You need these 35 tools if you are a small business owner- 2016

You need these 35 tools if you are a small business owner
35 Tool
Are you a small business owner? To make things easier for you and perform your day to day jobs easier, you need right tools.

You can find right combination of tools through your own experience. Trial and error is another process to find out right combination of online and offline sources.
Rather than spending your time on these things, here is a list of resources compiled for you broken down into different categories:

Customer Support
Success of each business depends upon customer services. The better you are at delivering excellent value.
You must have customer support in place to make sure you never miss on your customers. To keep records of support tickets, questions from your customers and general communication, check following tools:

  • ZenDesk : It is a customer support service which also feature as self-service solutions.
  • HappyFox : This is practical help-desk software
  • FreshDesk : If you want to make your customers happy, this is great service for streamlined customer services.
  • ClickDesk : ClickDesk provides combination of solutions to manage your customer interactions.
  • Expense Tracking
    You can’t run your business without keeping a track of your expenses. As a small business owner, this is most laborious work for you to manage.

    Using automated tools can help you to relieve some stress of managing your expenses. Whether you want to keep record of receipts other expenses, following tools can be of great help:

  • MileIQ : MileIQ is really smart tool to track miles for business owners.
  • ReceiptBank : Receipt Bank can help you avoid manual data entry.
  • Xpenditure : Provides complete services to handle tasks such as receipt tracking and accounting.
  • Automatic: This is hardware which can actually connect your car with rest of your digital life.
  • Customer Relationship Management
    To achieve explosive growth in your business, managing new and existing customers is must-do. If you put in place a good CRM, you can spot opportunities and enrich your relationships with your existing customers.
    Use of following tools can help you keep track of all your communications with your customers:

  • Agile CRM : To maintain optimal CRM, you need this automation tool for your marketing and client management.
  • Batchook: With BatchBook, you can make sure that every lead is followed up and all tasks are performed on time.
  • Capsule: It is a simple and flexible CRM tool for small businesses.
  • Relenta helps you maximize every opportunity and get you more done in less time.
  • Solve 360 helps you manage what is important
  • You don’t need a CRM helps your sales team to track and conclude the deals
  • Connector Tools
    If you are someone who likes to connect all things together and want few distractions, connector tools are great for you.
    Following connector tools will help you become efficient and can save you time:

  • Zapier : It helps you connect your favourable apps together
  • itDuzzit : It can save you lot of time by syncing data across cloud applications
  • OneSaas automatically shares data between apps you use
  • IFTT is a great service to automate most of your tasks
  • Project Management
    If your business revolves around projects, you need tools which can keep track of all steps to be done. Online project management tools are perfect to manage your projects and keep you organized.
    Use of following project management tools can help you keep track of all project related tasks:

  • Podio organizes and connects all your project tasks and communications.
  • Basecamp is excellent if you work in teams and can keep everybody on same page to deliver desired results.
  • AutoTask is IT business management solution
  • ClientSpot provides one simple solution to organize clients, projects and your deadlines in place
  • Marketing
    Your business can grow with word of mouth but you need a good marketing strategy for growth. Right from content marketing to direct sales, you need a plan and tools to hack your growth.
    To take your marketing to next level, try these tools:

  • MailChimp : This is a simple and quite efficient email marketing service for small businesses.
  • ActiveCompaign : This is all-in-one marketing platform which can help you grow your business.
  • Benchmark : Benchmark can help you to easily manage your email marketing.
  • HubSpot is inbound marketing and sales generation services offering great value for small businesses.
  • Lead Generation
    If you are a small business owner, you must be well aware of the fact that your business cannot sustain without constant stream of new leads.
    Following tools can help you to automate and streamline your sales process:

  • BidSketch can help you create client proposals within minutes
  • Wufoo is a great service to design and create forms online.
  • Quote Roller is a great service to generate quotes and communicate to the customers immediately.
  • Live Chat is simple communication software to keep you connected with clients.
  • Proposify : A Simple and cost effective service to generate proposals for your clients.
  • 123 contact form is a wufoo competitor offering you easy solution to design forms.
  • AcuityScheduling is a great tool to automate your client bookings, cancellations and is also effective to send reminders.
  • Workforce Management
    If your workforce is mobile and your employees are constantly in field generating sales, you need following tools:

  • GeoApp is a low cost alternative for job management
  • BlueFolder is a streamlined service if your team is mobile and in the field.
  • Using right combination of tools can take your small business to next level. With this list, I hope that you will be able to organize your work and be more productive at various tasks.