Year: 2016

Benefits Of Using Predictive Dialer With ConvergeHub CRM

Recently one of our clients mentioned in a conference call a phrase we hear over and over in different ways: “I don’t know how we did it before we integrated. By “integrated” he meant using a predictive dialer with their converged CRM.

Benefits Of Using Predictive Dialer With ConvergeHub CRM, learn why you must get ConvergeHub. Recently one of our clients mentioned in a conference call a phrase we hear over and over in different ways: “I don’t know how we did it before we integrated.”

By “integrated” he meant using a predictive dialer with their converged CRM. The advantages are just too big to ignore and these days is not a matter of “if” but “when” for companies looking to maximize performance and by consequence results. Who doesn’t want that?

But what is a Predictive Dialer?

A predictive dialer is a contact solution that works almost like an Artificial Intelligence: it dials from a list of phone numbers and quickly transfers any connected call to a live agent, bypassing unavailable phone lines and voice mails (or leaving messages instead).

This eliminates agent’s waiting time and accelerates contacts. The dialer “thinks” and decides.

For example, if this morning only 1 of every three calls are getting answered, the dialer will look at how many agents are working today and dial more numbers at the same time to get to that one connection more quickly and avoid any agent downtime. If the variables change the dialers adjusts accordingly by itself.

There’s even more, and we plan on explaining it while outlining the benefits of using a predictive dialer with a converged CRM.

Calls are matched with CRM records

When a contact calls, the predictive dialer checks their number against the CRM data and if there’s a match, immediately shows all of the client’s details on screen: orders, previous conversations, lead status, etc.

The same happens when an outbound call is connected to a live agent or when there’s a transfer based on agent skill or personal voicemail. Any changes made to the record, notes added and conversation recordings will be added to the CRM at the moment.

Dual way sync of new contact lists

If new lists, like paid ones, are added to the CRM, the predictive dialer will compare the new contact information and filter the contacts to detect any numbers in the “No Call” registry, fax numbers or to avoid duplicate entries if the contact is already in your CRM, only adding new contacts.

No more wasted time or manual work.

Smart prioritization

Calls can be routed to the based on predefined filter combinations and based on multiple criteria: location, language, prior contact, lead stage, etc.

For example, if a high priority lead calls, after matching their phone number with their record in the CRM, the dialer can route this call to only high performing or experienced agents ready to close the sale or to the same agent who answered the previous call to follow up on an incident.

Outgoing campaigns can also benefit from this smart prioritization.

Setting agents for success

Details, details, details! A predictive dialer / Converged CRM integration can contribute to contact success in small ways like showing a local phone number that will prompt potential customers to answer their phone, since we know they’re more likely to respond if they see numbers from the same area code or city.

Also, by providing powerful analytics to automatically determine the best calling times based on previous success with individual customers or group of leads and this info could be shared with the Customer Relationship Management.

As you can see, integrating a Converged CRM and a Predictive Dialer is full of advantages and usually out of reach, especially if you go for focused solutions like ConvergeHub and iNexus who work together to improve productivity (lower costs!) and drive sales while using their resources in a smart way.

ConvergeHub CRM introduces Email functionalities for its users

After the successful integration of Lead Clipper and Round Robin assignment rule, ConvergeHub is back with the announcement of two new features. This time the focus is on improving the emailing experience. So ConvergeHub has gone ahead and added Email History View Status and Reply All & Forward functionalities within its converged CRM platform. Check what these are and how will they benefit small businesses while emailing from ConvergeHub.

ConvergeHub CRM introduces Email functionalities for its users, a great boost for you to manage your daily schedule. Meeting with the client? Discussed the details through email. New Sales and Marketing guidelines? Sent to the team right at their inbox. Revised incentive scheme? Emailed to all channel partners.

No business can imagine running its operations without email. This rightly prepares the background for introducing our new set of features – Email History View Status and Reply All and Forward.

We know how crucial is email to all our customers. So in the quest of making things more easier and convenient for them, we have gone ahead and added a set of two compelling functionalities in ConvergeHub. Both are aimed at enhancing the emailing experience of our CRM users. Check it out –

Email History View Status

Emails are a great sigh of relief. But while we all use it uncomplainingly to immediately send information, files and collaterals, there is always a mild dissatisfaction in our minds – if only the email clients could tell us whether the emails have been delivered and whether they have been viewed by the recipients or not.

It often happens that emails are sent and there is no acknowledgement/response from the other end. In such situations, either we wait or send reminder calls and mails.

But this whole quandary can be easily avoided with ConvergeHub, now. Our CRM users are getting the compelling advantage to exactly know when the emails have been opened and viewed by their recipients. Exciting isn’t it?

Just months after we introduced the email delivery tracking feature within ConvergeHub, we have come up with this email open tracking feature as well. We know its one of the most important metrics of email because it ultimately tells whether the message has been successfully viewed by the recipients or not.

Unlike other CRMs who demand some specific changes in email settings, there is no such fuss with ConvergeHub. The status of all delivered emails will now automatically change from ‘delivered‘ to ‘viewed‘, once they are opened by the recipients.

Simple and effective !!

How it works

1. Send email to any Lead/Contact/Account/Partner.

Email History View Status2. Check the history tab in the subpanel of the (Lead/Contact/Account/Partner) details page. The history tab will initially show the email’s status as ‘sent’.

Email History View Status 23. After a few minutes the status will automatically turn to either ‘Delivered’ or ‘Bounced’.

Email History View Status 34. For an email delivered successfully, its status will automatically change from ‘Delivered’ to ‘Viewed’ after it is opened by the recipient.

Email History View Status 4Reply All & Forward

Emails are forwarded and replied to per day and per hour. To ensure that both these tasks are done in a snap, we have introduced Reply All and Forward functionalities into all email clients that are/will be integrated with ConvergeHub through IMAP.

How it works

Email History View Status 51. Reply All: If there are multiple recipients of the message, our users can respond to all of them, by clicking on ‘Reply All’ option above the message.

2. Forward: It lets our customers easily resend a message to other people, whether it’s a minutes of the meeting report or an important deal agreement copy. ConvergeHub users get the convenience to forward an individual message or an entire conversation.

Final Thoughts

All these features are live in ConvergeHub and are sure to improve the experience of managing business. Let us know what you think of these new set of additions and what other add-ons can be introduced to ConvergeHub. We’ll be waiting to hear your comments.

Not an existing ConvergeHub User?

No sweat! Check out ConvergeHub’s FREE TRIAL option and get a feel of what our software can do for your business.

Thank you!
ConvergeHub
P.S. Twitter is a great place to reach us.

https://twitter.com/convergehub
Looking forward to see you there.

Sync QuickBooks with ConvergeHub

CRM is the most common tool used by businesses for capturing and managing customer data. However for added benefit many entrepreneurs take the pain to pair their accounting software QuickBooks with CRM solution. ConvergeHub is a select software that offers seamless integration of QuickBooks within its CRM platform. ConvergeHub users can easily sync their QuickBooks data with the CRM to gain insight about past trends, create a more accurate forecast for the future, reduce search time and increase productivity.

