ConvergeHub Blog for 2017

Does Investing In CRM Lead To Betterment In Permission-Based Marketing In 2017

It has been recently observed that although ad growth in slowing down, investments in CRM are growing. This makes total sense as it points to further growth in permission-based marketing channels such as email marketing.

In a report published by eMarketer after conducting several outside studies indicates that companies of all kinds, particularly SMBs are nowadays spending more on CRM technology- because CRM improves sales and customer service.

Also in a study done by Duke University, located in Durham, North Carolina, it has been noted that spending on CRM systems is outpacing brand spending over the last two years, since 2014.

More to say, eMarketer matching Duke’s findings did a research from Gartner, which showed that among SBM professions in the creative industries (Advertising and marketing, IT, Software and computer services, Publishing, Film, TV, Video, Radio, Photography etc.), sale of CRM has increased between 10 to 49 percent.

This is why it has happened:

Adv Spend Uncertainty

Let us put in the context of the ongoing worries advertisers are having about fraudulent ad viewability. In a recent conversation with Omnicom’s CEO John Wren with Gartner’s representatives, he stated that in a most recent investor conference, he has noted a slowdown in the growth of client’s digital spending, as he feels that clients are tapping their brakes because of the lack of clarity about these issues.

Media Life echoed this same concern after they observed in an independent survey that 96% of the surveyed professionals at digital publishers said that viewability is the most pressing problem, while an equal number was worried about advertisement campaign’s attributions and measurements.

CRM As an Antidote To Adv Waste

In our view, the solution to this industry woe is to double-down on permission-based marketing. According to Terence Kawaja, the founder, and CEO of Luma Partners, connecting CRM data management platforms let marketing professionals merge first, second and third party data to reach customers on a closer one-to-one basis.

Hence, used skillfully, CRM systems and email communication can create a virtuous cycle.

Finding the consumer’s email address is generally the very first step in permission-based marketing, while the email itself becomes the foundation of that CRM profile.

Now, once the relationship with the consumer has begun, email becomes an outstanding channel for availing more relevant information about the person. These emails can include multiple-choice questions, surveys, and other brand marketing strategies that can be used for further promotions, via email and other channels. CRM can also provide purchase history of the customers, which also helps in establishing a stronger relationship with the buyers at large.

From the other end, once all the information of the customer is appended into the CRM system and the system is filled with people-based prospective profiles, powerful emails can be designed that comprises of dynamic content, which is personalized to the likes of the recipient. The greater the CRM system is made knowledgeable about an individual with information like location, product and information preference, ideal time of the day to receive offers, the more the email can deliver the best mix of offer and information to the customer.

However, marketers can avail these benefits only if they have a robust technology for both CRM and email, which is found in converged CRMs like ConvergeHub.

This is why the increase in investment in CRM platform is healthy, which will make email marketing better and help provide a single view of customers across channels, which remained unexplored hither before.

References:

Bush A., , Bush V., , & Harris S. (1998). Advertiser perceptions of the internet as a marketing communications tool. Journal of Advertising Research
Karson E. J., , McCloy S. D., , & Bonner P. G. (2006). An examination of consumers’ attitudes and beliefs towards web site advertising. Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertising,
MacPherson K. (2001). Permission-based E-mail marketing that works.

Best Small Business CRM ConvergeHub- The #1 CRM for SMB

Though CRM solutions plies on their bells and whistles for attracting customers, in reality, there are a few core functionalities that all best CRM features, which have the most impact on your business. Therefore, while you examine your possible options for adopting a CRM, focusing on these features can prevent you from getting distracted by functionalities, which in spite of appearing interesting or even promising, will not be able to do the CRM assisted heavy-lifting tasks that your business needs now

Though easy to use CRM solutions plies on their bells and whistles for attracting customers, in reality, there are a few core functionalities that all best CRM features, which have the most impact on your business.

Therefore, while you examine your possible options for adopting the best Small Business CRM, focusing on these features can prevent you from getting distracted by functionalities, which in spite of appearing interesting or even promising, will not be able to do the CRM assisted heavy-lifting tasks that your business needs now.

What is CRM?

ConvergeHub defines CRM as “Another way of illustrating the various functions of CRM software and what it can do for an organization is based on the following parameters, which includes features related to Sales, Marketing, Service Management applications, and Collaborations with Partners”.

It provides organizations with necessary customer data, so that businesses can provide products and services that the customers want, provide effective cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, retain present customers, close deals, and ultimately better understand who their customers are.

Why we need easy to use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software?

A easy to use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool is the heart of every business. Best Small Business CRM software adoption allows organizations to gain business and customer intelligence with the aim of improving overall productivity and customer satisfaction.
This customer relationship building system also helps businesses to automate day-to-day mundane tasks and time-consuming processes, while improving communication and visibility across an organization.

Therefore, if your company does not have a CRM system yet in place, it might be a good time for you to start looking for one, which has all the best CRM for small business features in it.

How best small business CRM helps business?

The wealth of main benefits that most easy to use CRM system offers are:

CRM Sales Automation
CRM Marketing Automation
Ticketing and Support CRM Features
Social CRM Integration
Mobility and Field Service

What can a easy to use CRM do for an organization?

Another way of illustrating the various functions of CRM software and what it can do for an organization is based on the following parameters, which includes features related to Sales, Marketing, Service Management applications, and Collaborations with Partners.

According to CRM expert and principal consultant at Third Idea Consulting Marshall Lager:

“Taken as a whole, these features are the core of what CRM is about,” he said. “Without them working together, an organization will wind up with siloed customer information, which is precisely what CRM is meant to prevent. They’re what you need to have a complete view of your customers”.

So, here we detail the features to consider when you are selecting a easy to use CRM application, one after another.

How best small business CRM works?

Briefly the bottom line of Customer Relationship Marketing workflow is:

1. Start marketing activities

Run Campaigns
Generate Leads
Create a database

2. Develop sales

Assign Leads
Qualify Leads
Convert Leads
Track New Opportunities

3. Schedule dispatch of orders

Deliver Products
Create Billing and Invoices

4. Extend support

Provide Service
Manage Cases
Conduct Training
Build up the Knowledge Base

Best CRM features related to Sales

Empower your sales team with Salesforce Automation software. SFA automates the repetitive tasks, which are associated with selling that in turn enables your sales personals to concentrate more on the act of closing their deals. Converged CRM like ConvergeHub also provides a 360-degree view of your valuable leads and customers, which provides your sales reps with precise selling and customer insights. Features like customized Dashboard along with Account, Contact and Deal Management enables the sales team to visualize all information from one application platform.

Dashboard

The dashboard helps you to get real-time snapshots of all your key metrics. It helps your sales managers to understand the latest developments in their sales operations from four different panels:

Deals By Expected Close Date
Leads By Source
Lead Acquisition
Deal Acquisition

Customizing the required setting of each panel helps the sales team to get a dynamic view as per their individual needs. For example, clicking on the Summary side panel on the ConvergeHub CRM window also helps in visualizing the sales pipeline at its various stages, like the updated data of the leads, contact, account, and deals.

Many also like ConvergeHub, as users of this CRM can experience easy navigation, which aids in visiting all the important sections in the CRM, through the links, which are present on the dashboard itself.

Account Management Module

Using ConvergeHub CRM’s account management software module, you can enable your sales reps to collectively manage, share, and collaborate with accounts. Being a cloud based CRM system sales reps can also authorize others to access a complete history of each individual accounts from one common database repository.

You can also add comments, attach files, schedule events, create tasks, and pin notes to the accounts.

ConvergeHub allows you to reach out to your accounts through phone, FAX, email, and SMS.

Refer to all your past deals of the accounts to understand their historical buying patterns, which increase the up-selling and cross-selling opportunities apart from setting up loyalty programs for your present customers.

Contact Management Module

ConvergeHub allows you to add contacts from third party sources using Developer API and Import tool to experience an easy and powerful means to store all your business contacts in a shared and centralized cloud database.

You can also use Microsoft Outlook plug-in to import contact into ConvergeHub or export it to Excel and PDF format.

Allowing your sales team to get a summary of all the communications happened between the customers and your company helps to improve customer service of your brand and organization.

You can also customize the contact management module in ConvergeHub easy to use CRM as per your organization-specific sales processes, which is just another best CRM feature of ConvergeHub.

Deals Management Module

The deals management module in this #1 CRM for SMB, helps to manage and store comprehensive information about deals and leads that are converted or to be converted, providing a detailed outlook about every single deal through fields like:

-Account name

-Assigned to

-Lead source

-Sales process

-Sales stage

-Deal value

-Deal type

-Expected closing date

-Conversion probability etc.

You can also associate the deals module with contact, accounts, activities, and other modules that will help your sales reps to close more deals and gain further insights into improving future ones.

