Year: 2018

Avoid CRM Disasters With This Ultimate Easy To Use CRM Checklist

Did you just invest a few thousand dollars in purchasing a brand new easy to use CRM software system, only to find that it does not solve the pain points and aches that are holding your business back? Well if it is so, we can assure that you are not alone. This has happened several times to many businesses big and small- nevertheless, it does not have to be so all the time. Read to know why does even easy to use CRM implementations Fail?

Did you just invest a few thousand dollars in purchasing a brand new easy to use CRM software system, only to find that it does not solve the pain points and aches that are holding your business back?
Well if it is so, we can assure that you are not alone.
This has happened several times to many businesses big and small- nevertheless, it does not have to be so all the time.

Less than 40% of businesses have a CRM adoption rate over 90%- CSO Insights Click To Tweet

Why Does Even Easy To Use CRM Implementations Fail?

  1. So many features, but not the right ones

It may be a flashy interface, new gamification features, and a lot more functionalities that you never knew you wanted, but does not actually offer the features you need on a regular basis to run your business.
Therefore, while choosing your easy to use CRM software , you need to work with a plan.
Find out what are the business problems you are planning to solve, know your goals, and always make sure that they are measurable, before choosing your easy to use CRM system that can address to those unique pain points and needs.

  1. The pricing of the software is eating into your profits

You have chosen an easy to use CRM software, that exceeds what your organization can afford. Therefore, while the benefits of using a CRM solution for your business can always increase your sales. However, it takes a longer time to build up those crucial customer relationships. Therefore, an easy to use but at the same instance, expensive CRM software can bring your business to a halt even before your sales start rolling in and eat away your profits.

  1. Promising the world

If you know what is CRM , always remember that this is a CRM system, which is just a tool and can never be a magic pill. Successful easy to use CRM implementations depends a lot on your employee’s eagerness to learn how to use the CRM software, keep all the records up to data in the CRM database, and your every employee’s commitment towards this customer-centric approach to the business.
Hence, set reasonable goals, and thereafter work with determination to exceed them. This will not only keep your team’s morale high but also help your business to grow at a steady pace.

  1. Too quickly too much change

After investing money and time on an easy to use CRM implementation, some entrepreneurs may get tempted to discard that their employees were using beforehand and push the employees to use the new CRM system. Nevertheless, whatever that you do, always understand that too much change in a small span of time can leave your team confused, and thereby make your customer service suffer the dire consequences.

Therefore, start rolling out the new features in your just purchased CRM system that makes it easier and more satisfying for your employees to do their jobs. Replace gruesome, routine tasks and manual workarounds with system automation and you can be sure your employees will start using the new software more quickly. Many easy to use CRM systems like ConvergeHub also includes a series of integrations , so that your old business software solutions like Gmail, DocuSign, MailChimp, DropBox, Ring Central, and others can seamlessly connect to the new system, which makes it easier to work for your staffs, making the CRM implementation more successful for your company.

  1. Not everyone is present on board

Finally, CRM is not just a tool but also a business strategy, and so like any other business strategy to work, everyone in your organization has to follow a singular goal. Per se, executives in your company and the users of the easy to use CRM software must willingly remain on board to learn and use the new customer relationship management software.
This factor in successful CRM implementation is absolutely necessary as it helps in creating a lot of less friction if everyone in an organization agrees to use the new CRM software in the first place.

Conclusion

Now that you are aware of what not to do, let us make your easy to use CRM implementation a success, as here at ConvergeHub, we have mined and worked with myriads of inquiries, customer data, and surveys to offer you with the most comprehensive Converged CRM system, and the CRM requirement checklist.
This is because of the fact- we are aware that the devil lurks in the details of implementation of the easy to use CRM software platform.

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Ways A MCA CRM Can Help You Reach Your Business Goals

GOALS- are an essential element that every business be it big or small must have, as aptly quoted by Tony Robbins: “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” This is because, without goals, businesses will never be able to achieve new heights, or rather to say remain comfortably numbed with whatever happens around them. It is nice to sing “Hakuna Matata” in your daily life, but when it comes to business, not worrying about achieving new levels in sales and customer support can burn your entrepreneurial endeavors to the ground. So how can an MCA CRM help you reach your Merchant Cash Advance business goals?

GOALS- are an essential element that every business be it big or small must have, as aptly quoted by Tony Robbins:

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.

This is because, without goals, businesses will never be able to achieve new heights, or rather to say remain comfortably numbed with whatever happens around them.

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.- Tony Robbins Click To Tweet

It is nice to sing “Hakuna Matata” in your daily life, but when it comes to business, not worrying about achieving new levels in sales and customer support can burn your entrepreneurial endeavors to the ground.

So how can an MCA CRM help you reach your Merchant Cash Advance business goals?

 

Ways Merchant Cash Advance CRM Software Can Help You Reach Your MCA Business Goals:

  1. MCA CRM Improves Customer Retention

If you know what is CRM, we have discussed even before in greater details how an easy to use CRM software can enhance your in-house customer support, but at a higher level, a Merchant Cash Advance software can also help you to reach your customer retention goals.

Per say, using your MCA CRM software you can easily track all your customer satisfaction metrics and conjure sales promotional activities that can uncover new, and recurring revenues.

Leveraging features like activity history of the customers, taking notes, and using case management functionalities in an MCA CRM software like ConvergeHub allows your employees to monitor the conversation that your marketing, sales, and support teams have had with your existing customers. That in turn makes it simple for your alternative funding organization to provide apt solutions and promotions to increase the level of satisfaction for your customers.

Always remember, it is at least 50% more easier to sell to existing customers than selling your services to new prospects and that 80% of your future profits in your alternative funding MCA business come from your existing customers. Therefore, leveraging your Merchant Cash Advance CRM to reach your existing customer is a must for the growth of your business.