Read QuickBooks CRM Integration – The Definitive Guide to know why you should sync QuickBooks data with your CRM.

Sync QuickBooks with ConvergeHub. It is a select CRM software to offer integration with most of the leading third-party applications, and our customers love us for this! But, we have always felt there is something missing. So we have addressed that missing bit, with…

yes, you guessed it right – QuickBooks.

You can now integrate both your QuickBooks Online and Offline accounts with ConvergeHub!

QuickBooks CRM integration

As a QuickBooks user, managing your data is a lot more easier now. And how is that? You can work on a single version of the data in both ConvergeHub and QuickBooks. No more duplicate entries! And what if there is a conflict in data between ConvergeHub Vs QuickBooks? No problem, we have solution for this too! The system which has the last updated data takes precedence.

How does the syncing work?

All you have to do is: Go to ConvergeHub Apps Store; Read details about QuickBooks App; Click on Get App; and Link your QuickBooks account. Bam! You’re done! Customers, Contacts, Products and Invoices get synchronized between both the platforms. And going forward – any data you enter in either QuickBooks or ConvergeHub gets automatically synced up in the other system. That means – More convenience to you!

Think of it this way: There’s a business contact of yours with whom you have closed the deal. You quickly create the invoice from within QuickBooks and mail it to to the contact. The synchronization of this event between your QuickBooks and ConvergeHub is taken care of in the background. When you check ConvergeHub, you find the invoice in the sub-panel of the contact details page.

Benefits of QuickBooks CRM integration

Using the combination of ConvergeHub and QuickBooks, you get empowered to perform multiple crucial functions. Some of the highlights include:

  • Get every detail about QuickBooks Customers from within ConvergeHub
  • See and share customers’ invoice histories from within ConvergeHub
  • Provide prompt replies to customer queries in regards to invoices and products from within ConvergeHub
  • Create and send invoices from either QuickBooks or ConvergeHub and get the other system automatically synced up.
  • Maintain up-to-date and consistent customer information across both the systems to reduce errors, increase productivity and provide better outcomes.

QuickBooks CRM integration features are available to all QuickBooks Users using the ConvergeHub Premium Package. So go ahead with QuickBooks CRM integration and experience a better way of running your business.

And don’t forget to share feedback about your experience below or via: Facebook / Twitter / Linkedin.

PS: New to ConvergeHub? Take a test drive of the CRM software and then proceed to Premium package with QuickBooks integration. We’ll love to welcome you into our family. 🙂

What are Five most critical questions in CRM

ConvergeHub is a select CRM software that has grown massively in the last two year span. It has established a customer base, spanning different regions of the world. In an attempt to make things easy for its potential customers, ConvergeHub has answered the five most critical questions about itself. Read through the blog to find out what these five questions are and what answers have ConvergeHub provided to each of them.

What are Five most critical questions in CRM, get the answer from the leader in CRM for SMB. It has been a successful completion of two years and five months for ConvergeHub. Launched at June 2013, ConvergeHub has grown at an impressive speed and attained a stupendous position in the CRM market. All thanks to your love and support that ConvergeHub has managed to attain a massive user base across continents.

The entire two years and five months span, have been a learning process for us where we have come across different types of customers. While every customer has had specific CRM requirements, there are a few questions that have been asked by all.

Assuming that these are the common priorities for all CRM-buying business owners – we have jotted down the answers to these questions in this blog. Any and every business owner planning to invest in ConvergeHub can get their most common doubts answered, at one shot here. Take a look –

1. How is ConvergeHub different from other CRMs?

In a market of 240+ CRMs, it is difficult for any new product to demonstrate innovation and uniqueness. However, ConvergeHub has been able to break through the 240+ CRM pack and gain advantage over BIG Players – due to its expanded functionality.

In spite of being a CRM, ConvergeHub is not limited to basic customer relationship management. On taking a detailed tour of the product, you will find four main modules integrated within the software – SALES, MARKETING, SERVICE & COLLABORATION. So while other CRMs only allow you to take care of your customers after sales, ConvergeHub empowers you to manage your customers and collaborate with them right from the stage of marketing to sales and service.

2. What features does ConvergeHub offer?

ConvergeHub functions as a comprehensive Business Management Platform. So you get to access a broad suite of features that otherwise is not available or partially available in other CRMs. For instance, CRM vendors do not provide BPM within the solution, like ConvergeHub does. Sometimes this is an additional cost as a separate module or it is provided via a third party vendor.

Our list of compelling features include:

3. What are the six popular integrations within ConvergeHub?

QuickBooks Online & Offline: ConvergeHub is a select CRM software that offers tight integration with QuickBooks Online and Offline. Using this functionality, you can synchronize Customers, Contacts, Products and Invoices between both the platforms and perform multiple crucial functions from one source point.

DocuSign: ConvergeHub has partnered with DocuSign to offer a seamless document management experience to all its users. You can send contracts for signature directly from ConvergeHub. Recipients just receive a link in email to sign the agreement. Within seconds they can sign it—anytime, anywhere, on any device. This completes transactions faster, lowers document management costs and streamlines all agreements in one system.

Google Apps: ConvergeHub offers integration with Google Mail, Google Contacts and Google Calendar. Using these three apps within ConvergeHub makes it easier for your business to collaborate, communicate and share information, all in a single, centralized place.

Microsoft Outlook: ConvergeHub provides Microsoft Outlook Plug-in in its Apps Store, using which you can easily integrate all your Outlook emails, contacts, tasks and calendars within ConvergeHub database. In addition to this, Outlook displays ConvergeHub as a folder within the Navigation Pane that enables you to get all the ConvergeHub data in one area of Outlook.

GoToMeeting: ConvergeHub has gone ahead to integrate with the world’s renowned online meeting and collaboration solution, to let you do Simple and Quick Web Conferencing Anytime Anywhere! Right from screen sharing to HD video conferencing and audio conferencing, you can conduct any form of online meetings with your clients, colleagues or business associates from within ConvergeHub.

Twilio: ConvergeHub has integrated with the much renowned Twilio App that offers telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud. Now you can make calls directly from the CRM platform and add call details to the contacts for easy follow-up. You can even send messages with up to 1600 characters to local, toll-free, and short-code numbers.

4. What makes ConvergeHub right for any business?

Critically acclaimed and Award-winning Solution: Till date, ConvergeHub has received positive reviews from CRM experts such as Chuck Schaeffer and Rich Bohn. Also it has been a Semi-Finalist at 2014 CRM Idol Awards and named Community Choice Honoree in the 2014 and 2015 Small Business Influencer Awards.

Easily Customizable: ConvergeHub allows easy customization. Users with admin privileges can comfortably make changes to it, without any involvement of coding or technical wizardry.

Way more than CRM: ConvergeHub offers benefits and features of a Complete Business Management Solution at the basic cost of a CRM. Using ConvergeHub, you do not have to invest on separate marketing automation, billing, email management, document management and project management solutions. ConvergeHub provides an all-inclusive solution to meet your organization-wide requirements.

