ConvergeHub Blog for 2016

Why your CRM should be flexible

WE know – In a time when business success is dependent on customer satisfaction, a cutting-edge CRM solution is the key to ensure the smooth operation of any organization. And we also know that to gain the benefits of CRM in real, we need to choose a CRM platform that closely reflect the type and needs of the business. Is doing that difficult? Not really. Although options are plentiful and we are faced with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choosing a CRM vendor, emphasis upon right selection factors helps sail easily through the process. So what are the typical factors to consider while choosing new CRM platform or, alternatively assessing the performance of the system already in use –

Why your CRM should be flexible, What we get out of a flexible CRM? A discussion that will enlighten the SMB’s of the need of a good CRM ConvergeHub. WE know – In a time when business success is dependent on customer satisfaction, a cutting-edge CRM solution is the key to ensure the smooth operation of any organization. And we also know that to gain the benefits of CRM in real, we need to choose a CRM platform that closely reflect the type and needs of the business.

Is doing that difficult? Not really. Although options are plentiful and we are faced with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choosing a CRM vendor, emphasis upon right selection factors helps sail easily through the process.

So what are the typical factors to consider while choosing new CRM platform or, alternatively assessing the performance of the system already in use –

Decision between on-premise or cloud CRM system
Important company requirements
Number of users
Third party app integration
Mobile access

In spite of the above-mentioned factors, experts suggest that there is no one-size-fits-all answer as to what type of a CRM solution is best suited for any given organization. Ideally, as a business grows and matures, its CRM must follow suit. This is precisely where the factor of ‘Change Agent’ comes into the picture.

Why should the CRM act as the change agent inside the company?

Most organizations have fixed goals – let’s say acquiring new customers, retaining the existing customers, providing on-time excellent customer support, driving revenue and controlling cost. But then the path/route to the accomplishment of these goals changes regularly due to the micro and macro level trends.

Macro-level trends, namely – market economy, the explosion of new communication channels etc affect how your organization reaches its goals.
Micro-level trends, namely – Change in executive management, internal process enhancement, customer demand response etc

Frequent occurrence of the above-mentioned trends forcefully brings change within the operations of an organization. As a result – there are high chances of organizations to get bewildered and bogged down at all levels and lose focus on their goals.

To tackle this, many organizations have invested on what is called the – internal “change agents”. These professionals are visionaries who help see the proverbial curve in the upcoming road. They help companies adapt to changes smoothly and quickly.

CRM (if selected right) works as the internal change agent

In the words of a technological expert – ‘’Many organizations get stuck trying to achieve their sales, marketing and support goals, because their CRM technology is not forward thinking. Businesses need to understand that while common selection factors (think: social, mobile, cloud) is important to consider, what is paramount is CRM FLEXIBILITY.’’

Very few CRM applications actually offer the strategic advantage of being deeply flexible and channel-agnostic. Fundamentally the CRM should enable companies to adapt to the changing tide in a strategic and cost-effective manner before other features to address those issues can be released.

Is flexibility more important for the small businesses?

For a small business, perhaps the most important feature to look into CRM should be more conceptual. Given the fact that they undergo rapid change and are under the phase of unpredictability, fundamentally for them the most important thing a CRM application should offer is flexibility.

Apart from efficiently handling the volatility that small companies go through, having a flexible CRM also prepares the SMB owners to traverse through their economic cycle i.e. growth – downturn – back to growth. They get more alert to changing trends in sales, marketing and customer support traction, to find the most productive niche and concentrate resources accordingly.

Final Thoughts

So, when you think about deploying or upgrading your CRM, think about its potentiality as a change agent. Do think about how you can adapt to organizational changes with the CRM you are thinking to deploy. Remember, goals will stay the same but the path will constantly change.

It’s important that your CRM is flexible enough to be a change agent seeing the curves far ahead in the road and helping you adapt to them hassle free.

Best Practices for Customer Engagement

The last few years has seen an unprecedented rise of social media and new communication channels. To aggravate the matter further, customers nowadays have a limited attention, considering the stream of constant information they get bombarded with. All these factors together have made it a challenge for the companies to fruitfully engage with the customers. This blog discusses FIVE key ways of customer engagement that can empower companies to reach out to customers, engage them and ultimately achieve conversion.

have you thought of the Best Practices for Customer Engagement, it is very important and vital for any organizatins growth. Engaged customers represent 23% premium for share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth. – (Gallup State of the American Consumer 2014)

That means customer engagement strategy should be the prime focus for every business. Not only does it impact customer retention but customer acquisition too.

In view of this fact, it is essential that the customer engagement strategy should cover two things:

• Keeping a potential customer engaged throughout the entire sales process

• Keeping a present customer engaged enough to choose the same brand when they are looking to buy again

How to do it?

In order to build customer engagement that extend and last, you need to understand its new definition and put it into action. The below-mentioned ways help you just do that:

1. Make it social

The past saw company-customer interactions happening in siloed, closed-off settings where customers mainly interacted with the company through email/call. The communication was private and issue often undisclosed.

But now, we’ve come to an “always-on” world where social has taken the place of email and call. Whether it is buying a product or posting a ticket about it – customers are unabashedly using social to connect with the business anytime. As a result – from the business’s point of view marketing, sales and customer service has shifted from traditional channels to the social sphere.

And businesses who are not engaging their customers’ socially are lagging in the race. Customers are getting the feel of neglect and businesses are missing out on the opportunity to better their customer relationship.

If you do not want to suffer the same, equip yourself with a cloud CRM solution to engage with the customers through social platform. That way you will be able to provide them with better and more immediate service. Not just this, staying in the forefront of the customers’ posts will increase your chances of better customer service when the time comes to responding to a query.

2. Promote Your Customers Interests

There’s nothing like it than promoting your customers’ interests over social media platforms. If, for example, you are a vet, post content that benefits your followers. That can mean posting tips on best pet maintenance practices, posting your patients’ pictures (with their owners’ permission, of course). Even you can promote your customers’ blogs and subjects of interest (if any).

