, and maintain your database in order to improve the efficiency of your Close operations.
• Outreach immediately. When a new lead enters Close, make sure they are enrolled in the appropriate sequence for immediate outreach. You’re about 100x more likely to connect with and qualify a lead if you reach out within five minutes. So, make it count.
• Develop in-app workflows. Your manager or favorite Close expert can set up vital workflows for your team using Smart Views, templates, automated Sequences, and so on. This preparation will streamline the everyday use of Close for your users.

Adding these best practices to your approach will maximize your results with Close.

Test Close + Crush Your Small Business Goals

Close has your back. Between the all-in-one platform, focused functionality, and stellar support, we are intentional about meeting you where you’re at—and supporting you to get where you want to go.

You need a smooth and strong ally in your CRM. One that provides the value and features your small business needs—and supports you with transparency in all respects.

That way, you can crush your sales goals and growth trajectories.

But don’t take our word for it. Try Close with a 14-day free trial; no credit card required. If we aren’t a match? No hard feelings.

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