Best CRM features related to Marketing

While easy to use CRM systems transform sales, marketing-automation completes the storyline by generating leads and managing lead engagements.

According to Matt Heinz, “World-class sales and marketing organizations need both teams to succeed and scale.”

Automated Campaigns

ConvergeHub CRM helps marketers to accomplish smarter decisions with exact information about their customers and prospects, at their fingertips. Increase your marketing ROI by building and running automated campaigns across several channels like email, mobile, Web, and social media to increase footfall and harvest more leads.

As one of the best CRM for SMB organizations measure your campaign results, mark the fruitful ones and rectify the areas that need improvements. ConvergeHub also features real-time visibility of all marketing performances with customizable and packaged reports.

ConvergeHub helps you to track campaign results through different fields like:

-Total Sent / Attempted

-Opened / Viewed

-Link clicked

-Unsubscribed

-Bounce / Invalid

You can also find extremely visual and content rich reports of your marketing campaigns on established user roles in Line, Pie, and Bar charts, for quick analysis of your marketing skills.

Create Email Templates

Content specific email marketing templates play a vital role in improving the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. ConvergeHub offers you predefined email templates in 6 different categories like:

-My Templates

-Business Templates

-Seasonal Holiday Templates

-Newsletter Templates

-Press Release Templates

-Showcase Templates

You can also create new or customize your pre-created templates with ConvergeHub Rich-Text HTML Editor.

Create Lists

ConvergeHub the best CRM for small business features the ability to create separate lists from accounts, target leads, and contacts to increase the impact of your marketing campaigns. Creating lists helps in targeting different priority markets through individualized campaigns, by adding segments and criteria in the lists for launching more specific and focused campaigns.

To create a list use the CRM’s advanced search functions to zero in on the recipients of previous marketing campaigns, export the list to PDF or Excel format and send a new campaign targeted to the previous recipients of the former campaigns. If needed, you can also adjust and modify the number of subscribers displayed on the list.

Create Broadcasts

ConvergeHub allows you to create, target and run broadcast campaigns from one interface across 4 mediums like:

-Email

-Direct Mail

-Social Media

-SMS

You can also perform cross-channel campaign tracking, identify the most profitable channels, modify your marketing efforts, and so find a noticeable improvement in your ROI.

Best CRM features related to Service Management applications

Use ConvergeHub to streamline organization-wide Customer Support processes. Instead of handling Sales and Post-sales support from two different platforms, integrate both under ConvergeHub. This facilitates you to provide quick resolutions to increase customer satisfaction and boost cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

Some of the features in ConvergeHub that make this happen are:

Case Management Module

Manage all your customer cases from a centralized database, for effective and on-time resolution of your customer issues. You can route and assign your support services to your help-desk agents across multiple communication channels like phone, email and the Web.

While resolving an issue support agents can attach relevant files from their computer or from the ConvergeHub Library.

You can also analyze the performance of your customer support agents through impeccable analytical reports.

For frequently complains about known support issues you can use the Knowledge Base of ConvergeHub for providing faster resolutions by submitting or editing through canned messages stored in the system.

View Case History

Click on the Issue History section in ConvergeHub to find a quick snapshot of your customer’s case history. You can get a detailed insight into your cases from important details like:

-Total number of previous cases

-Assigned customer support agents

-Case resolution status

-Case closure date

You can also comment on the issue history, if needed, as per your specific requirements.

Web to Case

ConvergeHub, in order to accelerate the resolution process, allows the system to capture customer support request from the website to include them in the system’s Cases module.

As one of its best CRM features, the case is automatically validated and assigned to the appropriate customer support agent.

ConvergeHub users do not need the help of software professional to build the web-to-case form. You can just drag and drop the required fields and select your customer support agent. Once you have set the form header, form description, button label, form completion message and redirected URL, all that you need to do is place the embedded code into your website.

API Integration

The ConvergeHub Application Programming Interface (API) allows your developers to integrate our CRM into any other application or system that you use. This signifies you can transfer and share data between your systems, which helps in building more effective business processes. Using ConvergeHub API you can connect to any other web-based applications, such as your in-house systems, website, and a myriad other cloud computing products. ConvergeHub’s API is a Representational State Transfer (REST) API that can accept your requests in either XML or JSON formats.

Best CRM features related to Collaborations

ConvergeHub helps you to collaborate with your employees, customers, and partners on sales opportunities, lead generation, service case, and marketing campaigns. Simplify your workflow by sharing winning practices, capturing new ideas with ConvergeHub online collaboration tools.

Library

Use ConvergeHub document management module to store and manage all your important files. Provide viewing and editing permissions of all your documents like presentations, brochures, case studies, and collaterals to employees based on their organizational hierarchy.

Use tags to make all your documents more searchable in the Knowledge Base and be notified when a new version of any file is uploaded, to keep all your information updated.

Calendar

Use ConvergeHub calendar to get reminded about upcoming events. You can synchronize your Google Calendar with ConvergeHub Calendar by downloading Google Calendar from the ConvergeHub Apps Store. You can also export your ConvergeHub Calendar to a third party source as per your requirements.

Partner

To improve partner relationship and increase channel partner sales, use ConvergeHub to directly communicate and share important documents with your channel partners for better collaboration on deals.

Notifications

As another best CRM features, get an instant view of all important notifications on your ConvergeHub dashboard.

As a round-the-clock communication channel, use your easy to use CRM also to send notifications to your business associates on client updates, reminders on upcoming sales and marketing events or meeting rescheduled dates.

Best CRM features related to Platforms used by a CRM

Office based CRM systems are undoubtedly powerful tools, but as competition increases, it is important for your sales team to be on the top of the game. Using mobile CRM helps your sales reps to show up in a meeting with all the information needed for closing the sale.

Mobile

Whether you are traveling within the city or on a business tour, ConvergeHub mobile CRM platform helps you to manage your business from your phone 24×7.

ConvergeHub is available both on Android and iPhone devices. Hence, update your sales opportunities, monitor the latest lead developments, act on customer complaints, get social insights, share files, and track your team’s activities anytime and anywhere using ConvergeHub the #1 Mobile CRM for SMB.

Takeaway

Now that you are aware of the best CRM for small business features, use ConvergeHub, join our team and we can help you to make your business smarter- for we believe that an integrated business is always a smarter business.

What Is CRM Marketing and How It Can Boost Your Marketing Plans

The answer to the question what is CRM marketing lies in the process by which marketing managers can track customer’s interests, record their behavior, watch the customer’s interaction to the campaigns to ensure campaigns and marketing messages are meeting their needs in the best possible ways.

Many in marketing and sales industry are familiar with the word CRM; however, few understand what is CRM marketing, as customer relationship management is often illustrated as a sales tool.

CRM as we know generally helps to track the outreach of your sales team, provide in-depth information about each prospective and current customer, and help your sales representative plan out strategies to close the deals.

However, CRM marketing is a newer breed of technology, which is developed to facilitate relationship-building activities for the marketing team, and often at a much larger scale, permitting both B2B and B2C organizations to plan and track interactions with their customers.

With the ability to track customer interactions across multiple channels and customize marketing plans according to those data, multichannel CRMs marketing (also known as Social CRM or SCRM) are essential for building a real 1:1 customer relationships at scale.

Therefore, the answer to the question what is CRM marketing lies in the process by which marketing managers can track customer’s interests, record their behavior, watch the customer’s interaction to the campaigns to ensure campaigns and marketing messages are meeting their needs in the best possible ways.

However, since every customer’s interest and behaviors are different, using personalization in campaigns leads to increase the conversion rates and encourage happy customers to stick to your brand.

CRM Marketing is most needed today as nowadays consumers are bombarded with all sorts of offers and messages that springs out of every corner of the business world.

Everyone is marketing these days.

Have you ever noticed how many times you receive promotional emails every single day, from a brand that you signed-up for? And more importantly, how frequently do you actually read them?

So consequentially, it has never been as difficult as it is now, for marketers to win customers, as everyone is on social media and everyone, as said before, is marketing their brands.

The rate of content generation is simply incredible these days. According to a report published by Science Daily, it has been suggested that more than 90% of all the data that is found on the internet now has been generating in these last few years.

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google has been quoted as saying that more content is created now in 48 hours than it was ever produced between the advent of internet technology up until 2003.

Since everyone now has a blog so, all can comment and share their ideas. According to WordPress, every minute WordPress users alone posts 347 blogs in their platform.

So, this mind-blowing acceleration of information affects the way we go about marketing in this digital world.

Bid Goodbye to One-Size-Fits-All Approach

With the spread of social media channels as a natural outcome of the rapid boom of modern technology, customers have become tech-savvy, discerning, and increasingly fussy. Modern customers are well aware of what they want, have wider choices and so they cannot be fed with just anything. Instead, modern buyers want personalization and demand ways of engaging with their desired products and services.