  1. Create Better Marketing Campaigns

Based on Top Marketing Automation Trends published by Software Advice, businesses that have already understood the impact, which a CRM for small business does for sales and marketing has leveraged lead scoring and lead segmentation features to create groups of customer targets to perk up the quality and reach of their marketing campaigns.

It is a common statement that easy to use CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub helps business to reach their goals by providing organizations with deeper insights into their leads, prospect, and customers.

More specifically MCA CRM software in alternative funding businesses provides your MCA firm to look at your opportunity pipelines so that you can very easily correlate each of the opportunities in your sales funnels to a specific marketing campaign.

This marketing automation functions in a CRM lets your employees quickly view which are the campaigns that are likely to result into opportunities and ultimately sales of your alternative funding services.

Therefore, using an MCA CRM like ConvergeHub, fine-tune your marketing campaigns in a manner that provides the opportunities to escalate your company’s goals and its bottom line.

  1. Increase Lead Quality

As you can easily reach your business goals using an MCA CRM software in Merchant Cash Advance businesses, you should instruct your marketing and sales managers to create pragmatic objectives to increase lead quality for higher sales. ConvergeHub CRM helps to score leads and determine which actions and strategies are most pertinent to lead to a sale. Using the CRM database for enhancing customer and lead information you can conveniently fast-track leads through the sales pipeline to help your managers more efficiently reach their predicted sales.

  1. Make your Business more Efficient

Your Merchant Cash Advance software can easily improve your efficiency to hit on goals by developing a better workflow for all your customer-facing processes. ConvergeHub MCA CRM software not only helps you with process workflow, but it even increases process efficiency and time management skills of your employees. Using an easy to use CRM software your team will be able to invest more time on value-added activities and thereby spend less time making communication blunders and loose information while making manual data entries in the software.

  1. Improve Sales Pipeline

Improving your alternative funding businesses’ sales pipeline through your MCA CRM software is a simple way to help you reach your goals.
In other words, plainly speaking, your company needs to reach its revenue goals and your Merchant Cash Advance CRM help you to reach it quickly.

Your sales pipeline gets a considerable boost from an array of areas, although it is a bit way around to include other sections in this list, nevertheless, improving the quality of your leads directly helps to enhance your sales pipeline, improve the quality of your marketing campaigns, and thereby improve your business workflow.
In addition to this, MCA CRM software also lets you segment lists by industries that help your sales teams to focus their outbound efforts on specific niche industries seeking alternative funding resources.

Conclusion

If you know what is CRM, then you must be aware of the fact that a CRM is more than just a piece of software. It is a tool that helps your business to reach its perceived goals, regardless of whether your primary objectives are improving sales, retaining your customers, increase inbound leads, or just reduce wasted time.

Therefore, to conclude, an MCA CRM is your always a silver bullet if you are in the Merchant Cash Advance business, which helps you to manage your entire operation, right from marketing and sales to customer support and project management by placing all of the pieces you need in a single platform to achieve your goals.

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Why SMBs Have Embraced Cloud Based Easy to Use CRM Platforms

For all business organizations, especially small and medium-sized businesses and startups growth is indispensable to meet up competition in the market. SMBs also have another factor; they mostly have a tight budget and a quick time frame for making their brand make a mark in the business world. As growth with a limited budget can be a hard task for any small organization, however, small and medium businesses are discovering Cloud based easy to use CRM platforms nowadays, which is making it easier for them to achieve this feat. Also popularly known as Software as a Service (SaaS), On Demand, or Cloud based CRM, it simply means that your information and data is stored in the Cloud, instead of, in your own server as in On-Premise CRM systems.

For all business organizations, especially small and medium-sized businesses and startups growth is indispensable to meet up competition in the market.
SMBs also have another factor; they mostly have a tight budget and a quick time frame for making their brand make a mark in the business world.
Growth with a limited budget can be a hard task for any small organization, however, small and medium businesses are discovering Cloud based easy to use CRM platforms nowadays, which is making it easier for them to achieve this feat.

In 2018, 87% of the businesses are estimated to use cloud-based CRM, while a mere 13% are pegged to use on-premise CRM. Click To Tweet

Also popularly known as Software as a Service (SaaS), On Demand, or Cloud based CRM, it simply means that your information and data is stored in the Cloud, instead of, in your own server as in On-Premise CRM systems.

While it may sound very obvious that you would always like to store your data in your own server, but the truth remains that Cloud is actually more secure, requires less maintenance, and you are less likely to lose access to your data once it is uploaded on the Cloud.

According to a recent survey by CBR (Computer Business Review), it is reported that 86% of small and medium businesses found improvement in their business processes since adopting an easy to use CRM software platform that is cloud based. CBR also reported in the same research study that the SMB cloud services markets would escalate by approximately 17% by 2021.

Now if you are curious to know “why”, here are 3 compelling reasons to go for easy to use CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub that are built on the Cloud.

  1. It Is Cost Effective

Unlike traditional On-Premise CRM systems, with easy to use CRM solutions that are Cloud based Customer Relationship Management software platforms, you do not need to buy and maintain a private server. Rather in a Cloud based CRM, you can easily access a website that is created for the customers through a hosting service. Additionally, Cloud based CRM systems save time and money during CRM implementation process, as easy to use CRM software platforms, which are Cloud based CRM gets you up and running in few hours, without impeding your daily workflow.

  1. Your Data Is Always Available and Protected

As it was a decade before, when your CRM software lives on your personal server, it becomes solely your responsibility to make sure that your CRM database is consistently backed up, just in case your server may fail one day. Cloud based CRM software like ConvergeHub takes backups of your software’s data, and manages them using Cloud infrastructure that is used for building the easy to use CRM platform.

This way, you never have to worry and fret about how long it has been since you last backed up the data in your easy to use CRM database.

With Cloud based CRM systems even, a power outage also does not mean it is lights out for your business. Word class data centers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) used by ConvergeHub have redundant storage, power, and overflow of seamless internet connectivity all available to maintain your CRM system during the most challenging situations, all the time.