Or even better, offering special deals on products or services. However, make sure it is all genuine. Remember, pulling a hoax on your customers may generate attention, but in the long-run it can undermine your credibility. And nothing is more important in customer relationship than trust, Right?

3. Ask questions

People love sharing on social media. So encourage your customers to weigh in on topics that are relevant / interesting to them. Let’s say you may ask your fans to vote on their favorite pets or suggest a few cool joints for pet spa. All in all, the questions should engage fans and inspire them to engage with the business for greater insight.

4. Offer rewards for social sharing

Do not waste a lot of time skimming the surface of multiple channels. That will dilute the efforts and minimize the overall results. Focus your efforts on mediums where your customers are most active.

Once you zero in on the specific medium, keep harping on that. Let’s say if Twitter is where your customers are, for a specific period of time, double the reward points for customers who retweet about your product in their profile. Offer a few tempting benefits to the ten customers with the highest reward points. This will encourage your followers to promote your brand and expand your reach exponentially.

5. Make it results-driven

Engage with your customers with a specific goal in mind. Do not make the goal related to a specific area (let’s say: sales, marketing or service) but equally targeted to all three.

Tim Colley (Customer Service Keynote Speaker) comments – ‘’whether it’s product marketing, sales; or nurturing customer loyalty – the lines between them have blurred. While traditionally, customer engagement solely benefited the customer service team – today nurturing a relationship with the customers make a major impact in all arenas. That is because the responsibilities that formerly fell to the marketing and sales teams now fall into the realm of customer service too. And that is precisely what companies need to understand. They need to broaden their perception of “customer service.” and not treat it as an isolated section of the business model.’’

Once you determine what your goals are, frame the engagement strategy that makes it easy and efficient to help you get what you want.

Stay Connected with ConvergeHub CRM

Your recipe for success

We all have busy lives. Our infinite to-do lists keep us occupied and productive throughout the day. But have we ever wondered that while being productive is good, is our over businesses getting in the way of our success?

What are Your recipe for success. We all have busy lives. Our infinite to-do lists keep us occupied and productive throughout the day. But have we ever wondered that while being productive is good, is our over businesses getting in the way of our success?

Confusing isn’t it? Well, according to a career consultant – ‘I am excessively busy’ is the reason that every working professional gives for not working on their career. And this is precisely what holds true for all of us. While we all are so occupied in writing emails, holding teleconferences and attending client meetings, that we actually fail to capture the benefit of these activities.

As business entrepreneurs/working professionals we should understand that our daily work activities should not leave us with less time to think about our career. I mean what’s the point of laboring everyday when ultimately you realize that your career has not progressed much? Do you want to be in a situation when after devoting 15 years to a company, you realize that you don’t have much to show in your resume? Personal branding as popularly said is important for every business owner and employee to indulge into.

Proceeding further, we will discuss a few activities that each one of us should do every day in order to make us SUCCESSFUL

1. Document your daily wins:Understand that your team members are too busy to note your achievements daily. To keep your momentum going, you can always take a brief moment to self-congratulate yourself. Prepare a job journal where you can jot down these instances. Let’s say – ‘prepared the presentation in spite of short deadline’. Remember doing this is a great confidence builder. It will help you quantify your strengths.

2. Be clear of what you do: Most employees do not have a clear picture of what they are doing. Or rather they do not know the purpose behind their daily tasks. If you identify yourself with these set of employees, change things now. Ask yourself –

Which type of projects are you working on?
Are you satisfied with the type of projects you are doing? If no, then what type of projects you want to work on?
Are you in follower or leadership role?
Are you fruitfully utilizing your work hours? If not, then are you wasting your time on inefficient process over and over? If yes, then what’s the solution? Does your company need an enterprise application for automating some part of the business processes?

In similar lines to the above-mentioned context, an instance can be cited where a sales and marketing team leader (after analyzing his work) realized that he was mostly wasting his time trying to procure customer data from three different databases. Outcome – he suggested his organization for a web based CRM solution. And now thanks to his initiative, that along with him, his team professionals are also benefiting from the CRM application. Customer record acquisition is no more a treasure hunt for them.

3. Recognize the difference: Record your feeling while you accomplished the goal. Many experts feel that meeting a deadline casually and meeting a deadline under exhaustion are two different things. If only you realize the feeling behind accomplishing the task that you will find out – the activities and co-workers that make you happy and the ones that fill you with fear.

Needless to say this self-awareness will help you understand the things that energize you. Accordingly you can give priority to your-preferred type of work and people.

4. Review the achievements: Preparing the job journal will always help you keep a track of things that you did a couple of months before. With the complete list of accomplishments, you can sort, categorize and combine depending on the requirement. Result – You will have a competitive edge. Instead of guessing about your past year improvement, you will have evidences to validate your performance. Instead of vague conversation, you will have a prepared document to show to your clients/seniors. Inevitably these journals will enhance your job by translating into a great career-marketing portfolio.

Critical Sales Mistakes companies make

In the Age of the Customer, selling is challenging. That’s because customers are pampered with numerous options and are not under the mercy of a single product/service provider. For any business to soar high with its sales, it is important to follow a well-defined sales process, minus any error. In this blog, we talk about the 6 most common selling mistakes that businesses make and how can these blunders be rectified. Check out –

Critical Sales Mistakes companies make can ruin their business opportunities, here we will discuss on few of them and try to understand how we can avoid them. Mistakes in sales have serious consequences! While we all tend to believe that we do not commit any bloopers, in reality there is nothing called full-proof in sales. That’s because creating one good sales approach and sticking to it lifetime never serves the purpose. The ways of selling have become dynamic and require all organizations to think differently and innovative.

Reviewing the sales approach, identifying the bloopers and eliminating them ensures that the business does not get deprived of revenue and the confidence level is always high within the sales team.

Below given are the 6 most common blunders that sellers make. Read through to identify and avoid them. Some may seem obvious but surprisingly even the most seasoned sales agents commit them:

1. Focused on the Feature than the Solution

Why do we buy a moisturizing shampoo? To solve the problem of dry hair. Common sense, right? But why isn’t this same common sense applied to our sales process?