Hence, the good old method of targeting everyone with one message does not work anymore. According to a survey done by Gartner, it has been found that 78% of online consumers get irritated with the website and promotional email contents, ads and offers when they have nothing to do with their interests.

There have also been many instances when customers got so frustrated with irrelevant contents, that they were also willing to leave the site forever.

So what do all these mean for marketers today?

This means- RELEVANCE.

Now, that we need to discuss what is CRM marketing, we must understand the rise of highly individualized content marketing approach, which is primarily driven by data and technology, and it only a CRM system that can aid marketers to stay on the top of this game.

Hence, let us take a look how customer relationship software can help the marketers to improve their activities and create better marketing campaigns.

Focused Targeting

One of the toughest tasks for marketers is to look through all the customer data. In order to receive a response from potential customers and find out what they are most likely to buy, marketers must send messages that appeal exactly to them.

CRM software helps marketers to sift through thousands of contacts and find out the potential customers who will be interested in buying the products. It aids in targeting potential customers. As CRM contains several information on the customer behavior and buying preferences it allows the marketers to take informed actions, which results in improving prospect awareness and customer satisfaction.

Segmentation

It is a clichéd saying that those who can predict, instead of reacting, win. This is very much true for marketers as to sell online marketers need to observe common buying trends before offering anything to the customers.

Today marketers not only need to segment their customers only by industry, job, or age, but they also need to be aware of such factors like the customer’s recent activities, their purchase history, their personal likes and dislikes, emails opened and replied, social media activities and others.

Hence, the sharper and focused is the potential customer’s profile; greater are the chances and opportunities for personalized marketing messages, which can bring sales for the organization.

So segmenting customer profile and email subscriber’s database with the help of a CRM system, not only aids in growing revenue but also improves the metrics in email marketing.

Personalized Contents

Once you have segmented the CRM database into meaningful groups and know whom to target, it is the time that you must individualize your marketing messages.

Mass marketing is outdated today. Today’s CRM allows markets to address their potential and existing customers by their name. You can even impress your customers by knowing what industry they work for, which will consequentially help you to tailor your email campaign messages according to their likings and needs.

Therefore, CRM marketing can shape the entire communication strategy in such a way that it can suit a particular customer or a group of customers who have one or more than one things in common.

Personalization of content helps in improving response rate, creates a stronger brand perception, and increase revenue.

Knowing what is CRM marketing, hence helps online marketers to focus more on the customers rather than on products.

Recycling The Process

Using CRM software marketers can analyze whether their campaigns were successful and they yielded any results. For once, you can find which content performed best; you can recycle the content and that email campaign’s template for converting new contacts and customers.

Hence, instead of starting from the scratch when you remarket your ideas, taking out all opinions and guesswork, you can curb your leads to marketing costs but focus on resending campaigns that performed the best.

Hence, marketing CRMs are more than the just inert database and market automation tools, because marketing CRMs helps in putting everything together for a truly personalized marketing effort. ConvergeHub’s founder and CEO Shampa Bagchi, speaking of CRM technology, sums it all up like this:

It’s been about propelling at the speed of mobile, digesting information and humanizing the data for the marketing team, building up the scale, and developing a product that conforms to the requirements of the marketer in this ever-connected digital world.

If you want to know more about how a CRM system can support your marketing efforts, please write to us in the comments below.

What to expect out of CRM Technology in 2017

Even apart from CRM technology, research says that 29% of all SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) view technology as a driving tool that motors the growth of an organization and boosts profitability. Hence, here we are today to explore how we can leverage modern solutions, which are increasing in popularity (like CRM technology) in 2017, to achieve a competitive advantage and work towards sustainable growth.

Even apart from CRM technology, research says that 29% of all SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) view technology as a driving tool that motors the growth of an organization and boosts profitability.

Hence, here we are today to explore how we can leverage modern solutions, which are increasing in popularity (like CRM technology) in 2017, to achieve a competitive advantage and work towards sustainable growth.

CRM technology at the heart of business agenda

In the past few years, we have observed a distinct shift from a product to customer focused strategies, which are allowing businesses to discover the ultimate potential of customer value. In line with these changes, CRM technology has also been evolving, showing a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 15.1 % between the span of 2012 and 2017.

Moreover, according to Gartner, it has been predicted that CRM will reach a $36 billion market in 2017, as improving the customer experience will remain a priority.

So continue reading to find out why you should invest in CRM technology in 2017, over here.

The rise of mobile

According to a research done by Sage, it has been observed that 89% of employees in the US use a mobile device for their work and that 67% of organizations believe that they would lose competitive edge without these devices.

Therefore, as businesses are now focusing on how they can increase the productivity of their remote workers, the acceptances of mobile-enabled solutions are skyrocketing throughout the global demography. All the way through 2017, mobile CRM technology will become more sophisticated, which will allow field based staffs to access their Customer Relationship Management platforms from any devices, regardless of location preferences.

The big data revolution

Accessing real-time data will become an absolute necessity in 2017 and so would actionable insights for driving business growth. Businesses this year will want to find out a greater understanding of what their customers want, what they think, and how they view a brand. Consequently, data will extend the value proposition of CRM technology, to businesses of all type and size, by providing real-time BI (Business Intelligence) tools that will help to identify new growth, enable smarter decision-making, and find new opportunities, which will improve overall business performances.

Tighter CRM integration

In 2017, it will become increasingly important for CRM technology to seamlessly integrate customer relationship solutions with all your business applications, as it is found in converged CRM solutions like ConvergeHub. Platforms such as e-commerce, accounting, analytics, and marketing automation will get integrated with CRM, which will drastically reduce the countless hours employees now spend re-keying data from one system to another.

This year CRM users will demand native integration with other platforms to make even more efficient use of their time, which will streamline business processes, save time and so ensure interoperability across all departments.

Cloud solution will be on the rise

According to Forbes, data storage management and data analytics are projected to lead cloud adoption among SMB. For this, cloud-based CRM technology will offer sophisticated BI (Business Intelligence) tools. Moreover, as cloud storage will become increasingly popular this year, it will allow employees to access software anywhere on the go, on smart handheld devices of their choice.

Final verdict

In 2017, businesses both in the US and elsewhere across the globe companies will invest in CRM technology solutions not only for improving business growth but also to keep up with their competitions.

So, this year when the benefits of adopting a CRM solution for your business outweigh the drawbacks, it is the time that you consider a CRM for your business and consequently makes your company harvest an escalating return on your investments.

Top benefits of implementing CRM for Small Business owners

CRM or Customer Relationship Management systems are designed to streamline the processes in your business involving your existing and potential customers. However, if you are a small business owner, you might feel hesitant to use CRM technology, mostly because you may find yourself unfamiliar with this new concept. Even entrepreneurs, who all are not so well versed in technology sourcing, many times avoid using software like CRM for their businesses.

It is indeed true that technology can never substitute human touch when it comes to socialization and communication, but then again, CRM never replaces human employees in term of client management. Actually, the key benefit of using CRM for small business includes helping organizations to improve customer relationship and employ performance.

Here are some of the 10 top benefits of implementing CRM for Small Business owners:

1. Organization

CRM system provides organized and safe storage of customer related information. Using this technology helps in storing all your client information in one place and it can be only accessed by authorized users. Once you start using CRM software you can walk away from cluttered filing cabinets or stop using multiple Excel files to store records of your customer data. CRM ensures that your customer data always remains updated, easy to access, accurate, and secured.

However, before you get started, it is utmost necessary that you must add your organizational details within the CRM platform. These details can include setting up time zone, currency details, the logo of your company, business hours, fiscal year, and others, which will reflect in your CRM account. Personalizing your CRM platform helps while sharing details of your leads, prospects, and customers with your business partners and professional colleagues both within and outside your organization.

2. Faster exchange of communication

Unlike emails, which can be cluttered, CRM has a separate platform for receiving and sending client communication through multiple sources such as email, social media messages, and SMS. Therefore, using CRM software your client management personals can easily view client messages and also respond to their issues in a timely manner.

Messages send by CRM platforms always reaches its targets. Moreover, engaging sales and marketing campaigns with a CRM provide your representatives access to nurturing tracks and a library of marketing-approved email templates that can be used by your agents to connect with their existing customers and prospects.

You can also view a detailed history of your prospects and customer’s engagements with your brand right within the CRM’s web and mobile app. This lets you understand your customer’s exclusive interests and capitalize on the CRM platform’s real-time alerts so that you know exactly when your reps should reach out.

3. Efficient scheduling and tracking

It is natural that when people do everything manually, there are chances of many tasks and deadlines falling through the crack. However, using a CRM for Small Business will help you and your team to monitor your marketing campaigns and schedule your activities accordingly.