However, if your CRM’s server is On-Premise, it signifies that even a small power outage invariably signifies a loss of all access to your CRM database until power is restored.
Nevertheless, with a Cloud based CRM, since your information is stored in the Cloud, you and your employees can still access the data even during a power outage, from any location that caters to power and internet.

  1. Superior Security

Many small business owners may have an uneasy feeling about keeping their precious and sensitive customer data in the Cloud, remembering frequent headlines we often hear about hacking and data breaches. However, with Cloud based CRM software platforms, your data always remains in the hands of professionals. Cloud providers like AWS, MS Azure, and others provide their employs with state-of-the-art security measures so that they can obtain and keep their customers happy.

Any small business owner using an On-Premise CRM software can rarely afford such extravagant measures, and so users of Cloud based software platforms get enterprise-level security for their SMB with the Cloud.

In fact, Cloud companies and data centers also invest millions of dollars in professional security services to monitor and guard their servers 24 hours a day.

Moreover, user sessions with Cloud are also fully SSL encrypted, which helps in establishing highly secured end-to-end connections between the server and the points of use.

Conclusion                      

Therefore, although  it completely depends on the needs of your business whether you choose Cloud or On-Premise CRM software for your company, Cloud  based easy to use CRM software solutions indisputably have several benefits over On-Premise CRM software, which makes SMBs embrace CRM(s) like ConvergeHub, which is an award-winning Cloud based  easy to use CRM platform.

If you are new to ConvergeHub, the best CRM for SMB, click on the link below for a 14-day trial of the software.

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Strategic Lead Management Tips To Keep Sales Moving Through Your MCA CRM Pipeline

Keeping track of what is going on in your MCA CRM pipeline is important for your Merchant Cash Advance business. Your Merchant Cash Advance CRM sales pipeline provides you an insight into how your sales strategies are performing, and if any improvement is required to increase your sales. Unfortunately, leads and fence-sitting prospects can get lost in the shuffle or suddenly becoming inactive. Hence, what do you do when you find that the leads in the CRM database are getting stuck or dropping out for a myriad of reasons. Here are some of the most effective tips on lead management strategies that can help you to make your MCA CRM sales pipeline going forward once again.

Keeping track of what is going on in your MCA CRM pipeline is important for your Merchant Cash Advance business.

Your Merchant Cash Advance CRM sales pipeline provides you an insight into how your sales strategies are performing, and if any improvement is required to increase your sales.

The CRM market has seen a steady growth in the recent past. For this reason, its value is estimated to stand at $19 billion. - GoalCast (2017) Click To Tweet

Unfortunately, leads and fence-sitting prospects can get lost in the shuffle or suddenly becoming inactive. Hence, what do you do when you find that the leads in the CRM database are getting stuck or dropping out for a myriad of reasons.

Here are some of the most effective tips on lead management strategies that can help you to make your MCA CRM sales pipeline going forward once again.

However, primarily do you understand what are the reasons that are causing your leads to get stuck in your sales pipeline?

Therefore, before you take any actions, the foremost thing that you need to do is to comprehend why leads are getting caught in the first place. Since, when you do a bit of pondering, you will most likely be able to link all your inactive leads to a few unambiguous causes for which they got halted in their progress.

Not find the proper person

If you are unaware of the right contact information and you do not know the proper decision-maker(s) in the company, you will hardly be able to make any sales.
In addition, a prospective customer may enter an email that the person may not use often when they fill out a web-form in your website.

Both these issues ultimately may lead to not letting your messages reach the right people who need to see them.

Therefore, measure the bounce rate for your emails using MCA CRM software, and if they are considered high, find a solution to your problem. As this can be an indicator that you are not selling to the right person, or rather to say, not selling at all.

There is a problem with your alternative lending service

Another pertinent reason why a lead might get jammed is that your prospects are having issues using your solution, or they assume that your services are too expensive when compared to other MCA businesses in town. Nevertheless, whatever the case may be, it is vital that you find and fix the problems that are within your control.

Although it is true that you just cannot please every prospect, however, making the right change can have a rocking impact on your bottom line.

For example, if you find that a majority of visitors are abandoning the account creation process on your website, do take up necessary steps to decrease friction at the steps.

Your buyer is not ready yet

It can always be that your prospects are not sure that they want to make a change and accept your solution. It is a known fact that most of the visitors on your website will not be ready to buy your service the minute they enter your sales pipeline, and therefore, not doing so can leave some of your prospects fence-sit without the confidence to make a purchase.

If you find this to be an issue, increase the chances of making the leads move through your Merchant Cash Advance CRM pipeline by being helpful towards your prospects.

 

Lead management tips to get prospects moving

Now, once you are aware of what is getting your prospects stuck; you are faced with another new challenge.

So, how do you remove these bottlenecks and advance your leads through your MCA CRM’s pipeline?

The good news is that when you adopt the proper lead management strategies into action, you can easily get all your inactive leads moving ahead again.

Here are a few time-tested tips that we recommend:

Revamp your communication strategies

Are you aware of your communication strategies with your prospects in the different stages of your sales pipeline?

Now, just sending an email blast to every prospect in your CRM database once or twice every month is not going to cut the knot, if you want to steadily encourage every leads to move towards a prospect.

Primarily, understand your sales process and think what is required for qualifying and pushing your leads at every stage of your sales pipeline.
Next, segment your leads using lead scoring tactics into different lists.

Find a lead scoring strategy that addresses to your lead’s concerns, curiosities, and pain points.

According to an article published by MailChimp, lead segmentation plays a major role in the success of any email marketing campaign.

According to MailChimp, it has been found that email campaigns with segmented leads using a Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, in alternative lending businesses gets cent percent more clicks when compared to non-segmented ones.

Know your leads better

Do you know if your prospective leads are casually considering your service or they are in urgent need of your solution?

Once leads are stuck in the sales pipeline, it can always imply that your leads do not need your services yet.