Shockingly, in a survey by Sales and Consumer Insights, out of 10 companies, 8 focus on selling the features than the solution to the customers. Their sales approach harps time and again on what unique features their products have, instead of what solutions do the products offer.

What sales managers do not comprehend is that talking about the features sounds no less than Latin to end-users. They do not understand nor do they (often) give two hoot about the product features. What benefits do the products offer and what solutions can they provide – these are the two central things that consumers are concerned about.

So instead of being feature-focused, be solution-focused. Understand that consumers buy things only in an attempt to solve a problem. Focus on how your product can solve the problems of your potential customers and position your sales approach accordingly.

2. Disclosing Price at the end

This is the standard approach practiced by all companies. But while this approach works, there have been a few cases where this tactic has worked against the seller. This is precisely why some sales experts have endorsed the ‘change of concept’. In their opinion, the new-age customers prefer to maintain a balance between price and features.

So it is ideal that sellers do not wait until the end of the discussion to disclose the price. During the process of building the product/service value, it is better to discuss the cost factor as well. This has an explicit benefit – the discussion does not get abruptly interrupted for price. Over the value-building session itself, the customer can evaluate the product or service and easily understand how it is worth the cost.

3. No Customer Data

A sale does not just offer immediate revenue but carries strong potency of future revenue as well. Reason being that it is always easier to sell to an existing customer than to a new one. However, to make a sale down the road, it is essential that companies have customer data, which unfortunately most lack.

Noting down customer details in loose spreadsheets, notepads and random sticky notes does not help. Isn’t it?

You need a robust software that comes to your rescue and stores your customer data neatly indexed in a centralized database. And this is precisely where (my favorite) CRM system comes into the picture. 100 or 1000 – whatever be the number of your customers, CRM is equipped to streamline all customer details in a commonly accessible platform.

Imagine the benefits: Seven months down or seven years, you have the details of all your customers who ever transacted with you. This data is no short of a goldmine for sellers and marketers who can run campaigns and cross-sell/up-sell products/services to your existing customers. Sounds tempting eh?

4. Aiming for only the Big Fishes

Very often we as business entrepreneurs want to score high too soon. This compels us to concentrate on high-priced deals only. But does that make sense?

High-valued deals are time consuming. The decision-making is slow and payments are slower. Closing them take months or more. What’s even worse is that often months of effort are put behind deals that fail to materialize eventually. This leads to cash flow crunches.

Large-scale enterprises who are firmly established can invest months behind one high-value deal. But for startups and fast-growing small to medium-sized businesses, it is essential that revenue (although in small amounts) keep flowing.

The pursuit of the titans should be done by the SMBs but simultaneously with the smaller deals as well. This will ensure that the business spreads the word about it faster, earns good revenue and maintains a regular cash flow.

5. Not deviating from the Sales Pitch

Highly impactful sales pitches have a crucial part to play in a deal. But sales is not just about sales pitches. Are they?

The most successful sales agents use their presence of mind to modify the sales pitches in line to the client’s reaction and query. Visit the client, show the slideshare presentation and talk about the price is not their style of sale.

They do not let their sales pitch dictate the flow of things. They prepare a compelling presentation, deliver it naturally, start off the discussion and change it if needed, rather than relying too heavily on the prepared sales pitch.

They are observant of the reaction of the client and act on vital buying signals. Inevitably, this results into a constructive meeting which most of the time leads to closure.

6. Being Defensive

Irrespective of how compelling your product/service offering is, conflicting questions are bound to come from the customers’ side. And the most common point of conflict undoubtedly is ‘pricing’. But instead of trying to over-explain the stuff, it is necessary to ask thoughtful questions, understand client’s perspective and then answer.

Acting defensive and giving an abrupt explanation to justify the product’s price will put off the customer. Rather your tactic should be to understand what makes the client conflict the price and give a constructive answer supported by facts.

How to Deal with Changing Customer

How to Deal with Changing Customer, adapting to the changes is difficult, but we have do it, lets learn how we can adapt to the changing customers. Attracting today’s customer is a challenge for small and medium-sized companies. Rapid technological changes such as mobile devices and online tools combined with pervasive connectivity have enabled individuals to become ‘highly-informed’ buyers. Consequent to which, buyers are no longer dependent on one avenue for product/service information. With a click of the mouse or flick of the thumb on the smart phone, buyers can access detailed specs, reviews and pricing to seek better value for their money.

Empowered by comprehensive information gained through different mediums, customers have acquired complete control over the buying process. Result – They expect the purchase experience to match the same comfort and quickness of the information-gathering experience.

In the words of an industry expert – ‘’It won’t be wrong to say that people today have rewritten the rule of contacting, interacting and transacting with businesses. Thanks to the digital empowerment (think: expansion of online media and mobile devices), customers just have to click a button to find out about a product, check its review by others and buy it online.’’

‘’ Around the world, customers are fast moving from product/service awareness – to – research – to – taking action in a far shorter time than ever before.’’

And it is the impact of this trend that you have IBM proclaiming –

Online shopping in the United States to grow from 178.5 million in 2011 to 201.1 million by 201

Connectedness of customers

In this new era called – ‘Age of the Customer’, consumers have donned the role of influencers. So now when you have a customer sharing his/her experience about a brand over social media, thousands are bound to form their opinion accordingly. Consequently, a customer’s social network has become an important influence on brand perception.

Explaining this context elaborately, a leading digital marketing executive has stated – ‘’Today, it’s much easy to connect with a circle of like-minded consumers through varied platforms such as forums, blogs and videos. And the influence of these online discussions gets more substantiated when you have studies observing 12 percent of the U.S. population (37 million customers) referring to social media before making a purchase.’’

Maturity of customer expectations

Customers demand to be wooed by personalized experience/promotions, custom assortment of products and most importantly, the right to be heard. In short, they want to execute control over the overall buying experience. So whether it is the demand of aggressive discounts or the opportunity to provide feedback – businesses are expected to respond to customer needs on the customers’ terms itself.