While using a CRM, you can also use queues to prioritize, organize, and monitor the progress of the works of your agents. Technically speaking, queues are containers that are used for storing any activity that needs an action or requires to be completed. For example, closing a case or finishing a task that needs to be completed. You can create queues depending on the type of business your organization does. For an example, you can set up separate queues for ‘Level 1’ and ‘Level 2’ product support teams that reflect their different levels of expertise, or setup ‘General’ and ‘Exclusive’ queues to reflect different priorities based on the service contracts that your existing customers are having with your organization.

4. Improved Marketing Statistics

CRM helps you to analyze your customer’s data more precisely, which aids in pinpointing your customer’s needs. Proper and efficient analysis of customer data using the CRM system helps in cross-selling your other or new products, which are in line with your customer’s previous purchases. Therefore, CRM for Small Business helps in increasing your sales and find better results in conversions.

According to a Forrester study where they conducted polling 2000 employees, using CRM platform it has been found:

• 50% of teams find improved productivity by using a CRM
• 5% of sales productivity is uplifted by using a CRM
• 10% of consultation time was reduced by using a CRM
• 2% revenue increases is noted as an average growth by using CRM
• 40% of customer service costs were reduced by using a CRM
• 20% of overall labor cost got decreased by using a CRM

5. Close Analysis of Customer Data

Implementing CRM in your business helps you to track every move made by your customers, which results in better client relation and improved service to your customers. CRM system also helps in finding leads that have the same criteria and wants as your current customers.

However, direct customer feedback, which is presently available via indirect and direct means, such as social channels and data mining from communities, is still at the top.

A comprehensive view of the customers, which is provided by converged CRM platforms, is necessary for rendering consistent customer response regardless of whom the company is trying to communicate or understand for engaging improved marketing campaigns. Moreover, CRM system should also capture customer data from store visits, partner visits, online buying patterns, and company blog comments. Once these data are collected in the CRM databank, the system can then generate psychological insights and demographic behavioral patterns of the customers, so that organizations can be made aware of their customer’s satisfaction with their services, response to marketing efforts, price changes and others.

6. Better Team Collaboration

Converged CRM for small business like ConvergeHub and others helps your company employees to collaborate with all the departments in your organization. Since all the customer data is saved in one unified system, CRM aids in better exchange of information between Sales, Marketing, Accounts (Billing) and Customer Support. Employees using CRM can also share marketing ideas that are specifically targeted towards your customers and similar leads.
Adding ‘gamification’ functionality in CRM is another way by which you can find the inherent competitiveness of your reps and helps them to deliver positive results as your agents strive to move ahead to the top of the leader-boards. Provide points to your reps not just for their customer wins but also for other sales related activities such as organizing a face-to-face meeting with the senior executives of your company, or for getting a new lead and

According to certain researches done by Forrester, it has been found that companies do better on their quotes after implementing gamification, with more than 87 percent of reps attaining their quotas and more than 53 percent of new hires achieving their sales figures in the first year of their employment. While in absence of gamification it has been observed by Forrester that only 76 percent of reps reach their quota and 43 percent of new hires meet their desired requirements.

7. Targeted Lead Generation

All in One CRM software can help you to concentrate precisely on your target markets. Using this technology, you can apply your marketing campaign towards individuals who have a higher interest in your product and services. Using CRM for Small Business, you can also create personalized email campaigns, which are more convincing and impactful for bringing in conversions.

However, it is much easier to send out mass emails than to nurture those leads. This is because nurturing leads is imperative for your organization’s sales success, as the competition is ever ready to take away your clients from you. Hence, you can use your customer relationship marketing system’s email-marketing functions to send the correct email at the right time, with appropriate contents as with CRM platform you can schedule emails and tailor your messages. You can even separate your emails based on the types of leads you are targeting. Not only does it increase your brand’s credibility on your leads and prospect’s minds, but also scheduling reminders ensures that you respond to your leads quickly, which otherwise can turn into lost sales. Only a CRM system can help you to track every stage of your sales process, which eventually results in generating even better leads and subsequently more sales.

It is essential to remember over here that the last thing you need is to create an email campaign with bad data. As bad data leads to inefficiency, you can never generate more leads from your CRM system unless you keep your data clean. The primary step for maintaining a clean database in your CRM is to follow a set of standards for entering data into the system. This includes registering your leads and customers name, address, job title and more. In addition, you must also ensure scheduling consistent audits for quality data as well as clean your CRM database every three months for making your CRM system become more efficient and productive as doing this makes your data remain in good shape and so immediately ready for creating any direct mail or campaign.

8. Automation

Most businesses have repetitive tasks, such as sending monthly reports or scheduling marketing campaigns and weekly follow-ups. All these processes c an be programmed into the CRM software using Salesforce Automation (SFA) tools, so that your employees may no longer handle the monotony of all these activities.

All SFA systems are built with two main components, namely, content management system and sales lead tracking system. While content management system in SFA, tracks customer activities, helps in forecasting and keeps track of communication and sales history of the customers, sales tracking system helps in tracking leads and opportunities in the pipeline data of the CRM database.

9. Integration with other third party software

Many CRM for Small Business (like ConvergeHub CRM) can be seamlessly integrated with other programs such as project management, accounting, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, and data processing software. This allows your organization to match your customer information with all other business processes within your company.
When your company is in a growth mode, it is necessary that each of your employees must be operating at their optimal productivity. Hence, if your employees are bogged down with the disjointed and inefficient process, it can lead to errors and take time away from their more important core duties towards your organization.

It has been observed that important processes like invoicing, order processing, expense approvals, to name a few, can take a longer time to get completed in the absence of third-party software installation within your CRM and even if they are done in time, they often prove erroneous. Labor intensive and manual tasks decrease the agility that your company needs to grow. Therefore integrating third party software within the CRM is most necessary for the prosperity of your business. Some of the most common third party software that businesses needs and are integrated with ConvergeHub (The #1 CRM for SMB) are QuickBooks, Gmail, DocuSign, GoToMeeting, Zapier, Twilio, IMAP, Outlook, RingCentral, Fonality, Box, and others.

10. Superior Customer Service

With close communication and timely response, once you adopt CRM technology for your organization, customers will be happier to work with you, as they will understand and recognize your efforts in keeping them happy. Happy customers are the bloodline of any company as they increase customer retention and bring in referrals, which lead to growth in sales and ROI.

Lastly, always remember that your customers want to feel that they are interacting with real people, not bots and FAQs. Hence, offer more than just automated email responses but write responses when your customers post on your social media page. This shows to your customers that you are real people working on their behalf. Using a Social CRM or SCRM you can integrate social listening functionality within your CRM platform.

Endnote:

As a small business owner adopting a CRM system for your business, will definitely help you to achieve growth, however, you need to choose your system wisely.

Therefore, jump start your selection process, in case you need any help in choosing the best CRM for your SMB, contact us for your free trial of ConvergeHub CRM by clicking on this link or writing in the comment box below.

Experience Sales Lead Management Using ConvergeHub

According to Sales lead management principles – Leads are the lifeline of any kind of businesses. Therefore, converting leads to customers is what it really takes to remain and thrive in business. Once you know how to manage your leads in a structured and systematic way, you can, not only increase the number of leads that you generate but also amplify on how many of those leads you can convert at the end. Here are some of the interesting steps suggested by sales lead management teams, which can be also followed by using ConvergeHub CRM for SMBs.

According to Sales lead management principals– Leads are the lifeline of any business. Therefore, converting leads to customers is what it takes to remain and thrive in business. Once you know how to manage your leads in a structured and systematic way, you can, not only increase the number of leads that you generate but also amplify on how many of those leads you can convert at the end.

Most of the organizations use a 3-step technique for converting leads, such as:

The marketing team nurtures the leads
The inside sales team qualifies the leads and then turns them into opportunities
The sales team works with the opportunities

Some other companies even follow a 2-step technique, such as:

The marketing team converts the leads to sales opportunities (when the lead’s meet certain criteria, like high score)
The sales team works the opportunities

As with most things in a matured CRM system like ConvergeHub, and others, the lead conversion process can be endlessly customized.

While this is an excellent attribute for organizations and businesses, those have been able to iron out their lead management process there are also many customers, who have started out with CRM adoption but have run into a sticky spot trying to figure out when and how they can convert the leads.

In a recent conversation in the SMB Business group in the Quora community, we have sensed varying approaches and emotions around this topic.

Working with Sales lead management processes people say, “Leads do not work” or “It is different for every company,” one thing is amply clear that this is a hot topic.

Therefore, we are set to compile some of the best practices for lead management, which suits the users of ConvergeHub CRM as well as many other Customer Relationship Management platforms, which cater to both large enterprise solutions and SMBs.

What is Lead Management?