Maybe, they are doubtful if your answer to their pain points is a good solution for their needs. Knowing this allows you to nurture your leads properly.

Understanding where your leads are in the buyer’s journey aids in marketing to them more efficiently.

You can always find out what your prospective leads are thinking by asking them to reply to your emails or by sending them out a survey using an easy to use MCA CRM platform.

If needed, you can even consider setting up a feedback form for all your new leads so that you can without any problems, collect all the information about your leads and their businesses and store the data in your CRM database.

Lookout for stalled stages

Find out if most of the inactive leads are getting stuck in one specific stage of your sales pipeline. If it is so, reevaluate the stages of your sales process. However, to understand how to fix this stages, you need to find an answer to these two most pertinent questions:

-What is happening?

-What should be happening?

For this, find an answer to what are the specific goals for every stage in your sales process. Next, evaluate how close you or your prospects are coming close to meet these goals. Finally, find out what can you do to make it easier for your leads to move to the next step or fetch a decision to complete the deal.

Offer help

If you are determined that a prospective lead is facing trouble in making a decision or getting buy-in from other alternative funding companies, what can be done offer them help?
What can you do to make your leads generate more trust in your business?

Well, to redress this issue you can offer free trials, eBooks, consultation, coupon codes, and other similar ‘at no cost’ resources. However, you should always make these offers available to the right buyers and at the right time.

Again, the key to finding this proper moment is making sure that your contact list is properly segmented. Per say, you just would not want to email a guidebook of how Merchant Cash Advance business works and its benefits over conventional bank loans to a lead who is already in a decision making stage of the buyer’s journey.

Create urgency

In case your prospective leads are not feeling an urgency to go for your service, set an expiration date or offer a discount.

According to a study done by Experian, adding urgency to your email marketing campaign efforts can increase open rates of your emails by 14%, the click-through rates by 59%, and double the number of completed deals.

To do these include the offer and time limit in the subject line of your emails.

However, always make sure that your urgency is based on something real, and is not a trial offer which is supposed to remain for a week but remains beyond that time, which is one of the quickest ways for losing credibility.

Ask questions

Start listening, if you cannot get a lead to close the deal. Ask your leads questions so that you can apprehend their hesitations. Since, if you ask your prospective lead any question that can get them engaged, you always have a fair chance that they will certainly reply, and you can easily find out from their answers what is holding them back.

If you are using a survey or sending a short email with questions to do this work, always send something that your prospects can answer within a few minutes.

Bottom line

Therefore, you see, solving issues and pain points of your prospective leads are not as complicated as it apparently seems.

The key to keeping you leads moving forward seamlessly through your MCA CRM sales pipeline lies in simply understanding and apprehending what is holding them back. Hence, make sure that the sales process in your Merchant Cash Advance software is set up to support your leads, and prospects and not just you as the owner of the software.

Are you ready to take control of your Merchant Cash Advance CRM sales pipeline now!

Learn more about how ConvergeHub’s robust marketing automation and sales pipeline management features can aid you and your team to get the right message to your prospects and leads in the right time.

To get going, start a 14-days free trial of ConvergeHub- the award-winning MCA CRM software by clicking on the link below.

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Steps To Stronger Customer Loyalty Using An Easy To Use CRM Platform

With the present time’s ever-expanding market, consumers have no dearth of options to choose from when determining their loyalty towards a brand. Therefore, when customer feedbacks are not asked for or not taken seriously customers tend to jump at the chance to find a brand that prioritizes it. We hope these four strategies will help you understand the feedbacks of your customers in a more evocative way, and thereby help drive greater customer loyalty by using an easy to use CRM and through your digital experience.

In modern times, customers have never-ending options when it comes to choosing new brands, products, or services. This means that the customer’s expectations are extremely high in the present times, which calls for immediacy, responsiveness, personalization, product quality that are some of the key reasons customers which will make the consumers choose to be loyal to a brand over another.
However, one major element that holds the key to solidifying customer loyalty and consequently increase earnings is correctly leveraging customer feedback with the help of a easy to use CRM for the growth of your business.

Therefore, here are 4 sure-shot tactics to help strengthen your customer loyalty through consumer feedbacks.

Customers who have engaged actively with a brand remain 4 times more likely to use the brand’s products and services even after three months following their initial contact.- ConvergeHub Click To Tweet
  1. Remain Proactive

Customers are hard-pressed to leave feedback in any form, but we often forget that there are real people on both ends of the exchange. Hence, though most brands think that they are building products and services around their customers, nevertheless in reality researches show that businesses only hear from less than 1% of their customer base (which we call as the vocal minority) and the rest 99% customers becomes the ‘silent majority’, whereby their feedbacks and loyalty are nor fostered or prioritized.

According to a study published by a leading market survey organization, it has been acknowledged that customers who have engaged actively with a brand remain 4 times more likely to use the brand’s products and services even after three months following their initial contact.

Providing a place for receiving feedback from the customer is a great way to start, although most consumers only reach out unprompted if they have an issue that needs help to be fixed. Therefore, to get in front of the customer, you need to make a proactive effort to show how important their customer feedbacks are for your business.

To do this, it is best to proactively engage the customers throughout their digital experience, whereby you can start with a simple survey asking a few questions about their recent experience with your brand, which can be easily done if you are using an easy to use CRM software, showing your customers that you care.

  1. Engage at the right moment

Now that we know that it is needed to engage the customers, let us discuss what is the ‘right moment” within a digital experience and how it actually looks like.

Encouraging feedback from the customers is all about starting a conversation with the consumers, and therefore, asking for a feedback at the right moment is needed to give this conversation the best opportunity to begin.

To do this it is crucial that you understand your customer’s journey and pick up the best point for communication (e.g. if they view a certain page, after a customer has completed a purchase, when they complete a level, etc.) and find the right time to ask for the feedback.