Light on the Pocket: ConvergeHub offers a variety of packages that suit all business types and sizes. Its basic package starts from $11 per month per user and goes to $29 per month per user. Check out the pricing page for complete details of all the three packages.

Note: FREE TRIAL is also offered, to help you get a feel of the application at no single penny.

5. What kind of customer support is provided with ConvergeHub?

Our commitment to customers doesn’t end once their ConvergeHub accounts get up and running. We offer a comprehensive and on-time after-sales service package to customers across the world. For any questions, complaints, doubts and feedbacks, customers can contact us via any of the three mediums: Email, Phone and Ticket. Our team of dedicated support professionals are always listening and happy to help 24/7!

Having mentioned the above points, we hope that we are able to cover 70% of your queries. For further clarifications on how Customer Relationship Management software ConvergeHub is the best for your business – we are always available for a one-on-one discussion.

Use our contact us page to get in touch with us right away. Also, we communicate through blog and through Twitter (@convergehub).

ConvergeHub and GoToMeeting synchronization boost for SMB

ConvergeHub has extended its functionality by integrating the popular GoToMeeting app within its cloud CRM platform. It is an exceptional benefit for the small and medium businesses who often lose out on sales due to the absence of a proper collaboration tool. Using the combined force of ConvergeHub and GoToMeeting, SMBs can collaborate with crucial sales opportunities via the Internet in real time. It gives them the empowerment of working better together, getting more people involved and closing the deals faster.

ConvergeHub and GoToMeeting synchronization boost for SMB. You meet a crucial prospect. The prospect seems highly impressed with your product and requests for a real-time view into it. You note down the client request in the CRM, and leave the venue regretting if only your CRM offered video and audio tools. Then you could have promptly provided a demonstration of your product to capitalize upon the moment and close the deal right then.

Timing is critical in sales where you need to hit the target when the opportunity is right. According to industry survey too, in 95% of occasions – any amount of delay in collaboration with the prospect can take the deal away from you.

The question is: whether you want to take that high-end risk?

Obviously, no. So to avert falling into any such plights where a delay in collaboration prevents you from a making a sale – you need a combination of CRM & Online Meeting & Collaboration Solution.

Question: Where can you find this powerful combination working in harmony?

Answer: In our Business Management Platform titled ConvergeHub.

ConvergeHub:

It is a leading cloud CRM software built priamrily for the fast growing small and medium businesses. It combines Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Collaboration and empowers users to attract more prospects, win more deals and build lasting customer relationships from within its platform.

GoToMeeting:

It is an online collaboration solution that lets you conduct unlimited online meetings, that includes screen sharing, HD video conferencing and audio conferencing.

When the two combine, your sales rises to new levels of performance!

How ConvergeHub + GoToMeeting results in massive Productivity Gains for the Sales Team?

1. Speedy Sales Process:

Empower your sales agents to schedule conference calls, webinars and online meetings with your prospects and customers – from inside ConvergeHub. With one click they can start GoToMeeting from within ConvergeHub account and give product demonstrations or conduct trainings sessions and more.

Imagine how productive can this dynamic feat be for you?

Your sales agents can collaborate and communicate with your customers and leads in minutes. They can present the right solutions at the right time to gain the advantage and close the deal. Be it the request for a product demo or a training session, sales agents can be quick and nimble by instantaneously catering to the demands of your customers.

2. Enhanced Customer Intelligence:

Sales agents can store enormous amount of information about your prospects and customers within ConvergeHub database. Further they can map the meeting details (type, duration, attendees and minutes of the meeting) with each lead, contact and account. Thus, all the meeting information and other details can be recorded as part of ConvergeHub history.

Do I need to say how helpful can this be?

The combined information of customer details and meeting conversations can provide enhanced intelligence to the sales agents. They can utilize it to understand the customers/prospects’ psyche more deeply and modify their approach accordingly.

And the best part:

during the course of online presentations or web conferencing, sales agents can access all the client related information from the CRM repository. This can make it much easier for them to interact with the customers and get closer to closing the sale.

3. Time Saving:

Your sales team will not have to waste time on system integration. ConvergeHub and GoToMeeting integrate in a few minutes and will work in perfect sync to ensure that your sales agents do not have to streamline data siloes.

In addition to this, the factor of ‘traveling’ that usually delays a sales process will not be applicable for you anymore. Since the meetings will be done online, your sales agents can reach your customers and prospects positioned across any part of the world, within minutes.

Right at their desk or in the conference room, they can invite up to 25 attendees and then conduct any type of business-grade web conferencing session. No lost travel time.

4. Teamwork:

Consolidating a geographically dispersed sales team for a crucial project is challenging! But not when you have the combined force of ConvergeHub and GoToMeeting. Utilizing the amazing online collaboration feature, you can bring your sales teams together to collaborate on sales opportunities and share winning practices.

5. Multi-tasking:

Choosing ConvergeHub will give your sales team a plethora of online collaboration capabilities combined with a robust contact management system. As a result, all sales activities will be done at a much greater pace:

  • Generate and Contact the Lead
  • Schedule and Conduct an Online Meeting
  • Note down the Meeting details
  • Close the Deal
  • Follow-up with the Lead via web conferencing.

Straight from ConvergeHub, sales agents can leap from one task to another, without missing a beat.

Impressed by the benefits but wondering whether your prospects and customers use GoToMeeting?

Do not worry. It is not necessary for your meeting participants to install the GoToMeeting application or have account in GoToMeeting. By just clicking on the received meeting invitation link(sent by your team), they can view and join meetings instantly.

So delay no further. Get the Twin Powers of CRM and GoToMeeting through ConvergeHub and energize your sales team.Get a detailed view on ConvergeHub Product. Or Start your FREE TRIAL now. No credit card details required – just get on with ConvergeHub!

PS:

Already a ConvergeHub user? Share your comments below on how you have benefited from the stellar combination of ConvergeHub and GoToMeeting.

Sales and marketing integration in CRM from ConvergeHub

Marketers are in constant search to find the most foolproof marketing method that will always score a home run with customers. Email marketing and social media marketing both have emerged as essential weapons in one’s marketing portfolio. But often they are treated as standalone systems without really realizing their common objective. There are also some ideas that email marketing is dead and can’t fetch as much results as it used to do before the social era. But the reality can’t be further from the truth. When email marketing and social media marketing just work fine as standalone systems together they create a synergy that can be unbeatable in the hands of marketing managers.

Sales and marketing integration in CRM from ConvergeHub brings best performance for SMB. In a compartmentalized business environment where no information passed through the closed doors of one division to another creating an integrated business environment was a distant dream. However, the situation is now changing fast and in this hyper-kinetic, complex, consumer driven economy businesses are required to readjust their approach towards integrating different departments.

Sales and marketing play pivotal roles in determining success of a business operation. But earlier integration between the two was unheard of. As a result, sales often complained about the marketing department for not forwarding qualified leads and the marketing department argued about not receiving timely feedback and measurable ROI on their efforts. But modern businesses have discovered the missing link between the two and there has been a conscious effort in collaborating sales and marketing by building channels of communication.