And not to forget that in a global marketplace, customer satisfaction also involves businesses serving them in their language of choice.

Demand for transparency

In comparison to the earlier times, customers are more aware of their rights when engaging with companies. Hence, now they demand control over their personal data which the company has acquired from them. This is precisely why data security has become an issue of great concern now. Customers are also finicky about the medium through which they are contacted i.e. by e-mail, fax and live agents etc.

Challenge of controlling the brand experience across multiple platforms

As mentioned earlier, customers are using online tools to engage and disengage with the company according to their own time and location. As a result – today, customer map has become a series of moments–

Awareness of a new product or service
Investigative process
Purchasing process

These moments are separated by days, weeks, or months. With customer map on a constant fluctuation (long or short varying from customer to customer), opportunity time frame to influence the potential buyers has decreased.

According to a sales executive – ‘’the new-age customer has leveled the playing field among competitors. Consequently, businesses face the eternal challenge of how to remain the most relevant to the customer. Cost alone is no longer the determining factor now. Companies are now required to provide a brand experience strong enough to earn repeat business.’’

How ConvergeHub helps having 360 degree view of a customer

With the present situation in mind, it only becomes obligatory for businesses to change the way they operate and compete. To meet the elevated personal expectations of the new, smarter customer, companies need to look beyond basic marketing and selling strategy. They need the fundamental key to address the massive shifts in the relationship between customer and business. And this can be possible only through implementation of ConvergeHub CRM – Enterprise Customer Relationship Management Tool.

ConvergeHub CRM provides a 360 degree view of a customer, enabling business managers to anticipate, and respond quickly and effectively to their customers’ needs. Using the real-time data and analysis tools, they can decide the best contact methods to employ to improve service levels and satisfy customers. In short ConvergeHub CRM acts as a ‘Business Growth Engine’ that helps in the understanding of who the customers are and what they want to deliver consistent customer experience – the most powerful competitive differentiator in this age to build brand loyalty over time.

Analyzing the letters: C-R-M

Customer Relationship Management has captivated the corporate world entirely. From the just-started ventures to the large corporations, every organization has just one thing on mind – how to utilize the CRM in the best way to hone customer relations. But what makes it interesting is that while CRM has become so popular, not many of us actually know about its history. By history, I do not mean when the first CRM application was designed etc. Rather, what I imply is the multiple changes that CRM has undergone in the past several decades. The CRM technology that supports the interactions between a customer and a business has evolved tremendously.

By history, I do not mean when the first CRM application was designed etc. Rather, what I imply is the multiple changes that CRM has undergone in the past several decades.

The CRM technology that supports the interactions between a customer and a business has evolved tremendously. Technological advancements, customer behavior and high-level phenomenon such as social media, etc. have all left their mark on the customer relationship management application.

Why and how – let’s discuss

The technological experts (who have monitored the CRM since its introduction) believe that each of the three initials of C-R-M have been the focus in different phases of the evolution period. To explain further, let’s say – in the first phase managing the data around a sales person’s activities (the”M” in CRM) was the focus.

The value of M

Initially, unwieldy databases were the status quo. As a result, when the CRM system was introduced, the priority was to standardize processes through better management. In fact, it was a result of this focus on management that led most CRM systems getting designed to benefit managers more than the end users. For instance, users were compelled to feed data in the CRM. While this made the management reports better, the actual users did not gained anything out of the CRM.

The value of C

The conceit of management continued for a long time. Most CRM systems focused on workflow process management, management-level reports, – NOT on optimizing the insights around customer histories. When it was gradually realized that such CRM systems were not creating meaningful experiences at different touch points, customer data came into the picture (the”C” in CRM).

Adding the C was a revolutionary yet ironical step. While Customer was always there in the term Customer Relationship Management, its actual significance came in later.

And now the last but the most important, the focus on the “R” in the CRM.

The era of cRm (i.e. R in the focus) is the one we are living now. Many industry leaders have believed that evolving further from the management of data and rich customer insights; we have finally arrived to focus on the RELATIONSHIP aspect. Today, every successful enterprise has attributed its success to enhanced relations with customers. And following this tactic are the small and medium-sized enterprises that have started investing in CRM cloud applications to focus better on the relationships customer have with them.

Experts believe that this period has turned out to be the most profitable among the three different phases of the CRM evolution. Focusing on the relationship has benefited both the customer and the actual front line users of a CRM system.

Users have been empowered with the tools which they need to provide an exceptional level of service. And that too, in a single, intuitive user panel that is accessible on any device. Result – Sales, marketing and support professionals are able do their jobs better with less stress and manual efforts.

The customers have benefited as the organizations have a complete record of their past transactions, buying patterns and preferences. Consequently, organizations have been in a better position to solve the problems and meet the customer needs across any channel.

Omni-Channel Customer Service Approach

Time-strapped customers demand the flexibility of interacting with companies across a growing number of channels. As a result, they’re demanding a seamless and consistent approach across all these. While the larger enterprises have things easy (with resources and technology), it’s the ‘test of the time’ for the small and medium-sized businesses. How the SMBs around the globe will implement omni-channel customer service to meet consumers’ expectations? This blog answers that for you.

Accenture Report states – Multi-channel approaches for prompt customer engagement is the clear trend in many industries. Every fast-growing company needs to work on this ASAP! They need to build strategies for a seamless and proactive omni-channel approach that provides a single, unified experience for their customers across all channels.

Today companies are facing a new threat in the global marketplace: the looming possibility of growing customer empowerment where customers are being provided with options from an array of companies and industry sectors. This multitude of choices has made it easy for the customers’ to switch between service providers.

And it’s an upshot of this that customers’ expectations have soared high and become intricate to ascertain. They’ve got the reigns of power and have influenced companies’ overall stature and become more globally diverse.

In such a scenario, companies who still stick to the decades-old, “one size fits all” service model are failing big time in responding effectively to the customers’ needs and behaviors. Either they need to buck up with prompt and proactive omni-channel customer service or be prepared to fall by the wayside.