However, it must be remembered that you need to remain conservative on how often you ask for the feedback and that you should give the customers sufficient time to engage with their experience with your offerings, before you ask for their feedback using an easy to use CRM, for the first time.

  1. Listen (really listen) to feedback

It has been found that far too often; businesses do not take actions based on the feedback the customers provide to the companies.

Now, it must be remembered that a lack of communication can affect both brand loyalty and the customer’s willingness to provide feedback in the future.

Therefore, it is most important for customers to feel heard when they provide a feedback, which can be validated in the following ways:

Say thank you

Always reply with a big “thanking you” message even if you have heard the same feedback for a million times or the feedback was incredibly rude.

Follow up

Always follow up with your consumers after they leave their feedbacks, and consider providing them something free for their valuable time, for customers who may have larger issues.

Be honest

Sometimes it is not possible to solve a problem on the spot. Hence, if a customer leaves feedback around an issue that is in a low priority level or cannot be solved, be honest and tell them why.

Provide Credit

Always give credit where it is due by giving thanks to your customers who brought your attention to an issue with your products or services. Taking a step further by personally calling those who provided such vital feedbacks and offering them thanks privately, often makes even those customers who get their problems solved become some of your biggest fans.

Remember that whether the sentiment is negative or positive, customer feedback is critically valuable and should always be considered as an opportunity to know how you can make a better product for your customers.

  1. Measure your brand’s progress

Executing a strategy always helps in improving your customer’s experience with your brand, and therefore drives loyalty in the primary part of the battle. However, measuring success is also equally important, since without tracking your success you will never be able to measure the progress that you have made.

If you are using an easy to use CRM software like ConvergeHub, consider following these five metrics for measuring the effectiveness of your customer’s experience over time.

– Average session length

-The bounce rate of various pages and email campaigns

-Frequency of sessions

-Track customer sentiment through NPS (Net Promoter Score)

-Activity per sessions

Conclusion

With the present time’s ever-expanding market, consumers have no dearth of options to choose from when determining their loyalty towards a brand. Therefore, when customer feedbacks are not asked for or not taken seriously customers tend to jump at the chance to find a brand that prioritizes it.

We hope these four strategies above will help you understand the feedbacks of your customers in a more evocative way, and thereby help drive greater customer loyalty by using an easy to use CRM and through your digital experience.

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If you have other ways that you have used for strengthening customer feedback, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

CRM Database and Blockchain: A Perfect Combination for You and Your Customers

Do you still believe that Blockchain technology starts and ends with Bit-coins? If it is so, then you must not have been paying attention in the way this technological marvel is rapidly gaining importance in the IT world, and it is very likely that this technology will get even bigger in the times to come. This is because Blockchain has opened up a completely new range of possibilities and has revolutionized how the present business processes and technologies work. As a matter of fact, Blockchain technology has the possibility to develop as one of the most technologically superior constructive tools for uniting and securing the CRM database in the coming years.

Do you still believe that Blockchain technology starts and ends with Bit-coins? If it is so, then you must not have been paying attention in the way this technological marvel is rapidly gaining importance in the IT world, and it is very likely that this technology will get even bigger in the times to come.

This is because Blockchain has opened up a completely new range of possibilities and has revolutionized how the present business processes and technologies work.

As a matter of fact, Blockchain technology has the possibility to develop as one of the most technologically superior constructive tools for uniting and securing the CRM database in the coming years.

Therefore, in this article let us find out how Blockchain and easy to use CRM software may be just what you require to bring up your business to the next level.

To ensure a successful Blockchain project, focus on the business problem, not the technology solution- Gartner Click To Tweet

Blockchain means improved security of the CRM Database

As the name “Blockchain” suggests, this technological wonder is nothing but a chain of blocks. Each of the blocks holds transactional records and stays connected to the blocks, which both precedes and follows the chain. In general, these blocks in a Blockchain remains cryptographically secured in a manner that the users of this technology are able to gain access to the chain if they have the access to the network keys that stands as a guard, for eliminating the possibilities of unauthorized entries.

In addition, thinking about how most of the CRM Database is hosted on the Cloud servers, security of the data in the Cloud remains a prevalent concern for many.
Of course, in the present times the Cloud protection protocols have been enhanced considerably, but all Cloud based CRM software platforms have an inherent solitary point of failure by virtue of being essentially centralized, and therefore, it could be wrong for a company to take unnecessary risk of sharing their critical data with CRM vendors of lesser market reputes.
This is exactly where coupling Blockchain technology and CRM Database of an online lead management system is the solution that comes into play.

Contrary to the Cloud systems, Blockchain(s) remains decentralized and distributed over synchronized P2P networks. Therefore, the chances of tampering the whole Blockchain is virtually impossible, since that would require a gigantic amount of computation power, which consequentially reduces the possibilities of fraud and repudiation to the bare minimum level.

Put an end to CRM Database tracking

Blockchain and easy to use CRM system can perform together to keep your CRM Database useful and clean. Right now, the user of cloud based CRM systems across the globe argue in different levels about the problems faced by users of easy to use CRM in matters of duplication or corruption of their customer information in the CRM Database.

Blockchain technology when coupled with CRM offers a unique solution to this ever-persisting data corruption problem by enabling customers to own a single block. Hence, this process offers a unified and accurate image of a user’s (lead, prospect, or customer) personal details, transaction history, and several other vital data.

Therefore, Blockchain ultimately ends up doing good for both the organization that adopts Cloud based CRM software platforms and the customers.

This inherent structure of Blockchain technology prevents duplication of CRM data or corruption of information from causing problems with the CRM Database. Additionally, once you wipe off all the inaccurate data, you will instantly notice a boost in the speed of your easy to use CRM processes along with greater improvements in customer behavior understanding.

Find the benefit of enhanced transparency   

As a decentralized process, Blockchain enables companies to deal with their customer base in a secured and transparent manner, without relying on a financial institution like a bank or third party broker to facilitate the entire process.
Therefore, once you are capable of eliminating these intermediaries, it is imperative that your dealings will speed up and can get your work done more efficiently, while at the same time all your private data will change hands less frequently and you do not have to worry about your information falling into the wrong hands.