The purpose of building the bridge is to help the sales and marketing teams to interact with each other as well as align better with customer needs and wants.

Sales and marketing often go hand-in-hand in achieving the common goal of increasing business volume but their underlying practices, execution and strategizing may differ widely to create a less than optimum situation. This is because departmental policy makers used to depend upon the information gleaned by individual departments in a siloed situation. There were limitations in accessing information and less visibility across the business process. The lack of communication between the departments created barriers for policy implementation and business development.

Here is why sales and marketing integration is important:

  • To create unified environment to facilitate flow of real-time data
  • Aligning the two departments to work towards one common goal
  • Gaining insight on performance and implementing results in policy making
  • Increasing sales volume by making marketing campaigns more targeted
  • Providing decision makers with tools and insight on entire business process

Today businesses are operating in a complex, dynamic and intermittent marketplace that is also highly competitive. Modern marketplaces are also highly buyer-driven where consumers are volatile, tech savvy, opinionating and interactive.

Even two decades ago buyers only had limited access to product specifications. Businesses were mostly conducted based on personal relationships. Buyers normally didn’t commit to price comparison. Product reviews were of less importance. The consumer behavior has undergone sea changes in the multi-channel environment. Buyers now do their homework upfront – compare price and product features, read reviews, discuss with peers using the multi-channel communication platforms and decide how they want to interact with a brand before considering buying. The role of both sales and marketing departments therefore have transformed in the changed situation. As a result, they now need a collaborative platform where real-time data can be consolidated, processed, analyzed and applied to deal with real business situation.

Before, disparate software systems were the barriers in facilitating smooth transfer of information but introduction of cloud based CRM solutions helped creating a unified platform to share real time data. ConvergeHub is one such cloud based CRM solution that has been designed to work as a single platform for sales, marketing and communication needs. It embedded powerful sales automation and marketing campaign management features to help teams share information and manage business from a collaborative platform.

ConvergeHub’s effective calendar management and deal management solutions are designed to help sales executives to automate and manage their sales progresses at every step. It also allows them to subscribe to real time feeds to receive any status update or changes on their accounts.

Similarly, marketing managers can create both simple and complex email marketing and DRIP marketing campaigns using the Enterprise CRM Software platform. ConvergeHub further acts as a social CRM by capturing real-time social feeds on customers to allow the marketing and sales teams to engage them on social platforms.

Sign up for FREE TRIAL.

 

 

What every business should know about Social Media

IBM CEO Study: Building a good rapport with the customers is the top priority of every CEO. And what are they doing to achieve this? The report states: Businesses today, are zealously framing social media strategies to accomplish the goal of healthy customer relationship.

What every business should know about Social Media to be successful. IBM CEO Study: Building a good rapport with the customers is the top priority of every CEO. And what are they doing to achieve this?

The report states: Businesses today, are zealously framing social media strategies to accomplish the goal of healthy customer relationship.

Source: IBM Institute for Business Value and Analysis, CRM study 2011

But then are customers actually interested in connecting with companies socially? Let’s figure out:

As the aforementioned IBM study puts it, Customers are pragmatic. Most of them engage with a company on a social media platform (say: Facebook, Twitter, Google+) to get tangible value in return of their time, endorsement and data.

In the words of Carolyn Heller Baird, ‘Today businesses are facing an immense pressure to be there where their customers are. And in the current worldwide explosion of social media usage, companies have left no stone unturned to be socially available.’

Considering the speed at which customers and businesses have adopted social media, the success rates should ideally touch the sky. But this is not so. Why – Because in all probability, customers and businesses are not in sync with each other’s expectations.’’

IBM institute for Business Value surveyed more than 1000 consumers and 350 executives to go into the crux of the matter. The objective behind this mass analysis was –

  • Who is using social media?
  • What sites consumers frequent?
  • What entices consumers to socially interact with companies?
  • Why consumers are interacting on social media? (the company perspective)

Below enlisted are a few of the key findings from the survey:

1. Social media is personal

In spite of ubiquitous presence of corporate profiles over every social media platform, consumers still think that social media is much personal i.e., engaging with friends and family and accessing news and entertainment.

According to the survey, while 70% of consumers cited personal reasons for accessing social media, only 23% agreed of interacting with brands there.

Reasons of reluctance while engaging with brands:

  • Privacy (47 percent)
  • Spam (42 percent)
  • Disinterest in the brand (32 percent)

Note: of the 23 percent consumers who admitted of interacting with a brand socially, emphasized that they need to feel the company is communicating honestly to connect with it.

Source: IBM Institute for Business Value and Analysis, CRM study 2011

What is your takeaway?

Most likely, less than half of the customers actively interact in a social media environment. Having said that, regardless of the customer profile and company type, all corporate social media strategies should be build on one question –

Why would people choose to interact on social media rather than contacting via traditional channels?

While the obvious answer is convenience and speed, experts suggest that businesses need to build strategies keeping in mind the 70% consumers who are not much inclined to participate.

It is essential that companies honestly and authentically communicate to learn what their customers’ value and offer those to persuade them to act. In short, companies need to have transparency to avoid being perceived as manipulative or self-promotional.

2. The perception gap

Businesses perceive that consumers interact in a social media environment to become a part of the brand’s community. Most business owners firmly believe that receiving discounts/coupons and product/service purchase is the least reason why consumers seek companies on social sites. Ironically, the customers’ opinions falsify this perception totally. When asked to the group of consumers why do they interact with businesses/brands via social media, the following feedback was recorded:

  • Discounts/coupons
  • Products/services purchase
  • Product/reviews/rankings

Inevitably, this question revealed the huge perception gap between the companies and consumers. What got precisely clear is that consumers interact with a business socially, only if they find it to their benefit, say: offers/coupons/product details etc. Although connecting with a brand’s community has an emotional intangible gain, this is not what drives majority of consumers.

Source: IBM Institute for Business Value and Analysis, CRM study 2011

What is your takeaway?

In order to monetize your social media endeavors, adopt social commerce strategy. Multiple cases can be cited as examples of companies offering commerce opportunities through different social media platforms.

Note: The popularity of social commerce campaigns among consumers varies. However, experts believe, the advantage of one-stop shopping is always difficult for the consumers to resist. Thus betting on social commerce is a wise decision.

3. Value of advocacy

Most businesses deem that social media interactions create customer loyalty. The truth in this statement comes under the scanner with a large section of consumers dubious about the influence social interactions have over their brand preference.

  • Astonishingly, only 38 percent of consumers feel that social interaction with a company develops loyalty towards it.
  • 24 percent think things remain neutral
  • While a whopping 64 percent consumers believe that social media engagement leads to future purchases only if they already have a sense of loyalty/passion for the company.

Put simply, social media interactions act as a catalyst and not a developer of customer loyalty.

What is your takeaway?

