What should a small business look for in a CRM?

A small business should look for a CRM that answers the phone, books the job, and keeps every customer in one place without you having to type things in. Most CRMs are built for big teams and pile on features you will never use. The right one for a sole trader does a few jobs properly and leaves you alone to get on with the work.

What does a CRM actually do?

At its simplest, a customer system remembers who rang you, what they wanted, and what happened next. That is it. Anything beyond that — fancy dashboards, scoring, pipelines — is only useful if it saves you time. If a feature makes you do more admin, it is the wrong feature for a one-person business.

What matters most for a sole trader?

1. It captures every call and enquiry automatically, so nothing depends on you remembering to write it down.
2. It books jobs into a diary you already use, instead of a separate one you have to check.
3. It texts the customer back, so a missed call does not become a lost job.
4. It shows you, in plain English, what came in this month and where it came from.

What should you ignore?

Ignore anything sold as a platform, a suite, or an all-in-one system. Ignore features aimed at sales teams — lead scoring, opportunity stages, forecasting. They are noise for a tradesperson. You do not need a pipeline; you need a diary that fills itself and a phone that gets answered.

How much should it cost?

It should cost less than one average job a month, and it should be priced in plain pounds with no hidden per-seat charges. If the price only makes sense once you have a team of five, it is not built for you. Look for a flat monthly fee you can stop without a penalty.

Do you have to be technical to use it?

No. If you cannot work it from your phone between jobs, it is the wrong one. The set-up should be done for you, and the day-to-day should need no more than checking a diary and reading a monthly report. Anything that needs you to learn a system before it pays for itself is not worth your time.

How do you tell if it is earning its keep?

You look at the pounds it brought in against the pounds it costs, every month. If a monthly report shows the calls answered, the jobs booked, and the money that came from them, you can see in one glance whether it is paying for itself. If you cannot see that number, you cannot judge it honestly.