Find the advantage of enhanced user privacy control

Security of private data has become one of the most crucial issues in the IT world with more cases of virus, breaches, and malware attacks being recorded each year more than ever before. Therefore, it is not surprising that the modern age CRM systems are expected to address these issues by modifying the way they deal with the private data of their customers.

Thanks to its decentralized and secured nature, Blockchain technology enables the CRM vendors to implement the concept of self-sovereign identity within the organization.

Now, users are able to encrypt and store their personal data and authenticate the same data upon inquisition without having to divulge any details with parties concerned, which is a great boon for easy to use CRM vendors in these trying times of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) data protection norms.

Escape the hassle of lead generation

Users of CRM can harness the power of Blockchain and Machine Learning to figure out, which businesses are most trustworthy in a particular area of interest. In the present times, the existing digital ad-space has its own flaws, and Blockchain is a technology that is capable of changing the way people connect with their brands.

Do you want to know how?

Well, primarily, with the advancement of Blockchain, a single business can no longer control various retail categories, as businesses will have to focus and select their specific search categories.

This implies that targeted marketing will no longer be the central focus and this will impact CRM-based lead generation strategies.

Apart from this, companies will be no longer forced to advertise for leads or purchase new database without the knowledge of where it came from.

Small and medium businesses using easy to use CRM software platforms will also benefit from this system, as they will be able to capture customer attention by earning trust.

Get rid of outdated information with data cleansing

All easy to use CRM users across the world must deal with outdated data at some points of time. Generally, this occurs because of negligence on the part of the users or for using the wrong kind of data importing tools. However, once you implement a Blockchain technology in CRM, you get the privilege of owning your own block that offers the most accurate and unified 360-degree view of your personal information.

Therefore, leveraging Blockchain and CRM technology lets you overcome the problem of storing outdated information, since cleaning out old data, and useless information and keeping an updated CRM Database, improve your customer insights and allows businesses to engage information in the CRM Database in a more effective manner.

Harness the full potential of loyalty programs

The key purpose of loyalty programs is to increase the profits of a business by adding value to the overall customer experience.

However, unfortunately, because of their variable mileage, volatile values, and privacy concerns loyalty programs becomes quite cumbersome for customers and therefore it yields a reducing ROI.

Nevertheless, in a way similar to different crypto-currencies, brands can utilize the Blockchain system to reimage and revitalize the entire loyalty program.

Implementing Blockchain with CRM systems will greatly benefit the customers as it offers a ‘single and decentralized wallet’, which is compatible with various brands. Effectively, the customer takes charge of the experience and companies must contend with one another by providing better deals so they can access their wallets.

The Bottom Line

Hence, in a gist, Blockchain technology will not only change how we approach a CRM system, but this newfound technology also has the potential to fundamentally alter business operation models and keeping in view all that Blockchain is capable of, we believe this claim is a justifiable one.

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Practical Guide For Upselling And Cross-Selling With An Effective QuickBooks CRM Software

We all have been sometimes or the other on the receiving end of pushy sale pitches, and hence knows why up-selling and cross-selling often gets a bad rap. However, if it is done effectively, with a robust QuickBooks CRM software both these marketing strategies are actually great weapons to grow your business by leveraging on your brands existing customer base. Therefore, primarily, let us clarify the difference between up-selling and cross-selling before we talk about the great strategies that can make it happen in reality.

We all have been sometimes or the other on the receiving end of pushy sale pitches, and hence know why up-selling and cross-selling often gets a bad rap.
However, if it is done effectively, with a robust QuickBooks CRM software both these marketing strategies are actually great weapons to grow your business by leveraging on your brand’s existing customer base.

Therefore, primarily, let us clarify the difference between up-selling and cross-selling before we talk about the great strategies that can make it happen in reality.

First thing first, Up-selling happens when you encourage and convince an existing customer to buy a more expensive item, version, or an upgrade of their intended purchase. A classic example of up-selling is when someone asks you in a restaurant “Would you prefer potato-chips with that?”
Here up-selling happens as the customer has already purchased one food item and adding fries to the menu just makes it a more delicious and expensive combo.

A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10%- Emmet Murphy & Mark Murphy Click To Tweet

On the other hand, cross-selling happens when you try to persuade your customer to buy add-on products or services that complement the customer’s initial purchase. For an example, when you purchase a two-wheeler, the seller will encourage you (hopefully) to add a fog-light and a helmet in the interest of the buyer’s safety.

Hence, regardless of whatever that your company sells, the act of selling becomes more effective at up selling, whereas cross-selling aids in generating repeat business and increase your revenue.

Are you now ready to get started?

Then, keep reading or download this PDF to learn how best CRM for QuickBooks online like ConvergeHub makes it easier to achieve these goals.

Always remain transparent about the pricing

While up-selling and cross-selling your products or services, your customers must never feel like they have been tricked into spending more. Therefore, advice your employees using your QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, to be upfront about what the add-on offering(s) will cost before telling the benefits of buying the products or services. Remember customers always appreciate honesty, and so they are more likely to consider the value of your proposed offerings if they are not distracted by unknown numbers.

It is always helpful to present your customers with an estimate that provides a line-by-line pricing break-up of your offerings.

Using QuickBooks CRM software allows your sales executives to create estimates easily directly within the easy to use CRM software, without requiring to wait for someone else to access the QuickBooks.

Bundle related offerings together

Here is the reason why “Would you prefer potato-chips with that?” is so very effective. Prospective customers always love a good deal, and it is typically cheaper to purchase a combo offer, than to buy, their burger first and go back again for potato chips later.

Now, if you find that your customer is debating whether to include an additional item to their purchase, try offering a time-bound discount on the combo offer, which certainly provides an incentive to buy now rather than waiting.