Build social media programs that touch consumers emotionally and motivate them to share their experiences with others. The objective should be to connect with customers on a shared set of values, while providing tangible benefit to them, like American Express Small Business Saturday program on Facebook.

Such social media campaigns will encourage your loyal customers to act as advocates. By supporting/participating in the campaigns, they will share the endorsement with their other social friends. Inevitably, this will expand the viral spread of the campaign and spread the word about your business to the not-yet customers.

Don’t forget

Recent research has cited that 45 percent of consumers seek recommendations from their social pals prior to a product/service purchase. As a result – the power of social media endorsement is paramount and unquestionable.

Social Media benefits

The benefit of implementing corporate social media program is real and deep.

  • Direct value to business through social commerce
  • Instant broadcast of offers/promotions
  • Valuable data for customer insights and brand monitoring
  • Continued analysis of business.

With this in mind, it is understandable that every big and small company is hell bent to use social media for interacting with customers. However, as mentioned above, companies need to shed their traditional approaches and perceptions and get into the skin and mind of the customer.

They need to invest in the right direction to break through the noise and offer a reason for the current/potential customers to connect to their brand.

In the words of a social media expert, ‘’the consumer finings gained from the survey (conducted by IBM institute for Business Value) is a wake-up call that more needs to be done than the regular stuff. Investing in the right technology should be the first step of every company who does not want to miss the boat here.’’

Social CRM – key to social media success

Social CRM recognizes the shift of power in company-customer interactions and hence, helps companies embrace this shift with a new strategy. Instead of concentrating on operational responses to manage customers, Social CRM facilitates sharing and collaboration between customers, partners and employees.

It enables a brand to truly listen to its customers more than ever before. Consequently companies benefit in several ways like; engaging in social media conversations, tracking new leads from a Tweet and moving them into the sales funnel. In sum, Social CRM gives the benefit of pulling all the contacts in one place to help engage with them across any social channel from an easy to use interface.

Experience the magic of a Social CRM now!

Opt for a FREE TRIAL of ConvergeHub cloud CRM to transform into a social enterprise. Get a deeper insight into your customer’s likes, preferences and opinions to accordingly customize your client approach.

 

 

 

How CRM connecting employees, customers and partners

Running a business in today’s cut throat environment is an uphill task. With corporate rules changing dynamically, business entrepreneurs are constantly on a treadmill, sweating it out to create the best strategies and deliver the same. While some have topped the success charts, others are still lying underground, grappling to make their mark. Running a business in today’s cut throat environment is an uphill task. With corporate rules changing dynamically, business entrepreneurs are constantly on a treadmill, sweating it out to create the best strategies and deliver the same. Result – There is a difference between the successful businesses and not the so successful ones. And the difference continues to widen? We tell you why

How CRM connecting employees, customers and partners in this modern age. Running a business in today’s cut throat environment is an uphill task. With corporate rules changing dynamically, business entrepreneurs are constantly on a treadmill, sweating it out to create the best strategies and deliver the same. While some have topped the success charts, others are still lying underground, grappling to make their mark.

Running a business in today’s cut throat environment is an uphill task. With corporate rules changing dynamically, business entrepreneurs are constantly on a treadmill, sweating it out to create the best strategies and deliver the same. While some have topped the success charts, others are still lying underground, grappling to make their mark.

Result – There is a difference between the successful businesses and not the so successful ones. And the difference continues to widen? We tell you why –

Running a business requires to keep constant track of an assortment of areas – clients, investors, employees, partners, and so on. Now imagine doing all these from ten different platforms. Taxing isn’t it? And most importantly not possible 24X7

What have the big brands done?

Taken the leap to a cloud customer relationship management tool!

Read what Sam Biardo states – ‘’Technology trend of CRM has made it possible and easy for businesses to keep track of all areas from one single platform. From monitoring client interactions, paying vendors, analyzing marketing campaigns to tracking employee workflow – CRM has powered businesses to keep track of all of these and much more on a daily basis.’’

If the benefits are so great, what keeps it away from businesses?

Jeffrey Kaiserman answers – ‘’CRM was originally created to keep track of client information. That perception still exists in the minds of business owners of the small and mid-sized businesses. Having constrained budget, they refrain themselves from investing in CRM which in their view is still just a standalone customer management app.

Familiarity and awareness about the current role of CRM needs to be given to them. They are required to understand that CRM has grown and evolved into a multifaceted program that can track sales, create/execute marketing opportunities and improve customer service interactions. Then only can they align the company’s Sales, Marketing and Service efforts to grow the base of happy successful customers.’’

Today’s CRM – one unified platform

Taking Jeffrey Kaiserman’s comment, here’s a more defined role and function of today’s CRM. CRM (a popular abbreviation for Customer Relationship Management) is now an effective combination of different business streams. It integrates processes, people, and technology to serve as one central platform for Sales, Marketing, Service and Collaboration. The objective is to give you complete visibility into your business. Using the CRM app, Marketing, Sales and Customer Service teams collaborate and work together on one platform to grow leads, identify sales opportunities, close deals and support customers.

In the words of Renee Shipley – ‘’the real advanced Cloud CRM suites offer solutions for managing every aspect of your business operations. You can say from, marketing campaigns, lead identification, sales, and right the way through to collaboration, inventory and customer service. They are specifically designed and developed to serve as all-encompassing, customizable, Customer Platform. Integrated with new APIs and next generation third-party tools, businesses connect with customers, employees and partners, instantly.’’

ConvergeHub CRM

Serving as a common platform for sales, marketing and service is hard work. In the lieu of streamlining there three different business divisions, many CRM providers offer a cluttered, difficult to navigate and unmanageable application. ConvergeHub sets itself apart from these counterparts by designing and developing a beautiful and easy to navigate system that lets you keep track of your company data and easily monitor the activities of each division.

Here are a few of its benefits:

1.360-degree business view
ConvergeHub CRM serves as a single repository for all collaterals, brochures, case studies and presentations. Consequent to which, sales, marketing and customer service reps exactly know where to look for a respective document in the time of need. As a business entrepreneur, you get activity feeds of prospects, customers and contacts from the CRM software that inevitably help you monitor developments in real time.

2. Unified sales & marketing
We unify your sales and marketing teams to help them collaborate on sales-ready leads. The idea is to make the sales teams take over from where the marketing team leaves off. Not to forget, our CRM system (acting as a shared platform) keeps you and your business organized. Whether it is nurturing the prospects from the first contact to closing a sale, diligent use of our CRM processes makes things easy for your reps. They are enabled to keep track of all prospect/client communication, meeting and documentation in one central repository – ConvergeHub CRM.

3. Better teamwork
Experts suggest that working as teams for leads/clients always benefits the business. Results are far better and most importantly more prompt in nature. With ConvergeHub CRM as your one central platform, your sales, marketing and customer service reps break free from siloed organizational divisions. Due to shared information, they accomplish work at a faster pace and ensure that leads/customers don’t fall through the cracks.
Also, in the absence of one team member, other can immediately replace him thanks to all the necessary lead/customer history present in the CRM.