In relation to this context, here’s what Kate Leggett VP, Principal Analyst @ Forrester states –

Customers want an accurate, relevant, and complete answer to their question upon first contact, so they can get back to what they were doing before the issue arose. Forrester data shows that 55% of US online adults are likely to abandon their online purchase if they cannot find a quick answer to their question (on any channel); 77% say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good online customer service.

Rise of self-service channels by the side of traditional mediums

Forrester states – Customers of all ages are increasingly using self-service channels (web, mobile, IVR) for customer service. While they are escalating the difficult issues to the customer support agents – (through chat, email or a phone), for generic queries, they are using the self service mediums more often.

Now there’s both pro and con to it.

Pro: With increased number of communication channels, Companies have more opportunities to help build stronger relationships with the customers to garner their long-term loyalty.

Con: Not really a con but definitely a challenge what companies are grappling with is delivering omni-channel experience. Providing a “pain-free” experience across multiple touch-points is no easy task.

2015 survey results from Dimension Data (also published in Forrester report) corroborate the same fact:

“Customers want a frictionless, easy, and immediate journey on channels of their choice. They want a connected omni-channel journey across channels.’’ Then only will companies get the much-longed loyalty and commitment.

So are companies trying to cater to this demand? Yes.

But the success ratio is low. While the larger enterprises are agile enough to adapt to this trend, SMBs are progressing at a slower pace. Not because that they do not want to but because they face a difficult choice between upgrading their past systems and investing in the future ones.

What does this mean: Omni-channel customer service only a USP of the larger enterprises? Nopes!

Possible Solution:

Kate Leggett brings forth three exclusive tricks to deliver prompt omni-channel customer service in the best possible way. Straight from the horse’s mouth – employ these pointers that are sure to make you hit the bull’s eye!

Customer service organizations have to go digital – the right way:

To cater to the omni-channel customers, organizations need to develop a customer-focused culture. Siloed technologies that don’t share the same data use the same business processes or share the same UI and user experiences will not do. Businesses need to invest in enterprise-wide applications (like we suggest: the new-age Small Business CRM applications) that map the customers journey and help in rendering service to the customers as they seamlessly move between channels.

Customer service organizations must retrain agents:

Organizations need to invest time and effort in retraining the agents in omni-channel customer management. Kate writes – ‘’Agents can no longer only be proficient on a single channel, but must be retrained to handle inquiries over a broad range of media types.’’

Customer service organizations have to empower their agents:

Customer Service agents need nothing short of modern customer service technologies (Hint: web based CRM solutions). They function as omni-channel customer service solutions that involve unified queuing, routing and reporting. They streamline all the customer data in one shared repository that offer easy knowledge management and support agents through resolution paths.

Using these tools, Customer Support agents focus well on the conversation instead of struggling with multiple applications at hand.

Tips to make your cold call a success

Most sales reps dread making the cold call. But then who doesn’t? Especially, when you know you’re interrupting someone to get something out of them; perhaps information, a meeting or a new sale. However, according to a section of experts, picking up the phone is one of the best prospecting tools and one of the best ways to meet with customers. So here we have got tips (framed by the best front line sales managers) to help you make the perfect call every time.

Tips to make your cold call a success, lets learn how to benefit from cold calls. Most sales reps dread making the cold call. But then who doesn’t? Especially, when you know you’re interrupting someone to get something out of them; perhaps information, a meeting or a new sale.

However, according to a section of experts, picking up the phone is one of the best prospecting tools and one of the best ways to meet with customers.

So here we have got tips (framed by the best front line sales managers) to help you make the perfect call every time.

1. Know the Target

Many sales reps make cold calls without enough preparation to turn a short conversation into something meaningful. Needless to say this approach is WRONG.

Work with marketing teams to discover the prospects who may be the best fit for your product. Use customer relationship management solutions to get insights into title of the company, background, company hierarchy and industry overviews. Make sure that you have a complete picture of the prospect such as day-to-day job functionality, mentality and the biggest business pains they have.

Note: Working out these things before you call will put you into much better footing to develop a relationship.

2. Know the time to get on the Phone

Learn which times of day or evening result in the most meaningful conversations. Accordingly, focus efforts when your prospects are AVAILABLE.

Introduce Yourself and Your Company

Greet prospects by name. Give your full name, company name, and job title. Include a benefit statement such as, “Hello Mr. /Ms…We’re a…company helping customers achieve cost reduction in operation.”

3. Give the Reason of your call

Clearly state why you’re calling in the beginning of the call; if the reason is to schedule a personal visit, say so.

4. Make the prospect say yes!

Use buy-in statements in the interaction. Use company names of a similar industry with the same challenges (as your prospect) to develop credibility and interest.

For instance, “I’m sure that like our customer, XYZ, you too would be interested in improving upon this area of your business.”

5. Try and have a referral

Most often the goal of cold calling is to close on an in-depth meeting. However, it’s unrealistic to think that this will happen with every call you make. To increase the success probability of the call, the best thing is to have a referral.

When you have been referred, your call to that referral gives you credibility which you can’t get in any other way. In fact when you connect with someone based upon a referral, the possibility that they will accept to meet is high.

6. Emphasize upon the Appointment

Rather than if strongly emphasize when you are going to meet. Avoid confusion through open-ended questions by specifically asking for a time. Sum up the appointment details via email for reference purpose.

7. Follow-Up with Reminders

Send reminders via email and voicemail 2-3 business days prior to the meeting.

8. Measure

Think about anything you ever cared about getting better at. Probably you kept measuring your performance and kept improving on it. It’s no different when it comes to prospecting. With continuous measurement and tracking of performance, you can adjust and improve.

Questions to ask:

How many quality discussions do you have (not with gatekeepers)?
How many referrals do you get?
How many meetings do you manage to set up?

How to start online social selling, Online social selling strategy

CSO Annual Sales Performance Optimization research results have stated – sales reps generate almost half of their new leads. Unfortunately, sales reps are facing increasing challenges in acquiring their leads. According to the IBM Preference Study – 97% of the time, cold calls are ineffective and since 2010, this percentage is increasing by 7% annually. As a result, most savvy sales pros are exploring the social media techniques to pick up the slack.