Therefore, if you want to refer to the regular prices of items in your selling list before making the big promises, QuickBooks CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub, allows your representatives to easily view your list of offerings and their usual pricing without leaving the CRM.

Know your customers’ preferences

According to Marketing Metrics, one of the leading market research firms focusing solely on advisor-sold investments and insurance across the world, states, “the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%”.
This happens largely because if you are using an easy to use CRM software, your employees already know who your existing customers are and what they prefer to buy at large.

Therefore, using a best CRM software for QuickBooks like ConvergeHub that offers QuickBooks CRM integration free your employees can track your customer’s past purchases and preferences, which can be thereafter used for identifying up-selling and cross-selling opportunities that are most relevant to their likings.

Using a QuickBooks CRM software like ConvergeHub not only provides a 360-degree picture of a customer’s history with your businesses, but it also provides every single personal detail and past communications with the customers which include notes, phone conversations, their response to your customized email campaigns in a centralized location, before formulating a new sales pitch.

Understand your customers’ journeys

Pay attention to the storyline that led to your customer’s first purchase, Even if you find them busy and focused on eliminating one problem or achieve a goal, they may have also mentioned other pain points that are related to that cause. Therefore, taking note of these long-term plans of your customers opens up opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling, when the customers are ready to take their next big step.

Hence, always encourage your employees to record every single communication with their customer interactions as a mandatory activity and ensure that everyone on your sales, marketing, and customer support teams has an access to the customer information to assist the customers on their journey with your brand.

Conclusion

Hence, up-selling and cross-selling need not always have to be a shady affair, since the key to both these strategic approaches focuses on delivering vales to your customer.

Luckily, a QuickBooks CRM software like ConvergeHub, makes up-selling and cross-selling strategic approaches focused on delivering values to your customers, which consequently increase your revenue.

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How Best Small Business CRM Solution’s Sales Automation Software Separates The Amateurs From The Pros

When you think of activities that are most important for making a sale, you must be probably thinking about several actions that need the human touch of the sales reps in your organization. Like listening to the needs of your leads and prospects, developing a solution to their pain points, and thereafter ask for the sale. Sales automation refers to any software tool that facilitates or automates manual tasks for your sales teams. Therefore, the most popular purpose of using sales automation in your best small business CRM software is to eliminate tasks that do not involve direct interaction or relationship building activities with your customers and reduce the amount of effort a sales team spends on managing and organizing their sales processes.

When you think of activities that are most important for making a sale, you must be probably thinking about several actions that need the human touch of the sales reps in your organization. Like listening to the needs of your leads and prospects, developing a solution to their pain points, and thereafter ask for the sale.

In 2018, 87% of the businesses are estimated to use cloud-based CRM, while a mere 13% are pegged to use on-premise CRM. Click To Tweet

However, apart from selling there are also several other tasks that your sales reps need to perform on a regular basis, as according to a recent survey done by InsideSales stated:

“Sales reps only spend 35.2% of their time actually selling, with the majority of their day spent on administrative tasks, research, and other non-selling obligations.”

These non-selling obligations can be things like:

  • Updating lead records and logging activities in their best small business CRM
  • Finding prospect’s phone number before making a call and then writing call notes afterward
  • Researching on the prospects (like finding their job titles, social media accounts, and location)
  • Emailing customized contents to the prospects with respect to their stage in the buying cycle

For the managers in your sales teams, the most widespread non-selling activity may include assigning leads to their sales reps or training new salespersons on the team’s sales processes.

What Is Sales Automation in your best small business CRM?

Sales automation refers to any software tool that facilitates or automates manual tasks for your sales teams.

Therefore, the most popular purpose of using sales automation in your best small business CRM software is to eliminate tasks that do not involve direct interaction or relationship building activities with your customers and reduce the amount of effort a sales team spends on managing and organizing their sales processes.

However, in spite of what the word “sales automation” may imply, it cannot replace the basic task that a sales rep do- Selling.

In fact, sales automation is a process that makes the actual work of a sales rep more valuable, as it permits them to invest more attention and time on quality sales-related actions, like improving the sales process, qualifying leads, or give the best prospects more attention to hasten the sale.

Types of Sales Automation

Sales Automation is a general terminology that can take many different forms.

Many organizations use silo sales automation platforms that focus on one specific part of the sales process (like prospecting or sending cold emails), while other those who rely on their best CRM for small business like ConvergeHub, can automate numerous activities throughout the sales process with salesforce automation integrated into the CRM.

Here are some of the key areas that sales automation can help to undo some of the frustrating and busywork out of a sale rep’s daily work, using salesforce automation (SFA) friendly CRM like ConvergeHub, which caters to almost all of these helpful tools.

  1. Automate Record Creation

Sales automation in best small business CRM software can instantaneously generate easy to use CRM records when a business card is scanned, a web-form is filled out by a visitor, whereby it saves the reps from having to create new lead records and fresh contacts manually.

  1. Automated activity logging in best small and medium business CRM software

One of the most annoying and frustrating “non-selling tasks” for any sales rep is the need to log in phone calls, emails, and several other customer communications for the benefit of the managers and other employees in the organization. Sales automation software is capable of logging those activities into your easy to use CRM software as soon as they happen, without the sales rep having to do the task times and again manually.

  1. Automated research

A sales automation software integrated into an easy to use CRM that has the ability to scour the Web for information can aid the sales team in several ways, from gathering publicly available data on the prospects and adding them to the CRM database to searching social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn to identify potential customers.
Per say, users of ConvergeHub CRM for small business can also avail its FREE LEAD GENERATION TOOL for visiting anyone’s social media page and capture all information instantly with no manual typing.

  1. Automated data entry

Sales automation software platforms are also capable of doing many more things that involve typing. For example, if you need to create a proposal for your prospects, sales automation can auto-fill your leads’ and prospect’s details like name, address, pricing, and particulars of your offerings. Additionally, an automated dialer like Click-to-Call when integrated with an easy to use CRM software solution reduces the need for the salespeople to punch in phone numbers manually for outbound calls.