4. Collaboration
Working together as a team and sharing documents and information inevitably leads to greater collaboration. Using the online collaboration tools integrated in ConvergeHub CRM, your reps not just distribute latest company/customer/lead data but share valuable insights with each other to drive more productivity.

5. Multiple channels for customers and prospects
Customers and prospects use an assortment of communication channels to interact with companies. Keeping up with the trend, ConvergeHub CRM enables you to not just provide channel flexibility for customers but for leads and prospects too. Hence, based on their preference, sales, marketing and customer service teams can use a combination of channels to engage customers and leads as they want to be engaged.

6. Partners
To bring in more business, you cannot afford to work in silo. ConvergeHub CRM not just limits your collaboration with sales, marketing and customer service reps but includes your business partners too. You can refer leads and share relevant documents with your partners/associates – all in a secured and protected ConvergeHub CRM environment.

Final Thoughts

ConvergeHub CRM is cloud based CRM application. Hence, all your company data gets stored in our server. We take care of server maintenance and troubleshooting. Benefit: your computer space doesn’t get bogged down with excessive data while you enjoy all the benefits of an all-time anywhere available business management platform – ConvergeHub CRM.

Take a FREE TRIAL of ConvergeHub CRM to see how you can track everything in your business without sinking in multiple software platforms.

 

What is Omni-Channel Customer Service Experience in CRM

The concept of omnichannel customer experience has apparently originated from marketing. After all, it was none other than the marketing professionals who started tailoring advertising content to different communications media, namely, print, TV, email and now mobile devices. Soon enough, what we experienced was the permanently altered consumer behavior. From learning about a product, evaluating and buying it, sharing opinions about products and service providers (with an ever-widening circle of online friends) to accessing customer support – everything spanned different communications media.

What is Omni-Channel Customer Service Experience In CRM Industry. The concept of omnichannel customer experience has apparently originated from marketing. After all, it was none other than the marketing professionals who started tailoring advertising content to different communications media, namely, print, TV, email and now mobile devices.

Soon enough, what we experienced was the permanently altered consumer behavior. From learning about a product, evaluating and buying it, sharing opinions about products and service providers (with an ever-widening circle of online friends) to accessing customer support – everything spanned different communications media. Inevitably, these interactions, entailing multiple platforms and communication channels in both the physical and online worlds have heightened consumer expectations.

In the words of an expert, ‘’such profound changes in the landscape, has preferred consumerization of customer experience to consumerization of technology. And the effects show up in everything from customer oriented applications to IT infrastructure and provisioning.’’

But the question is how successful have the companies been to tackle this challenge?

Traditionally, companies have always offered siloed experiences that targeted a specific medium. Elaborating further on this context, a senior executive at a retail company has stated – ‘’ Companies were comfortable in catering to customers till the time customer interactions started and finished in a single channel, say visiting a retail store to buy a product, or calling customer support to resolve a billing discrepancy.

However, today’s hyper-connected world has afflicted us with smartphone-induced ADD. People increasingly multitask, interact through multiple devices over several channels (web, email, social networks, text messaging, and voice) to complete a single task. So whether it’s a customer inquiring about a specialty drink on the Starbucks Facebook page, and then taking a product satisfaction survey via a series of text messages, initiating a conversation or task on one medium, and taking it up later on another has become a trend.’’

Customer experience challenges

Having said all this, let’s proceed to see some of the common problems faced by customers due to ineffective omnichannel customer service:

1. Inconsistent information

When customers move across different channels, they often encounter inconsistent information. Data is presented in different designs without the synchronization of content between journeys along different channels. Nevertheless, this makes for a confusing customer experience when some actions, are available on one, but not in the other.

In the words of a customer, ’’ The least favorite thing is that everything is not included on the mobile site. It’s important that companies redesign their online presence to embrace omnichannel world.’’

2. Lack of Personalization

Consumers demand the companies to record their preferences learn their habits and keep track of them regardless of the platform they happen to be using. Gone are the days when companies could pass off by just synchronizing wish lists between mobile apps and a Web site or offer purchase suggestions based on the shopping cart. Today, ideally, companies are required to record when and where a customer performs a particular action. Then only can they improve the customer experience by using present context and past history.

3. Frustrating customer support

Omnichannel has amplified the frustration levels of the customers through the sheer increase in the potential number of communications medium. For instance, there are millions of cases when customers have initiated contact via a mobile app, filled in the problem details using a Web form and has finally called a live agent only to repeat the concern once again.

In the words of a customer – ‘’Most often while contacting the customer support, my call has been transferred multiple times, with each agent asking for the same routine information.’’

Ineffective omnichannel customer service has led to increased customer effort and frustration. Inevitably, this has resulted in customer churn and attrition.

How does a disjointed omnichannel customer experience affect companies?

Repeated surveys have cited that poor management of customers across different channels has resulted in losing customers in the long run. Without crucial customer data, companies have failed to provide relevant content, cross-selling opportunities, timely alerts and better loyalty programs.

Explaining the importance of omnichannel customer experience, Erin Levzow, (customer service professional) has stated – ‘’Building a community of loyal, engaged customers becomes a colossal challenge when you consider the number of times an average consumer uses multiple devices and platforms to connect and interact. The thinking goes like this: stealing time wherever and whenever to get things done.

With this in mind, it is nothing but a competitive imperative to incorporate omnichannel facility into the entire customer experience. Whether companies integrate their sites with social platforms like Facebook, Twitter or integrate commenting and review systems, customer experience is required to be a multichannel conversation.’’

One of the business verticals to have implemented this trend in full swing is the retail sector. According to Vicki Cantrell, SVP of the National Retail Federation, most retailers have already merged online and on-premise shopping to deliver nothing but the best to the customers. Forrester Research Retail analyst Sucharita Mulpuru has commented, “Retailers need to be wherever customers are, which these days means online and on their phones.”

As retail has started the trend of omnichanel customer experience, experts predict other business to follow the suit. Forrester’s Ron Rogowksi has commented – ‘’the phenomenon of mobile-first consumers wandering between multiple communication channels will ultimately affect every business. Consequently, companies need to focus on delivering great experiences, day in and day out. ‘’

How ConvergeHub helps you?

ConvergeHub online CRM offers a multi-pronged, data-management strategy in which all customer data, marketing and sales brochures, presentations and case studies are tapped into a single, consolidated repository. The CRM can be used to store and analyze 100 percent of your customer interaction data: from web transactions and online chat logs to contact center transcripts.

It –

a. Helps create and maintain uniformity across all channels

Benefit: Customers receive same information regardless of the channel they contact you through.

b. Helps establish a multichannel marketing platform

Benefit: You are where your buyers are; engaging them as they want to be.

Note: Multichannel customers spend 3-4 times more than single channel customers.

c. Helps deliver consistent customer service across all communications medium

Benefit: Customers perceive you as a unified brand with a set of working values and principles.

Put simply, using ConvergeHub CRM, your customers experience a consistent, contextual, smooth and unified experience in all their interactions i.e. buying – purchase – customer service – technical support.