How to start online social selling, We know a lot of new ventures to start selling online are there, but how good is online social selling, let’s learn that. With the vast change in digital business management to social spread the time has come for all businesses to be online, digital and social.

CSO Annual Sales Performance Optimization research results have stated – sales reps generate almost half of their new leads.

Unfortunately, sales reps are facing increasing challenges in acquiring their leads. According to the IBM Preference Study – 97% of the time, cold calls are ineffective and since 2010, this percentage is increasing by 7% annually. As a result, most savvy sales pros are exploring the social media techniques to pick up the slack.

What is Social Selling?

Social selling involves utilizing the information available in social channels to aid sales strategies and pursuits. Now the information available in the social channels (i.e. comments of actual/prospect customers) is varied such as – questions, concerns, inquiries and frustrations, which again can be both candid and desirous of a response.

In the opinion of the experts, more than B2C, B2B buyers are active in publicly sharing their opinions about what they like and dislike, want and need and what matters to them.

Sales professionals working in B2B enterprises can capitalize upon the social interactions. They can put themselves into an early and coveted position by engaging with the buyers before the buyers get engaged with other sales competitors.

But then is the social selling strategy so easy? In the words of a sales rep – ‘’ even while sales professionals have understood the importance of being social and are taking steps towards it, adopting social selling techniques to discover relevant conversations can be difficult.’’

So here we have got it for all B2B sales professionals – 5 key steps to kick start the social selling strategy!!!

Social Search

Do you know every day there are almost 200 million tweets posted about different companies, products and services. Now from these 200 million tweets, very small but substantial percentages are buyers seeking referrals and advice for your products/services.

Social searching can help you identify the right sale opportunities from the crowd. You can use Twitter’s search and advanced search capabilities to find potential prospects. All that will be required here is a few hours of thoughtful analysis and experimentation to identify the relevant search terms/keywords that will yield the maximum results for your business.

Social Prospect

Use tools to filter social spheres and create highly segmented target lists. One of the best utilized tools for social prospecting can be LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. Using this, you can seek out prospects and create target lists through the demographic search criterion.

Note: In LinkedIn a warm referral increases the chances of a sales success by 2X-4X. Considering this fact, many sales reps use their networks personal connections to turn a cold outreach into a warm transfer.

Elaborating further on this context, here is what a leading CRM blogger has put up in his recent write-up – “Social media is a major asset in getting the target audience to be more receptive to the sales reps. Here is what happened to one of the sales rep (recruited in HootSuite) – The sales rep came across an article in the Boston Globe regarding a new project about to be launched by a renowned communications company.

The article mentioned the C-level executive who headed this project. Doing a quick search on LinkedIn, the rep found that he shared a first-level connection with the executive. He referenced this mutual connection while reaching out to the executive and incredibly, got a response in 30 minutes.’’

Now had the rep taken the traditional route of calling or emailing through LinkedIn, it’s unlikely he would have received such an immediate response. .

Trigger of Events

Put yourself in front of the buyer at the beginning of their buy cycle. Identify the activities/events that precede a buying opportunity such as company acquisition, senior executive hire, product launch, new venture and geographical expansion.

At present, many sales intelligence tools are available which can help the reps create watch lists to identify these triggering events.

Note: Once the events are identified, sales reps can find the prospect decision makers or influencers, and can send them a congratulatory tweet or link to useful content.

Contact Intelligence

Social media channels can be a bit cryptic by providing limited information about the leads. You can use several Data append services. LinkedIn too can take an email address or other identifier and can add helpful insights about a prospective company or contact.

Contact intelligence can be taken to the next level with marketing automation systems and CRM systems. These can link social media leads with accounts or contacts present in your CRM database. Once you identify the social lead, you can easily review his/her other social media profiles to get a comprehensive knowledge about likes/preferences.

Create Lists

Once you begin identifying sales prospects, you can categorize them for continued social media buy signals. Twitter allows you to create lists of customers or prospects in order to curate and monitor all their future comments. You can also streamline social contacts through marketing automation systems or Cloud CRM applications with built-in internal social networks.

Final Words

Research by Altimeter Group found that only 11% of companies used social media tactics for sales. Although adoption is currently low, performance results for early adopters have been quite remarkable.

According to Forbes 78.6% sales reps using social selling techniques outperformed their non-social peers. In fact, the social selling reps were 23% more successful in reaching their sales quota.

Stating these figures, it won’t be wrong to say that while social selling doesn’t replace good selling strategies but it clearly acts as a method to make selling strategies more successful.

5 Step approach to an easy Social CRM implementation

The age of Social CRM has ushered in a new practice of customer relationship management. But, how well have the companies implemented it? According to Chris Bucholtz, unlike a CRM, companies simply cannot approach a vendor for buying a Social CRM application. Before taking the plunge, it is required of companies to – Examine internal operations Analyze customer base and target audience However, most companies have not followed the above-mentioned procedure.

Examine internal operations
Analyze customer base and target audience

However, most companies have not followed the above-mentioned procedure. Consequently, despite companies building foundations for corporate social media strategies, the benefits have not been up to the standard mark. Executions have been erratic and ROI concerns have amplified.

According to Carolyn Heller Baird (Global CRM Research Leader with the IBM Institute for Business Value) and Gautam Parasnis (Partner and Vice President for IBM Global Business Services and the Global CRM Leader), it is essential of companies to change their perception of social media and build a flexible and structured strategic and operational framework. Then only can they unlock the potential of social media to reinvent their customer relationships.

They point out that one of the key challenges faced by any company is the progress from social media programs to social CRM strategy. While Social CRM offers a multitude of benefits, the transition to a Social CRM approach forms the real challenge. Explaining this context further, they state ‘’ Social media programs often have a defined mission, set of guidelines, and some degree of analytics, governance and executive endorsement.’’

Social CRM strategy breaks this compact approach by moving the social media programs beyond the domains of a single organizational department. It involves an integrated approach by implementing ‘’ a cross-functional network of integrated communities with customer facing responsibilities’’. Resultant to which, customer insights captured from a slew of sources – multiple social touch points and traditional channels are shared comprehensively. Inevitably, sharing of insights enable companies to treat their customers holistically. Customer experience is improved and companies develop innovative customer engagement models.