In brief, the definition of lead management can be broken into five following step:

Lead acquisition and data capture
Lead import and data cleansing
Lead distribution
Lead enrichment, lead scoring and lead prioritization
Lead cultivation and lead conversion

However, one of the principal problems with this process is within its first step of “creating a new lead”; because duplicate records most often cripple the CRM’s ability to see the true history of an individual lead and cloud the ability to measure and track outcomes accurately. This is why we advise users to dedupe their contact database while or after importing any new leads and using ConvergeHub CRM; it is not as hard as it seems.

Here are some of the exciting steps suggested by many lead management teams, which can also be followed by using ConvergeHub CRM for SMBs.

Always take a note to track the ‘lead source,’ and ‘lead type’ of all your new leads
Generate detailed information to help your sales reps follow-up from your email campaigns. For this create a detailed email template and prepare a call list with qualifying questions, to help your internal sales team follow-up from your campaigns. Many organizations using ConvergeHub CRM are even able to indicate which products their customers are most likely to be interested individually, based on their campaigns
Define lead status values, lead scores, which are mostly needed for tracking the stages, and conduct the next best action for each lead. Here are the lead status values ConvergeHub uses:

New
In Process
Recycled
Dead
Lost

Much like other lead management processes, ConvergeHub also considers inquiries from current customers as new leads. Treating inbound leads in this manner from existing customers as new opportunities help to cross-sell more to that client, by making these leads go through the same lead maturing process, while many other CRM companies want the contact to go directly to the sales reps
Create a report to track leads that have NO activities, for seeing which leads are not being touched and to ‘shame’ the sales reps those are associated with those leads
We all know asking more question on a landing page often leads to decrease in conversion rate. However, if the person is a qualified hot lead, consider testing. If longer forms drive more sales-ready leads the getting it is the way. This is because if an individual is interested in buying your products or services, he or she will be most interested and willing to give additional information before closing the deal
Implement web-to-lead to integrate your web leads in your CRM’s database with ConvergeHub.

Once you have these systems in place, do not forget to monitor your reports and view the trends.

Lastly, at the end of the day, ensuring your awareness of communication with your customers both during the lead and contact stages is an essential part. We are also in agreement with leading lead management practices that by creating a lead nurturing workflow for new leads and getting a series of drip emails can boost up your conversion ratio. However do not forget about regular communication with your contacts, which can heighten your lead conversion in a more targeted way.

How to Choose the Best Mobile CRM Solutions for Small Business

In the recent times, it has been observed that mobile devices (like smartphone, tablets etc.) have become an ever increasingly important tool for small business owners looking for an advantage in this cutthroat competitive world. Here is a list of the advantages of using Mobile CRM solutions for small businesses.

Are mobile CRM solutions for small business a must for all SMBs? How can you choose the best CRM? Which is the best mobile CRM platform?

In this article, let us answer these questions and a few others.

Truth be told, the mobile version of Customer Relationship Management technology has indeed taken business productivity beyond 10 to 5. With mobile CRM solutions for small businesses, field workers can now access the central database of any organization and update the information on the go. Executives can also view reports in real-time in order to finalize on instant decision making, round the clock.

Ray Grainger, the CEO of Mavenlink, stated in a report that he believes mobile CRM technology will become a necessity in 2016 and afterward, as he quoted:

“This is the year that mobile CRM will finally take off, as businesses of all sizes continue to hire remote workers and provide them with devices that support mobile versions of reliable CRM applications.”

However, irrespective of whether his predictions are coming true or not, for any small and medium business owners, the advantages of using mobile CRM application is extremely hard to ignore.

Here is a list of the advantages of using Mobile CRM solutions for small businesses:

Lets you manage your business from anywhere
Allows you to perform critical business activities like Lead Management, Contact Management, Sales Analysis, Task Management, and others, right from your smartphone and tablet
Taking productivity beyond office hours reduces downtime
Enhance the accuracy of sales forecasts through real-time updates from your field staffs
Build up customer intimacy
Reduce telecommunication and IT costs
Offer the freedom to do things that you could not have done otherwise, i.e. record videos and voices, take a photo, use and monitor GPS data, voice calling the contacts on the go, etc.

Best practices for choosing a mobile CRM

Before you pick up any mobile CRM solution for your small business, make a note of the specific benefits that you want to achieve by implementing this business management system in your company.

The most important thing that you must keep in mind before purchasing any mobile CRM is your end-users and so you must plan a “mobile strategy” which is most helpful for them.

Now, after you have planned and defined yours end user’s needs, it is time to select your CRM platform. Different CRM vendors offer mobile CRM designed for different devices (like iPhone, Android etc.), so as an SMB (Small and Medium Business) owner, you can minimize all sorts of costs, which may include device cost, administration cost, data cost etc. by buying a standard platform for mobile CRM implementation.

If you have a larger setup, before rolling out your mobile CRM solutions for small business, across your entire organization, it is highly time and cost effective, to test the CRM by making it operational for a smaller set of people in your company.

Most popular mobile CRMs like ConvergeHub are quite simple and do not require any training. However, if you are opting for a multifaceted CRM, never skip their staff-training programs. It is because, if your staffs fail to use the application properly, your whole investment may as well do down the drains.

At the end, always make sure that you perform an extensive evaluation and then analyze how going for mobile CRM application as a whole, has affected your team’s performance.

Methods for implementation of mobile CRM

Essentially, there are two main approaches for implementing mobile CRM:

Web Based Mobile CRM

This type of mobile CRM solutions for small business usually makes use of HTML5 and so do not require any download or installations. The biggest advantage of using this type CRM is that you can use it one any device and on multiple Web browsers to instantly access your required data.

This type of mobile CRM application is useful organizations where the users want their freedom to use different devices and do not mind the unavailability of their information when they are offline.

Client-Server based Mobile CRM

If you want to opt for this type of Mobile CRM, you will have to install a client side application, which will interact with your CRM vendor’s server. Unlike Web-based Mobile CRM, these CRM offers limited offline usage, but on the flip side, these CRM applications are device and platform specific and are much more costly than the former one.

Levels of Mobile Maturity

There are 3 levels of mobile maturity which you can choose from while buying your CRM solutions for small business, depending on your business requirements and goals.

Personal Productivity

This is the lowest level of mobile CRM usage, whereby the system provides the field staffs access to personal productivity tools, like calendar, contacts, and emails. Using this information user can stay on top of their personal schedules and keep up with their customers and colleagues.

Corporate Application Access

The next level of mobile CRM usage gives a larger subset of mobile workers in your organization the access to your corporate database. For effective synchronization of customer data and emails, organizations usually deploy an in-house server for this type of CRM usage. Moreover, this type of usage of the CRM also helps in accurate sales forecasting and so increase the productivity of your entire sales, marketing, and customer support team.

Comprehensive Mobility

In the highest level of mobile maturity, your staffs have the real-time access to your entire business data. Therefore, field workers those who use mobile CRM of this type can have full functionality of the CRM with just a smartphone or tablet, as it is found in converged CRMs like ConvergeHub.

Which is the best mobile CRM?

In fact, there are no one mobile CRM solutions for small business, which you can label as the best. For a CRM ideal for one organization might be a sheer disappointment for another. However, if you are looking for one Web-Based Mobile CRM that is #1 easiest converged CRM for SMBs, you can opt for ConvergeHub, which is an ideal CRM designed for your small-scale business needs.

Watch Out For These 4 Deadly Signs- Which Can Make Your CRM Fail

If your CRM software is on the brink of failure, instead of blaming on the system, have you thought what signs you would look for? How can you save it from a point of no return? Fortunate here is help so that you do not have to experience your CRM falling over the edge. Here are some early warning signs that indicate all is not well in your CRM-land, and some advices for addressing them.

If your CRM software is on the brink of failure, instead of blaming on the system, have you thought what signs you would look for?
How can you save it from a point of no return? There are many sales and customer service managers, who simply do not initially realize that their CRM is failing them until they understand that when it is already too late. Further, standing on the edge of a disaster it also really becomes hard to accept that you need a new system when most of your employees are already so deep-rooted using the existing CRM platform.
Fortunate here is help so that you do not have to experience your CRM falling over the edge.

Here are some early warning signs that indicate all is not well in your CRM-land, and some advice for addressing them.

1. WARNING: Your CRM only works in silos

It really becomes hard for any business establishment to work in tandem when each department (e.g. marketing, sales, accounts etc.) is seeing something different. Therefore, the right CRM is a Customer Relationship Management software that provides a holistic view of each contact in your database, so that all the departments in your company can glean the relevant information to send a unified and cohesive message to the customers.
The same applies also to functional areas. For an example, let us discuss customer support. If a customer calls with an issue and you are capable of solving the problem over the phone- that is good. But, what happens, if the same customer calls and then wants the answer by SMS or email, which you cannot since your CRM does not have the desired functionality- that is not so good.
So CRMs which are most effective should be capable of handling customer support via all communication channels that your customer may use.
Good CRMs are the ones, which cater to your customers rather than forcing your customers to alter their communication style to adhere to your system.