It helps you seam the different steps of customer journey: browsing, evaluating, buying, sharing, and upgrading (done through different channels). Designed and developed on the power and convenience of cloud, ConvergeHub CRM converts vast quantities of unusable data into useful, actionable information, without expensive up-front capital and maintenance costs.

Maximizing the value and effectiveness of the CRM requires making sure your sales and marketing teams diligently enter the data into the CRM. Doing this will help them track all communication, meetings and documentation in one system. Let’s say, your executives will know exactly the past purchase history of every customer. As a result – they can anticipate what the customer wants to do next to complete a particular task.

This indeed is the essence of omnichannel customer experience: seamless and smart.

In sum, ConvergeHub CRM will ensure that delivering an omnichannel customer experience no longer remains for you a cloud-cuckoo land. Post the implementation of the CRM; you will easily orchestrate the customer experience across all channels in a fluid manner.

Opt for a FREE TRIAL to see yourself how ConvergeHub CRM powers your business executives to render multiplatform, social customer experience.

Small businesses needs a CRM like ConvergeHub

CRM is an essential solution for every small business and startup. However, while there are more than 200 CRM solutions in the market, not many of them are built to cater to the needs of a small business. That is why, we have designed ConvergeHub that exactly meets the needs of every growing small business. It offers all the crucial features in a simple and intuitive way to help the business owners get started with it in no time.

Small businesses needs a CRM like ConvergeHub which can bring amazing changes for your company. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the most valuable solution for all small businesses and startups. It needs to be implemented right at the beginning to have a long term significant effect.

As per Forbes, small businesses who use CRM increase sales, marketing and customer service productivity by 29%. This clearly explains how important CRM software is.

But to gain benefit out of CRM, it is important to choose the right small business CRM software. There are more than 200 CRM solutions in the market. But we suggest you ConvergeHub.

Wondering what makes ConvergeHub unique? Here are five ways in which ConvergeHub benefits your small business:

1. Focus on your business than maintaining the CRM

There is no headache of software infrastructure with ConvergeHub. Once you have ConvergeHub account, you can get on with the real work fast. You do not have to get your head into any type of complicated server installation, configuration and patches. The only requirement to access ConvergeHub is : an internet connection. That is it. Not an inch less or more!

2. Make most of your activities Automatic

We understand how every minute is crucial for you. That is why we have an advanced feature of AUTOMATION built inside ConvergeHub. Use it and make most of your Sales, Marketing and Customer Service activities automatic.

So if you are a business owner who has to assign leads to your sales agents or mail to your customers, ConvergeHub will do all these activities automatically. Imagine, how many hours will you save?

3. Combine your employees as a Team

Are you worried that your employees work as separate departments and not as a whole team? Not anymore. ConvergeHub unites your entire team in one thread. Sales Manager, Customer Support Executive or Marketing Team Leader – every individual works through ConvergeHub.

So everyone stays up to date on what is going on across the organization. Using the easy collaboration tool within ConvergeHub, the team can communicate with each other on important matters.

4. Manage your business Anytime, Anywhere

You do not have to be in office to run your business. Anywhere in the world, as long as you have a smartphone/tablet/laptop/desktop with internet connection, you can access ConvergeHub to see-

  • How your projects are progressing
  • What new marketing leads have got generated
  • How many leads have been followed by sales
  • What customer support issues have come
  • What are the upcoming meetings
  • How tasks have been spread among team members

Use ConvergeHub to discuss strategies, keep everyone on the same page and share documents.

5. Get a feel of it without Paying

There is no lengthy process involved in using ConvergeHub. At this very moment, you can opt for its Free Trial version. Just sign up and you will be ready to get started within a few minutes. Yes, that’s how easy it is!

The best part? NO formal training required. The application is no ROCKET SCIENCE. In fact, it is so intuitive that any person can use it comfortably. And just in case you have a few doubts about using certain features – there is a User Guide to give you a step-by-step explanation on how to use each module. Our support consultants are also just a call/mail away to answer your queries immediately.


PS: These are just a few of the ConvergeHub features. There’s more! Use ConvergeHub and enjoy other features, like Reports, Invoicing and Social Media Integration.

In the meanwhile, do not forget to tell us what do you think about the benefits talked about in this blog. Are you impressed with all of them? Are there any other features/benefits you would like ConvergeHub to offer your small business?

Want to increase the Sales, learn about the features to look for in a sales CRM.

Features to look for in a sales CRM

The Guide to Social Customer Service

While few years ago social media was rarely a blip in the business sphere, today it is the prime medium for customer service. Now it’s no longer a question whether or not to use social media – it is all imperative. The businesses, who have embraced this trend proactively, are the real winners. For the rest, this is your chance to compete with your counterparts. Check out this guide and learn how you can deliver customer service through social media.

The Guide to Social Customer Service describes every aspect of social reach and related customer services.

• 35 percent of Americans are using Facebook to complain to brands

• 88 percent of consumers are less likely to purchase from a company that leaves questions on social media unanswered.

• One third of worldwide social media users prefer social care and hence ask questions, report satisfaction or complain— through social channels.

– Nielsen’s Social Media Report

It’s clear and official: Social media is the new water cooler of customer service. From being just a platform for marketing and advertising, it has evolved to become a valid and important channel through which consumers solicit service. And social care is not limited to any particular industry. Every organization irrespective of its size and domain has its consumers and target audience active in some social channel.

Social care practices are hence, an expected action from all. However in majority of cases, social care practices are stuck at planning. Reason being that organizations get cold feet when it comes to providing social care in real-time. The very fact that a slightest bit of glitch can mar the reputation is what bothers them. They perceive social media as a for-customer phenomenon. But that’s not the reality.

Just like for the customers, social media has its own series of pros for the companies too. Believe it or not: it brings ample opportunities to positively impact sales and customer loyalty. All what is needed is a thorough planning and implementation of the best social care practices (like the ones mentioned below):

1. Be next to your Customers

Social Media is huge. You cannot expect to be in all places especially if you are a company who is just getting started with social media service. So better, take it one at a time. Choose one of the channels where you and your team will first focus your time and resources.

And how do you choose the channel?

Find out where your maximum customers are. While Facebook and Twitter is the common social platforms for most companies, nowadays, consumers have also been seen socializing much on Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram.

Tip: unlike the bigger organizations who find several mentions of their brand across social channels, chances are that SMBs do not experience the same scenario. If you too do not find much of your customers talking about your brand online, that doesn’t mean that social care can be postponed for a while.

Start targeting the channels which hosts maximum of your industry related conversations. Proactively engage in these conversations to come into the sight of your target audience.

Remember by adding something of value to these conversations, it can be a great opportunity for you to come in contact with your potential customers.

2. Listen to your customers first

Understand the pulse of the customers’ comments to identify the kind of issues being raised over social media.

For instance,

• How many comments are related to service feedback (both positive and negative)?

• How many comments demand immediate attention?

• When are your customers most active on social media?