Companies need to be aware of the fact that the road to transition is not tidy. According to the IBM Global Business Services Executive Report, often what companies’ witnesses (during the transition) is a mixture of qualities in the social CRM programs. Consequently, it becomes difficult to create lines of demarcation. Example – cross-functional social media initiatives without KPIs or social media program metrics without an executive sponsorship.

With this in mind, Carolyn Heller Baird and Gautam Parasnis have stated 5 key tactics to ensure a smooth transition from isolated social media projects –to-social media programs–to-full-blown Social CRM approach.

Take global references

Refer to other companies’ social media measurements, tools, policies and usage guidelines. Combine them with your company’s corporate values to build a governance model for Social CRM. Form a community of customer-facing representatives. Encourage them to collaboratively develop customer engagement strategies and share ideas that enable other departments to leverage these methods with the freedom to innovate.

Align marketing and customer care together

To support the customer holistically, it is imperative to synchronize social media initiatives originating in both marketing and customer care functions. As they put it – ‘’ whether customers engage with a company to respond to promotions or seek information and support, they expect an authenticity that delivers the brand promise.’’

Organize training for varying levels of social media expertise

Guarding the Social Gates: The Imperative for Social Media Risk Management, (prepared by Alan Webber, with Charlene Li and Jaimy Szymanski) discusses the risk/reward paradox of social media:

According to the survey cited in the report, while companies held social media as a powerful tool for distributing content, engaging audiences and driving sales, simultaneously, they expressed the fear of facing a whole new set of social media vulnerabilities. Two thirds of the companies surveyed mentioned reputational risks associated with social media.

To alleviate social media vulnerabilities, adoption of a sustainment program to continually re-evaluate the social media usage process is required. Carolyn Heller Baird and Gautam Parasnis stress the value of ongoing employee training on social media policies. In their words, ‘’ make sure all employees using social media receive training on guidelines, policies, customer communications practices, and processes for mitigating risk and escalating concerns.’’

Ensure hands-on involvement by senior executives in the adoption of social media policy. To avoid initial hiccups pair novices with mentors (holding key insights on customer and marketplace trends).Provide incentives for employees to enhance customer value through social media. Recognize and acknowledge employees who deliver exceptional social media customer service

Build virtual communities within the organization

Establish internal virtual communities for employees to connect and cross-pollinate their ideas and knowledge. This will help break down the organizational silos. In addition to the sharing of ideas, it will also help the novices fine-tune new initiatives by implementing them first in the internal virtual community. In sum, it will serve as a safe training environment to frame and test innovative social media practices before implementing them publicly.

Use customer insights and analytics

Capture and analyze customer data from social interactions to reduce reputational risk and improve customer relations. Sentiment analysis and predictive modeling are common processes. Most companies follow the chain of Listen-Analyze-Engage-Evolve.

Conclusion

IBM Global Business Services Executive Report has stated – majority of companies today have aggressively forged ahead with social media initiatives, corroborating the potentiality of social media. However, in this gold-rush mentality to exploit social media benefits, they have not evaluated the value of social media programs to the customer. Understanding what entices customers to interact with a company via social media and what value can be given to the customers through this medium is essential to build value proposition for a Social CRM strategy.

Based upon the aforementioned insight, companies should audit the customer-facing social media initiatives and align them under the overarching Social CRM strategy, which in turn will boost social engagement customers’ value and business revenue.

5 killer social media tips for B2B businesses

Social Media is the most powerful marketing tool for increasing B2B sales. Unlike other marketing mediums, here businesses get the benefit of engaging directly with the decision-makers of the targeted company. This is precisely why more than seventy percent of B2B companies are exhaustively investing their time and effort in social media marketing. This blog is an all-inclusive guide to social media for B2B. It cites five best strategies for businesses to gain maximum ROI from social media channels.

social media tips for B2B businesses that not only benefit in bringing business but also increases productivity and builds a good brand.

n the ocean of potential customers, social media is a charter fishing trip. – Adam Fridman

Quite a precise statement, especially at a time when so many popular social communities like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. have come up. You can go to any of these platforms and land a big catch.

But things are tad more difficult or let’s say challenging for B2B businesses. Here one company is trying to get hold of another. So things ought to be more tactful and carefully premeditated.

Unfortunately, while the awareness of social media marketing is growing, most of the tips given are focused on B2C communication. This also explains why many companies in spite of implementing most of the social media tip given everywhere, fail to generate any ROI.

In business-to-business (B2B) scenarios, although the social media platforms are same, the tools and tactics are a bit different. For instance, – new-age customer relationship management applications are required that enable a business to monitor its social media channels. Businesses (anytime anywhere) can get the latest insight into what their leads/customers are sharing or talking about socially. Plus, they can post their own updates through the CRM too. In short, the CRM application works as business growth software.

However, simply having the technology is half the battle won. You need to have clearly outlined B2B specific social media strategies to gain benefit.

Read further as we provide you five tips for creating a strong and effective social media marketing campaign specifically for business to business.

1. Capitalize the power of Twitter

Twitter is the most powerful social media tool for B2B communications. Once you know your exact target, you can find, follow, and engage the person in ways that other social media channels do not allow you to do.

For example – Facebook, in which there’s no reason why you need to see photos of the vacation that the CEO of some XYZ company went for.

So basically, Twitter lets you do your business well. However, just a word of caution –

Once you find and follow your target(s), observe them for a while. Study their Twitter profile thoroughly to understand the kind of tweets they post. Even after they follow you – Don’t tweet to them or send them a direct message right away. First develop a precise idea of what they usually share and re-tweet. Then start sharing similar things on your profile.

Use the #B2B hashtag on Twitter. This is a popular hashtag used by companies to connect with other B2B companies that are giving Twitter a try.