The Solution:

Try to configure your current CRM to show information that is more pertinent to various users in your organization. Find out from your CRM manufacturer if there are any reports or metrics that you have not used so far, that can bring real value to your business. However, if you find that you do not have the liberty to customize what information appears to whom, it is unfortunate that you might have to look beyond your current CRM software. In this case, consider integrating necessary applications that work with your existing CRM or buy an entirely new system, depending on what other functionalities your present CRM offers.

2. WARNING: Your CRM “supports” vague processes

Even the best-stocked toolbox is of little help if you are not aware of what you are trying to fix. The same thing is true even with CRM. If you have purchased your CRM even before establishing a process to nurture your leads to sales, CRM can be of no help to your organization. So, if you are unable to name the specific steps in your sales cycle, then it is for certain that you are just not taking full advantage of your existing CRM’s capabilities.

The Solution:

Break out the process flow and clearly identify how you will communicate with your prospects. Right from their exposure into your organization until the point they become your loyal customers determine how the process can be improved and figure out how CRM can help in enhancing the efficiency and quality of your services.
For an example, brainstorm what are the steps that are involved in nurturing your leads by email. Find out how many emails you will send to your leads and what will you reply to their emails. Once these are ready, create a defined email process that can be now facilitated through the functionalities of your CRM. For an idea, you can now auto-assign tasks to your sales team, when a lead is ready to receive the next email in the series, or you can also use automated email functionality from your CRM if your Customer Relationship Management platform provides integration with an email marketing solution.

3. WARNING: You have “users” who don’t (or won’t) use your CRM

If your CRM goes unused, then most certainly it is of no help to anyone. Rather implementing CRM in such an organization is a sheer waste of both time and money.
Here are a few likely reasons why your users may reject using the CRM:
– Users feel it is a monitoring mechanism, a tool that has been imposed by the management against their will.
– The user believes that using CRM complicates their job.
– The functionalities of the CRM are not relevant to the process.
– There are other important information and data which exists outside the CRM and not within, which makes the users look into other resources, which kills time.

The Solution:

If the CRM that you have purchased for good is so unpopular, talk with the non-users of the CRM and hear the reasons behind their dissatisfaction. Find out what makes them feel frustrated. Learn about what exactly they wished the software would do. These answers may help you to decide what you need to re-configure and re-introduce in your current CRM system that can make it work for all.
To do this you can choose an advocate from each department in your organization and consult with them what tasks would be best to automate with your redesigned new CRM. Allow these individuals to encourage their colleagues to use the re-configured system and establish best practices for the future CRM users in your company.

4. WARNING: You are unaware of what success looks like

You do not have to be a genius to understand this simple fact that you just cannot accomplish your goals- if you do not have any.
Many CRM users make the dire mistake of implementing CRM without even deciding what they want to achieve out of it.

The Solution:

Ask yourself and find out your ultimate wants. Deduce what kind of impact you want to achieve by implementing CRM in areas such as lead generation, lead readiness, closing rates, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and retention, customer feedback and others in your company.
Once you have your end goals defined in a measurable, quantifiable and achievable term, you can always go ahead, purchase a CRM and track your progress towards achieving them.
Also, let your teams know about your company’s goals and show them how using CRM will help in achieving faster and stellar growth in your businesses.

If you find this article helpful in avoiding CRM related damages in your company, write back in the box below. We will be happy to know about your experiences.

Are CRM and Marketing Automation Software 2 Different Things?

Do you remember someone, who told you that England and Great Britain were not actually the same? Well, your mistake is completely understandable. Actually, Great Britain is composed of England, Scotland, and Wales, and so England is just a part of Great Britain.People often have the same kind of reaction when they realize that Marketing Automation software and CRM are different as both these software serves two distinctly different purposes.

Talking about CRM and Marketing Automation software, let us begin with an example.

People often have the same kind of reaction when they realize that Marketing Automation software and CRM are different. If this is news for you, it is okay! Since even though at face value both appear to be the same thing (like England and Great Britain), however, both these software serves two distinctly different purposes.

The main and the biggest difference between CRM and Marketing Automation software are their targets. Therefore, while CRM is more sales focused, Marketing Automation software is marketing focused which is very much apparent by its name.

;'[‘“A strategy for managing all your company’s interactions with current and prospective customers.”

A CRM system is a platform that saves customer names, addresses, phone numbers, and most importantly the interactions of the customers with your company.

On the flipside, leading marketing development software companies describe Marketing Automation software as a platform that:

“Allows companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows”.

Hence, although Marketing Automation software, stores similar information as a CRM software, such as your lead details (addresses, phone numbers, email, job title, company namiye etc.), this is all they typically share – and no moredifference between marketing automation and crm

Marketing automation lets you follow any prospect or lead’s “top-of-the-funnel” activities. Like, when your lead visited your web page and blogs, opened your emails, or filled out a lead magnet form.

Scheduling or tracking marketing campaigns is also done by marketing automation software. Especially mass business communications like email campaigns.

Some of the advantages of using Marketing Automation software platforms are:

It provides you with the ability to conveniently segment leads and prospects into separate mailing lists based on their previous interactions with your organization or their preferences and interests.
Ability to nurture leads, so that you can automatically send triggered emails when a prospect is found most interested in your products or services.
Activate “drip marketing campaigns” by scheduling a series of emails, so that your company remains at the top-of-mind with your prospects.
Once your campaign has ended, Marketing Automation software also helps you to generate analytics to show and measure the success rates of your campaigns.

In other words, Marketing Automation software is one that helps to nurture leads and foster them to make the leads ready for the sales team. Now, once the lead has graduated to the bottom-of-the-funnel, and has become a sales lead (and then a customer), that is where business organizations start tracking the interactions with those leads through a CRM.

Customer Relationship Management platforms typically stores how long a contact has been your customer, record the number of purchases made in the past by your customer, the date and notes of the phone conversations you have had with your customer, records of your customer’s inbound emails that they have sent to your customer care and sales team, and others.

To optimize the one-on-one interaction between the customers and your company, Customer Support team and the Sales reps use this data, to increase customer satisfaction and sales.

Some of the other advantages of using a CRM are:

You can send more targeted promotional materials, which is more likely to lead to a sale, and foster a good relationship between you and your customer.
While speaking to a customer, your employees using the CRM can get a full 360-degree picture of the customer’s interactions with your company, which helps in making the conversations more personal and successful for your organization.
By viewing where a customer is in the sales process, your sales personnel can find additional help in closing the deals.
Many CRMs can also synchronize social media outlets so that you can understand which social media websites are generating more traffic and what your customers are saying about your company online. These CRMs are commonly known as SCRM (Social CRM).
CRM can send internal alerts to your team, informing them when a call has been scheduled, when a customer’s birthday is coming up, or when a customer’s account is set for renewal, which helps your sales and service team know exactly how to reach out under these specific circumstances.

Simply speaking, CRM helps to generate sales by making the sales process a more personal experience for the customers.

Hence, although at a first glance Marketing Automation systems and CRM may look similar, they cater to dissimilar roles in an organization and this difference makes these two systems more valuable to the unique teams they serve.

Now you may wonder, why would you track half of your prospect’s interactions using Marketing Automation software and the other half in CRM?

Good question!

Most Marketing Automation software allows you to synchronize your business data with your CRM, which in turn helps you to see and record your entire customer and prospects’ activities through one solution.

There are several companies those who synchronize their data both ways so that the marketing teams know what is going on in sales and the sales and customer support teams know the history that your marketing team has had with a specific prospect or customer.

Moreover, many CRM companies like ConvergeHub and others have developed or acquired Marketing Automation software thereby including both these business solutions on one platform.

Typically, SMBs begins to adopt CRM to optimize the bottom of their sales funnel and close more deals, but as they grow and prosper, these companies use CRM for SMBs, invest more in marketing by opting for a Marketing Automation system that will integrate with their CRM platform.

Learn the 6 reasons to use marketing automation with CRM

Now, that you know the basic difference between these two business intelligence software, if you are still unsure and need further help to guide your decisions, write back to us on the box below.

What You Must Ask- For Finding an Easy CRM for SMB

For finding an easy CRM for SMB, let us first break down the Customer Relationship Management software platform into individual components for a better understanding of this misused tool, which will most importantly help small business owners to make informed decisions when opting for their preferred CRM and bring growth in sales.

Customer

Definition: The person who gives you business for your product and services.

Who is your customer?
Why did your customer choose to do business with you in spite of other options in the market?
Who is/are your competitor(s)?

Relationship

Definition: The process of connecting with other human beings.