Getting answers to some of the above-mentioned questions will help you plan out the next course of action. So let’s say if you encounter abundant numbers of customer support requests, you can decide whether you want your team to handle the issues directly through the social channel or plan to implement a separate dedicated line of support for social customers.

Tip: Use social media management tools to do the weekly/monthly monitoring. The really good ones provide all the social feeds together to provide you a complete picture. You find it easy to sift through the noise and zero in on the main crucial posts that require an immediate response. And this is precisely what sums up the next point too.

3. De-clutter the posts to prioritize the crucial ones

One of the foremost problems in delivering social care is the debris that clutters the funnel. Manually sifting through the noise to find the top priority contacts takes up a lot of time that delays the immediacy of the response to the otherwise crucial posts.

Tip: choose a customer relationship management platform with social media monitoring and management functionality. These CRM platforms with intelligent social tracking streamline all the feeds together and give you a complete picture in one shot.

Going through the posts, you can easily categorize them in two distinct sections:

Hot ones that include:

• Complaints from dissatisfied customers

• Urgent Service or product requests

• Issues (or outages) that affect many users at large.

Cold ones that include:

• General reference to products or services

• Positive feedbacks

• Comments aimed at your industry at large.

As a result, it becomes much easier for you and your team to prioritize the social inquiries and respond to them accordingly.

And not just this, considering that you are using a cloud CRM software to manage your social media, you can always refer to the customers’ background to understand the immediacy and seriousness of their support requests.

So let’s say if the customer has had serious problems regarding your service earlier too, this means that the grievance level (this time will be very high). Immediately, you can turn the post/tweet into a support ticket. You can easily escalate issues behind the scenes, and respond to the customer within the desired timeframe.

What’s more you can also create an archive of interactions to refer again in the future.

Final Thoughts

Customer service expectations are rising year over year. And social media service is one of the most decisive ways to meet these ever-increasing expectations. However, merely being active on different social channels is not the key to stellar social care. Companies really need to brainstorm ideas and come up with a mix and match of proven and innovative social media service practices (combined with the best of social media management tools).

Have you learnt these three sales lessons

Here you go: Your first meeting with the client and you are set off to a good start. You talk about their business, understand the problems they face and identify the areas that your product can help them with. You put forth the features of your product; discuss what you can do and they seem pleased. You leave the meeting contended. It feels like you’ve hit the bull’s eye! Then nothing happens. Despite a pleasing conversation and a compelling proposal, they don’t revert. When you contact them, they give a possible excuse of changed priorities; tight budgets and future association.

Here you go:  Your first meeting with the client and you are set off to a good start.

You talk about their business, understand the problems they face and identify the areas that your product can help them with. You put forth the features of your product; discuss what you can do and they seem pleased. You leave the meeting contended. It feels like you’ve hit the bull’s eye!

Then nothing happens.

Despite a pleasing conversation and a compelling proposal, they don’t revert. When you contact them, they give a possible excuse of changed priorities; tight budgets and future association.

Does the above-mentioned scenario ring a bell?

If it does, you’re not alone. Many sales reps face the same situation worldwide. In spite of good lead management tactics, they fail to make the conversion.

To prevent facing this plight in the future, follow three sales lessons mentioned below.

1. Sell to the right person

So you’ve impressed the client and they’re enthusiastic to buy the CRM software. You’ve shared new insights and they’ve developed complete trust in your product. In short, they’re sold.

In spite of all these positive developments, you fail to make a conversion. What could possibly go wrong?

Focus on the wrong set of people.

Often the person you speak to is not the real buyer. He is either the contact person of the company or someone most interested in solving the problem. While they might be convinced to invest in the product/service, they can fail to convince the decision-holders of their company.

Laura Fagan states – ‘’these days, you cannot expect one buyer for very large purchases. Often it’s a group of people who influence the decision directly/indirectly. If you don’t know the actual buyers, you’re “selling blind’’. Your chances of winning are slim.’’

As a result, figure out the decision-makers in the organization. Make sure you’ve got them “covered” by meeting them face to face.

Tip: Enquire the client about the buying process during any of the sales meetings. In this way, you can come to know who will be actually involved in the buying decision. Also once you are aware of the decision-makers, you can make an informed decision on how to go about the sale.

2. Give new insights to the clients

Today, the clients come to the table exactly knowing what kind of solution they want. Although, they may not be an expert but they do their research on the web. Hence, do not waste your time telling them what they already know.

For instance, explaining a client about the benefits of salesforce automation; who has already made up his mind to invest in a SFA module will be a sheer waste of time.

Laura Fagan states – ‘’if all what you do is tell the client that they need the solution they already think they want – then you’re a commodity.’’

After all, every service provider tells them the same thing – they’ll meet their needs and provide the solution they’re looking for.

Thus, if you talk about how great your product is; your brilliant testimonials and feedback; your USPs and differentiators; chances are that the client will not be interested. They can bracket you in the same category of sellers who are more self-boasting and less valuable.

So how can you escape that?

Bring new insights to the table. You need to change their perception about business growth strategies. And to do this, you’ve got to dig deeper than just understanding their business needs. If you can highlight problems or opportunities they didn’t know they had; nothing like it.

Remember, your overall aim should be to come up with different, better solutions than the ones clients already know. In this way, clients will see you as someone who can actually add value to their business. You will set yourself apart from the competitors in a meaningful way.

Note: Following this tactic can be challenging in the beginning. Make sure you do your homework thoroughly. Use the CRM to gain information about them. Study about their business and its related product/service offerings.

3. Do not use your problem solving skills too fast

Imagine: You meet with the client. Ask him about their problems. They mention a few challenges and boom – your problem solving skills kick in. You identify the root cause of their issues. They get excited as you have got the perfect solution. They get interested and really want to proceed.

But then it all boils down to how much? (Price)

You tell them the cost of the product and for some reason it all falls apart.

This is the most common blunder sales reps do i.e. to jump to solutions before the client realizes:

  •  How big the problem is? Or
  •  How much of an impact will the problem have on their business?

Understand that your clients might not see a business problem in the same light as you do. So what could be a huge sales process glitch in your view might just be a small area of improvement for them.

And this is precisely why; your reasonable product cost looks huge to them. Result: After much gnashing of teeth and knotting of brows – they fix it themselves, or choose a cheaper alternative.

How can you avoid this plight?

Do not kick in your problem-solving skills to early. Before you propose the solution, work with the client to make him understand the impact of the business problem/opportunity. They should exactly know the knock-on and contingent impacts of the problem.

Put examples to help them see the impact themselves. Then only can you make clients believe in your product/service and they can be willing to bear the cost.

 

Patricia is a full time CRM consultant at ConvergeHub and part-time blogger. She has earned herself quite a fame as a specialist and market expert in CRM software. In the last five year she has worked with various companies as CRM consultant to help them move their businesses to cloud. Her expertise lies in offering cloud CRM consultation, CRM customization and integration solutions to small enterprises. For last one she is engaged in building ConvergeHub, cloud-based CRM solution for SMBs, as a consultant.Follow her at Twitter: @convergehub