Christmas and Budgeting for Priorities

1 Dec 2014

Last week I wrote about the importance of putting together a wish list of things you need your CRM to do for your business. It just helps you when you’re shopping for and then later configuring your new CRM system.

On this Monday after what has become one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year, I want to talk about finding the right deal on a CRM system. Now, I’m not referring to necessarily finding the cheapest system, I’m talking about finding the right system for your budget.

For some businesses, this can be really difficult, because they may need something quite specific but don’t necessarily have the budget to splash out on a fully bespoke system. For other businesses, the budget isn’t quite as tight, but they may not need all the bells and whistles, preferring something a bit more straightforward and manual.

It all comes down to what your business needs and can afford.

Think back to that first Christmas you spent as an adult, the first time you were buying presents with your own hard earned money, instead of with your parents’. My shopping list that year had a lot more to do with how much I could afford to spend, rather than what I actually wanted to buy for each person.

In the end, I shopped around to find the right deals and, sometimes, completely changed my gift ideas. My friends were all in the same boat, so instead of buying things for each other, we decided to make all our presents for each other. There were knitted scarves and personalised picture frames, home-made cakes and even a few mixed CDs (because MP3s hadn’t completely taken off yet).

By taking some of the work into our own hands, we’d all saved a few pennies that could then be put towards buying gifts for our families. That year, I still had to re-evaluate my original gift ideas for my parents, but those more expensive things that I really wanted to buy them? I just put them on a separate “someday” list and bought them when I wasn’t a student anymore.

If you face CRM shopping the same way you face Christmas shopping, so starting out with a wish list and then budgeting out for each of your needs, wants, and “ideal world scenarios,” you’ll be able to judge what you can buy this year, what you can do yourself, and those things you can leave for the future.