Whom would you like to communicate?
How do you like to communicate?
How do your prospects like to communicate?
How do your existing/new customers like to communicate?

Management

Definition: The act of manipulating and cajoling people to perform tasks and duties from afar.

In business, you cannot manipulate people but rather you can nurture them. Therefore, add a little love and see what happens.

So when you are looking for an easy CRM for SMB, ask yourself some primary questions that start with “What must I have?”

1. Do I need Salesforce automation?

What is Salesforce Automation?

SFA or Salesforce Automation is a technology that helps in automating common online business management tasks like inventory tracking, processing sales, logging and reporting of your customer’s interactions and others. SFA can also aid you in creating and for analyzing performance and sales forecasts and handling:

Lead management
Contact management
Region / Quota management
Opportunity management
Implement sales methodology
Partner management

2. Do I need Marketing Automation?

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing Automation is a technology and a software platform, which is designed exclusively for the marketing department of an organization, to more effectively market their products and services. Marketing Automation covers multiple channels both online and offline and automates repetitive tasks.

Here is an example:

Online Marketing Automation channels

Email
Social Media
Web site and others

Offline Marketing Automation channels

Direct mail
SMS
Fax
Voice broadcast and others

Automated repetitive tasks

Registration reminders
Live events
Trade show attendance
Webinar and others

Marketing automation also helps in Web forms submission, List segmentation and creates Follow-up sequences.

3. Do I need Reporting and Analytics?

If you cannot measure your company’s performance, you cannot improve it. Here are a few most common report structures that you need in your easy CRM for SMB.

Scheduled reports
Customizable forecasting reports
Proactive alert reports
Comprehensive library of pre-made reports

4. Do I need a shared database?

The shared database helps everyone on your sales, marketing, accounts, and customer support team to access the CRM database.

You can opt for shared database functionality in a CRM for performing the following:

Sales tracking
Customer service
Email marketing

5. Do I need an “In the Cloud” or “On Site” CRM?

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a technology that has been prevalent in the market for decades. Most easy CRM for SMB are cloud based CRMs, like ConvergeHub, which is the #1 Converged CRM for SMB.

According to a study done by Nucleus Research, more than 80% of SMB organizations that adopted cloud-based CRM achieved a positive ROI.

Therefore, unless you want to mess with your oven server and bear the maintenance and support costs associated with it, it is best to outsource your CRM from customer relationship software development companies.

The benefits of using a cloud-based CRM are:

Easy upgrades
Predictable costs
Fast deployment
Enhanced security
Reduced need for staff expertise
Reduced “customization fever”

6. Do I need third-party integration?

There is no perfect, all-in-one CRM software platform out in the market today for small and medium size businesses. Even large enterprises are bolting on additional tools to get more out of their CRMs. Here is a list of the most used third party tools used by small and medium businesses for enhancing the efficiency of their CRM software.

7. Do I need a mobile CRM?

Constant and seamless access to customer information means that time away from the office does not necessarily mean you have to be “away from the office.”

Being able to be connected to CRM software from remote locations allow your team to be far more productive than ever before.

In a recent study done by Nuclear Research, an information technology research firm specializing in investigative research is of the opinion that mobile access to a CRM increases team productivity in SMBs by more than 14.6% with a further 4 in 10 mobile users of mobile CRM reporting improvement in productivity by more than 22%.

With tools to respond fast along with customer data always at your fingertips, mobile CRM helps employees close more deals with fewer interactions and less time.

This allows sales reps to spend more time prospecting or find new avenues for exploring untouched sales opportunities.

Takeaway

Now that you are aware how you can choose the best CRM solution for your SMB, find a platform that has both great onboarding for new clients and great customer support. That is why when you talk about buying an easy CRM for SMB you can rely on ConvergeHub, which has all the features listed above that are needed for a modern day CRM, that too at an affordable price.

If you have liked this article and found it informative, do comment in the box below.

Why Your Business Needs CRM?

In the modern times, we operate within a global economy that buys, sells, and communicates in countless ways. Happy customers speak aloud to the world about whatever that is good about your products and services…and so do the unhappy ones. Did you ever think of why your business needs CRM when commoditization is happening with breathtaking speed? To know the answer read more

Did you ever think of why your business needs CRM when commoditization is happening with breathtaking speed? Here is the answer:

In the modern times, we operate within a global economy that buys, sells, and communicates in countless ways.

Happy customers speak aloud to the world about whatever that is good about your products and services…and so do the unhappy ones.

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is the process of tracking and analyzing all the communications and interactions you have with your customers and prospects, which is why salespeople need CRM.

Typically, sales managers and senior sales representatives appreciate this customer relationship platform, as they are mostly aware when your business needs CRM, whereby they can centrally store all sales data, and present them in an easy to follow format.

The benefits of CRM technology allow its users to monitor processes, staff performance and hence optimize selling.

However, what about your average bottom-line sales staffs? Do they understand how you can grow business with CRM?

More often than not, your sales staffs who are fighting the sales-war from their trenches are never all that happy-go-lucky about adopting Customer Relationship Management system in the beginning.

Since sales reps often see CRM as just another tool, which involves more work, and is just another way for the management to keep track of their work.

So initially the extra time that they have to spend on feeding-in data into the CRM system, adds to their irritation, which makes them apparently assume that the CRM platform is keeping them away from their main task- selling.

However, this article is not about finding out why sales teams primarily do not find the goodness in CRM- rather this blog is about why you need CRM since it is an established fact that CRM technology actually improves the lives of the salespeople, in the long run, fetching more ROI for your businesses.

Is CRM a great sales tool underestimated?

Even though the benefits of using CRM technology to the organization may not be immediately recognizable, but it is indeed a game changer when implemented and adopted in the right way.

As it is shown in the chart below, the percentile of salespeople who disliked using CRM is 87 percent in 2013, those who felt that CRM was adopted by the management for policing on their activities.

Although in a report published by Tech News World in 2012, revealed that more than half of the businesses are expected to improve their revenue in the North American demography by using CRM.

More to say, statistics of a study done by Innoppl Technologies points out that 2014 also saw an 87% increase in the use of mobile CRM, whereby 65% sales reps who used CRM achieved their targets, compared to a staggering 78% who did not achieve their sales quote and were non-users of CRM.

Here are some of the key points, which illustrate the benefits of CRM that centralizes, simplifies, scales, and secures your customer engagements:

Enjoy safe storage of your data

CRM helps salespeople to centrally store their contacts, activities, sales opportunities and scheduled plans in one place. Moreover, by adopting CRM technology sales reps can also get uninterrupted access to the company’s database from remote locations on multiple devices. It is a system, which assures you that your data will never get lost.

Manage time and plan like a pro

When your business needs CRM, this platform helps salespeople to prioritize their tasks and optimize their daily schedules to make sure that none of your key prospects (leads) and customers are ignored and are contacted on time. In other words, CRM allows sales reps to utilize more of their productive working hours with the customers that result in more closed deals and a stronger customer base.

No brainer- Activity reports

Adopting a CRM platform helps the sales department to easily prepare their weekly, monthly or quarterly reports for the management. This process of creating reports is transparent and automated while using a CRM and so it just takes a minimal number of clicks to inform others about how many sales are currently in progress.

End surfing and start targeting

CRM technology aids sales reps and managers to segment data and focuses on valuable opportunities via criteria based selections. This reduces the efforts of cutting and pasting data from several documents or surfing through a plethora of disorganized lists of customer-related databases.

Stay up-to-date with recent happenings

Customer Relationship Management system offers sharing of document templates, calendars, and email integration, which helps in uniting all team members and keeping everyone updated about the latest information about any customer or prospects.

Moreover, the ability to share selling patterns and processes allows the sales team to see which sales and marketing strategies are working best for any organization, which also increases communication between the management and the sales team.

Show up in time

By tracking all the communications with the customers, CRM helps the sales team to understand exactly when any customer needs to be contacted. This can be for contract renewals, product replacement, or an up-sell to a new product or service. Hence, another reason for why salespeople need CRM is that it phenomenally increases the chances of closing a sale.

Rationalize your moves

CRM is technology that helps in streamlining the entire sales cycle, which results in closing sales deals in your pipeline and help others within the sales team to reach their targets quickly by sharing documents, templates, and other necessary sales backups.

Since preparing quotes and order processing is automated in CRM, sales teams are able to reduce the cost of production and increase sales revenue, which is another example of how you can grow business with CRM.

Understand what your customers actually want

Since all the customer-related data are stored within the CRM platform, implementing CRM helps the salespeople to analyze their customer’s needs and also anticipate their problems- all at the right time. This helps in increasing customer satisfaction towards your product and company, thereby ensuring loyalty, as well as higher ROI and profit margins for your organization.