2. Be Human

You’re chasing a business deal or a lead but that shouldn’t make your communication robotic. Be interesting, funny, and engaging on every social media channel. This is extremely essential for a healthy relationship with your clients. Remember businesses are made up of individuals and connecting with those individuals over social media should be your motive. To successfully achieve this, you need to develop a personally engaging approach.

So share stories or news about your employees as well as your product. Present a personal voice and image to your targeted customers. Put company faces out to humanize you and your brand.

In short, make your marketing person to person. As Matthew Chapdelaine, co-founder of CommercialConnected.com states – “Every transaction still relies on the personal touch to get the deal to the finish line.”

3. Prepare a Mixed Approach

Share industry news articles. Maintain 2:1 ratio where you share third-party content two times followed up with your own content. Make a list of the thought leaders in your industry. Share most of their content that’s relevant to your business. Considering that all social platforms show who has shared whose post – this is a great way to get on the radar of your industry thought leaders. (Definitely much better than a direct sales pitch)

Also look for other ways to engage with the leaders socially.

Let’s say Twitter chats where you get the chance to participate in a conversation with a large number of people. The conversation usually centers on a topic of current interest.

Twitter chats are frequently held where people follow a specific hashtag at a specific time. The ones who want to take part in the conversation comment with the topic-related hashtag. Anyone following the hashtag can see that Tweet.

Why do we recommend this for B2B?

Business Leaders and Top-Notch brands promote thousands of hashtags everyday. Majority of the tweetchats are established around these hashtags only. You just need to find the one that’s relevant to your business/target audience and take part in there.

Over time, you can start your own Twitter Chats. Sharing good mix of information through these chats can be a great strategy to increase your followers.

4. Use Google Alerts

53% B2B companies actively use Google Alerts to monitor industry news. Follow the same tactic. Keep yourself updated with what’s happening with other businesses. Get links to popular contents that you can later share with your followers.

5. Start commenting in LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn provides 80 percent of all B2B social media leads.

LinkedIn Groups are pre-made marketing communities, which allows companies to build up their name socially. If you have a solid resource of information to share in a group, start posting them. It’s one of the best options to drive people to your profile, and eventually, to your website.

Just a word of caution – Don’t spam the group with tons of sales messages. Share useful information that you’re confident will benefit the people in your group.

Once you establish an affirmative reputation as an expert commenter, you can start your own LinkedIn Group too. The group can be strictly focused on a particular subject or have a number of relatable topics bundled together.

Experts suggest focusing on a narrow topic at first. Over time, you can dig deeper into the topic to educate your audience and gain their trust. Remember while you might find uncountable number of companies forming their own LinkedIn groups, only few of them get heard. This is because every company is not able to become an authoritative voice on LinkedIn. To make your company gain a strong foothold in LinkedIn, share great knowledge insights that allure the best businesses to your group.

How to keep Customer Database in CRM

How often have you made a follow-up call only to find out that another member of your team has already contacted the lead? Many times indeed! According to the sales experts, repeated follow-up on the same contact is one of the most embarrassing situations. In spite of using the CRM software, sales reps have been often found facing such type of awkwardness in front of their customers

Integrate Customer Database in CRM, how and when a guide. How often have you made a follow-up call only to find out that another member of your team has already contacted the lead? Many times indeed! According to the sales experts, repeated follow-up on the same contact is one of the most embarrassing situations. In spite of using the CRM software, sales reps have been often found facing such type of awkwardness in front of their customers.

So where is the confusion? Is there no use of having feature-rich CRM software? Does the customer relationship management software not perform always? Do you have second thoughts about your CRM investment?

Wait…

Before you raise a finger at the CRM tool; ensure that your people are maintaining clean and accurate customer information in the CRM database.

Believe it or not, many instances have been reported where sales professionals have found duplicate contacts existing in the CRM database. The presence of duplicate data is the common reason behind many goof-ups which the sales reps make. As a renowned CRM consultant puts it – ‘’Inaccurate CRM data hampers sales and marketing performance. Duplicate/redundant data is one the prominent forms of inaccurate data. Team professionals especially the marketing, sales and customer-support team leaders should ensure the maintenance of accurate information, to get CRM system under control and save headache down the road.’’

Read further as we discuss the 4 EASY ways to maintain accurate information in the CRM:

How complete are your records: is the first question you need to ask. Most often it is seen that sales reps neglect proper data entry. Wonder why? Well, this is due to the numerous fields that are mandatory to fill in while feeding data in the CRM. Considering this aspect, it is advisable to set a few fields as mandatory. Let’s say Last Name and Budget can be the two mandatory fields that the sales reps need to fill in while in a hurry. In fact this is precisely what Converge online CRM does.

Its Create Leads/Contacts/Accounts/Deals in Quick View is especially designed for the convenience of the sales, marketing and customer-support professionals on the go. Instead of going through the long process, they can feed in the details within a few seconds.

Role-based security: We all realize maintaining an accurate CRM database becomes highly challenging especially when you have data pouring in from multiple sources. The best way to tackle this is to set access levels for different users. Converge CRM has an exclusive feature of creating hierarchy and setting data security rules. As Converge CRM users, you can leverage, edit or restrict access to reports, data view and other features of the CRM based on your company’s hierarchy.

Needless to say, with the use of role-based security, you can easily manage sharing of information and organizing the overall workflow.

Eliminate chances of duplicate entries: As mentioned-earlier, duplicate entries has been one of the common problems of the sales reps. Thanks to CRM systems such as Converge, that possess smart duplicate checking intelligence. Inevitably, using the Converge CRM saves team professionals from going through the records for duplicates. They do not have to prevent the rise of duplicate data by manually comparing the details.
Style sheet: Uniformity in data entry is one of the most critical aspects. And how you can do it is by maintaining a style sheet. Converge CRM offers the admin the flexibility to set formats for a few fields. Let’s say Quotation Number Format and Invoice Number Format. By setting this, it ensures that all the CRM users will follow standard data entry formats. Inevitably standardized format for important data helps generate accurate reports.

Lastly it can be concluded that maintaining data quality in the CRM is not a one-time event. If not taken care from the beginning, it can become a tedious task ahead.

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