Reduce admin task

By adopting CRM technology in sales and marketing, it releases the sales reps from several admin tasks, which needs repetitive actions that take a lot of time but yields very little profitability. For example, CRM stores product and price details, trigger necessary reminders for sales related activities; guide the sales reps through their sales pipelines and others.

Saves money

This is a paradox. Although implementing a CRM is not cheap, but adopting CRM helps to save money. For example in respect to sales CRM reduces the errors in order and quotes, which otherwise could have increased your expenditures for the effort and costs needed for correction of these errors.

Conclusion

In a gist, although CRM and Salespeople are not an immediate “match made in Heaven” but the more time sales reps spend working on this platform, it helps them to excel in 4 areas that are critical for the sales process, such as:

Sort, search and qualify leads in a better way
Follow up with sales opportunities just in time
Prioritize necessary follow-up activities according to their level of importance
Increase target reach rate

However these above-mentioned improvements may justify why you need CRM, but it does not come without any effort, understanding, and determination from the sales team members, people who need to understand that updating the CRM is central to their and the company’s success.

Therefore, sales team should embrace the idea of registering all their activities in the CRM, which will help them to reach their sales goals.

If you have liked this article and you want to share your experience about the problems you faced while implemented CRM in your company, write to us in the comments below.

Support Software Is On The Fritz- The Future Of Customer Support Is CRM

You may be of the opinion that Support software is a boring and sleepy software category that does not call for innovations. In this article, we are going to explain why we demarcate this software is a wrecked category, which is failing to solve customer problems in this modern world. This is because CS software is going to be massively disrupted by CRM software designed for CS teams- which is an entirely new way for these teams to work in the present times.

Why The Future Of Customer Support Is CRM?

You may be of the opinion that Support software is a boring and sleepy software category that does not call for innovations.

You are right! However, this is about to change.

In this article, we are going to explain why we demarcate this software is a wrecked category, which is failing to solve customer problems in this modern world.

This is because CS software is going to be massively disrupted by CRM software designed for CS teams- which is an entirely new way for these teams to work in the present times.

Although CS is an essential team in your business, Sales and Marketing also get in touch with your customers every day. This is how CRM helps in marketing.

Hence, when your CS team interacts with your customers for years, it is the time that you need to provide them with a new software that they need for their daily chores.

The Problem: Support Software Really Sucks

Still date, bad CS scenarios are very common everywhere across the globe. If you enquire in a room full of people, when they faced a bad customer oriented experience, most people will cite a date within the range from the last months. Mostly, these customers are those who had been kept on hold or had interacted with agents who could not answer their problems or provided impersonal services.

There are hundreds of articles, which confirm this fact.

According to Edison Research, while more than 80% companies boast about delivering unparalleled Customer Support service, only 8% of the customers, in reality, agree about the same.

However, legacy software does not only suck the customers. During the past couple of years, while we were developing ConvergeHub CRM for SMBs, the best CRM software for small business, we discussed with hundreds of CS team members to locate their pain-points, and their top complaint was that the software they use sucks. According to the users of legacy software, these software are hard to use, clunky and fails to unify all customer touch points and data, which are essential for serving the customers.

If you are not okay and you would not think about carrying a phone that is 10 years old, why then is it agreeable to use legacy CS software that is equally old as your dumb phone.

In fact, all major legacy CS software are crammed with so many unnecessary and outdated features that for today’s CS agents it may take weeks to learn how to properly use these systems.

The Problem: Does not solve the “Data Chaos”

While using a legacy platform, CS team members often find themselves overwhelmed by the myriad number of applications that contain customer data in such support-oriented software. While building ConvergeHub, as the numero-uno CRM for SMBs, we came across several team members who still use 10 or more applications in the process of resolving an issue.

It is very natural, that it is impossible for any team member to offer a high level of service if they are spending all their productive hours going back and forth between different applications and screens. Moreover, as legacy software are usually built on closed architectural platforms, it becomes painful to integrate any third party app in these systems (especially in a security compliant way).

The Problem: Most CS Software Is Built On A Lie

If you view any website of a Support software provider, you will most possibly see several images of people and mentions of the term ‘relationships’. Hence, although these software gives the impression that these software enables high-quality personal communication for upholding relationships between the company and their customers, in reality, the opposite is true.

Legacy software treats customers like tickets, which highlights and promotes a transactional approach while dealing with the customers that are completely opposite of ‘building relationships’. So, getting a 360-degree view of the customers along with their transactional and purchase history is really a hard thing to accomplish with these traditional CS platforms.

1. The Solution: CRM for CS

Before launching ConvergeHub, the best CRM software for small business we talked with several team leaders through meetings, online forums, dinners, conferences and happy hours, listen to their complaints. During those prolonged conversations, we kept hearing to a common theme “We do not want just another silo (stand alone) CS software. We want a CRM platform that unifies all touch points and is built around the customer”. This feedback proved astonishingly valuable for us and it served to confirm the founding vision for ConvergeHub, which is a converged CRM that gives a 360-degree view of the customers across all departments, right from Sales, Marketing, and Billing to Customer Support.

2. Solution: Everything In One Place

CRM created for CS unifies all the customer data in one place. Remember, every time you keep a customer on hold while you search between applications, you are alienating your customer by not giving them what they need. ConvergeHub is a CRM, which uses an open architecture that helps in easy integration of any application within its platform.

3. Solution: Treats Customers Like People

The central focus of CRM for CS is to keep its spotlight on the customer timeline since CRM is built around the user experience of the customer. CRM integrates everything related to the customer, which includes conversions, transactions, events, and your company’s data into a cohesive and unified experience. Hence, while using a CRM, rich customer profile aids agents to learn more about customers, so that they can provide more personalized services.

4. Solution: Fun to Use

Gone are those days, when CS team was stuck with old software. CRM for CS is easy now. Converged CRMs like ConvergeHub are Customer Relationship Platforms that are as easy to use as Snapchat or Facebook. Modern day Converged CRMs have extensive collaboration features so that you can work in tandem with other members of your team. Moreover, present day CRMs have built-in intelligent workflows, which automate all the cumbersome admin stuff, like reminders and routing, so that you can utilize your time helping customers instead of sticking post-it notes on your office desk.

CRM for CS Empowers The Most Important Team At Your Company

Traditionally, CS was seen for a very long time as an unavoidable necessary evil needed for keeping frustrated customers at a bay. A cost center for the company, whereby CS teams were almost never given a seat at the big table. According to Forrester, in a research done in 2012, more than 50% of the senior executives never focused on customer experience over sales and marketing departments.

However, today CRM for CS has radically changed the previously held concept, which has subsequently altered the productivity and happiness quotient of the CS teams.

Here is a list of enhanced abilities that CRM has accomplished for the CS team members of a company:

Increased Productivity

Unifying CS applications and data in one place have made the team members a lot more efficient. Automation of tedious processes and daily admin works enables the team to concentrate more on important things like serving the customers.

Deeper Customer Connections

By increasing the rate of customer retention, best CRM for SaaS companies like ConvergeHub has enabled business establishments to increase customer lifetime value, which translates to a substantial growth in ROI.

Create New Leaders

CRM has enabled team members to find a strong leadership role in the company. Modern CRMs like ConvergeHub not only amalgamates and improves customer data but also export the data to other applications so that CS information can be used in making decisions throughout the company.

Grow Revenue Faster

When you capable of having a full picture of your customer, you can easily find where you can benefit from an up-sell. Cross-selling and personalized automated email campaigns are more likely hit the mark and perfectly position products and services to drive-in revenue.

Takeaway

When CS teams see ConvergeHub, the best CRM for SaaS companies they usually switch over to us in a few weeks. We have a talented team that can help you to get started with our #1 CRM for SMBs within a few weeks and that too with limited hours needed for its configuration time.

So, if the future of Customer Support is CRM, now we would like to hear you talk.

If you have found this article useful, comment in the box below.

What is CRM?

Why we need easy to use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software?

How best small business CRM helps business?

What can a easy to use CRM do for an organization?

How best small business CRM works?

Best CRM features related to Sales

Here are some of the 10 top benefits of implementing CRM for Small Business owners:

1. Organization

2. Faster exchange of communication

3. Efficient scheduling and tracking

4. Improved Marketing Statistics

5. Close Analysis of Customer Data

6. Better Team Collaboration

7. Targeted Lead Generation

8. Automation

9. Integration with other third party software

10. Superior Customer Service

Endnote:

Some of the advantages of using Marketing Automation software platforms are:

Some of the other advantages of using a CRM are:

1. Do I need Salesforce automation?

What is Salesforce Automation?

2. Do I need Marketing Automation?

What is Marketing Automation?

3. Do I need Reporting and Analytics?

4. Do I need a shared database?

5. Do I need an “In the Cloud” or “On Site” CRM?

Why The Future Of Customer Support Is CRM?

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