  1. Communication automation

Although no sales automation software even when integrated with an online lead management software like an easy to use CRM solution can put one-on-one communication on autopilot, nevertheless, many of the grunt-jobs involved in connecting with the prospects, delivering customized contents, or following up with the prospects at the right time, can be automated.

Sales email campaigns for prospecting targeted leads, scheduling meetings, and sending automated voicemails that permit sales reps to drop pre-recorded messages to the prospect’s mailbox when they do not answer their phones, can be easily automated using salesforce automation in a CRM.

  1. Lead management automation

One of primary thing that a sales manager needs to do when a lead comes into the sales pipeline is to assign the lead to the most capable rep that is most likely to close the deal, which is based on factors like demographic preferences, or how comfortable the sales rep is with the specific product line.

Sales automation software in easy to use CRM software, allows managers to automatically distribute leads to the reps by setting automatic lead assignment rules based on their preferred criteria.

Apart from this after a lead is assigned to a sales rep, sales automation can eliminate the need for the rep to manually advance the lead through the sales funnel in the CRM, when stage goals are accomplished, or update the lead score when a lead progresses from one stage to another and ends up (hopefully) into a sale.

  1. Automated guidance

With automated reminders implemented in an easy to use best small business CRM software, sale reps always know what they need to do next, which ensures that important meetings, and follow-ups with the prospects and leads, are completed on time.

How sales automation separate the amateurs from the pros?

Concisely, the basic and the most fundamental difference between the amateur and the pro sales reps lie in consistency.
Therefore sale automation software when integrated with best small business CRM software creates this consistency that is needed for a team to accurately measure the health of their sales funnel and impact of their sales and marketing efforts, which ultimately helps the team to make improvements in their sales strategies accordingly.

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What Is CRM And How It Can Unlock Massive Sales Enablement Benefits For Your Business

You may know by now what is CRM software, but are you aware of the term ‘Sales Enablement’ and what it means to your business? Well, in general, sales enablement refers to a process of providing your sales teams with the most effective tools they need to sell your offerings successfully. Therefore, sales enablement provides your sales teams with the right technology and content to better engage their prospects in the buying cycle. It is a tool that can unlock significant benefits that in turn will increase your sales and drive more revenue.

You may know by now what is CRM software, but are you aware of the term ‘Sales Enablement’ and what it means to your business?

Well, in general, sales enablement refers to a process of providing your sales teams with the most effective tools they need to sell your offerings successfully. Therefore, sales enablement provides your sales teams with the right technology and content to better engage their prospects in the buying cycle. It is a tool that can unlock significant benefits that in turn will increase your sales and drive more revenue.

Leads that are nurtured in the CRM system convert 47% of the time- Annuitas Group Click To Tweet

For example, ConvergeHub small business CRM software is a sales enablement tool that can empower your sales teams to convert more leads and prospects into customers in a much lesser time.

Therefore, with a small business sales enablement tool like a CRM in place, your business has the potential to provide more ROI rapidly.

However, what are these benefits that you can unlock with a best small business CRM like ConvergeHub?

Now that we know what is CRM software, let us dive in see!

Automating manual tasks

A sales enablement CRM for small and medium business drastically increases the efficiency of your sales teams by automating their day-to-day tasks. Therefore, when you use a Converged CRM that includes sales, marketing, customer support, and also accounts (if you are using a QuickBooks CRM), your efficiency increases dramatically.

Here are a few examples:

  1. Data Entry

Lead data is captured successfully when you leverage lead-generation forms. That means, your sales reps do not need to enter data manually, and they can use that time to focus on more important issues.

  1. Appointment scheduling

CRM helps to automate the process of scheduling the appointment process. This allows prospects and customers to schedule meeting with reps with their convenience, freeing them from having to conduct the actions manually.

  1. Lead Scoring

This process helps sales reps to take actions by viewing the propensity of the buyers. Lead scoring methods help in improving the quality of the leads. Hence, small business CRM software that includes lead scoring capabilities helps reps to focus on other things and at the same time have an insight into, leads, which are sales-ready, and those leads that need more nurturing.

  1. Telephony

If you easy to use CRM provides telephony integrations, like Ring Central and others, it helps your sales reps make more calls in less time. Using telephony integration you can select a group of leads to call and let the software call them in sequence without your sales reps having to call up each of the dialed numbers manually, resulting in increased productivity.

  1. Voicemail Drop

Another great benefit of using telephony integrations with your small business CRM software is the ability to leave pre-recorded voice mail drops. Hence, when your sales reps call someone and get sent to the prospect’s voicemail, they click the voicemail drop they want to leave, which thereafter gets delivered automatically.

  1. More Insight Into Customers And Prospects

A CRM software that provides sales enablement stores extensive data on customer and prospects, which includes demographic and personal data of the prospects and the customers. For users who know what is CRM software and its capabilities, can easily track such data for finding behaviors such as clicking on an email, attending a webinar, or viewing a content, which can help sales reps to leverage sales enablement software to maintain more insights into who the customers are and what they need.

  1. Understanding past buying behavior

Sales enablement software like ConvergeHub software helps to track all deals that have been created by your reps.
Once you are using a QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, which offers QuickBooks CRM integration free, your reps can easily open a contact’s records in the CRM database to see which product has been bought by the customer in the past. It can also show which products the prospects and customers have been interested but did not purchase, which allows reps to understand which types of offerings the customers are interested in that in turn drastically increases up-selling opportunities.

  1. Knowing customer’s pain points

When you use a Converged CRM like ConvergeHub, you can track all the customer support tickets, and easily see which problems a customer has faced with your offerings by reviewing their ticket history in the CRM database. Therefore, before up-selling to any customer, using a CRM you can see if the customer is having an issue, and up-sell until the customer is satisfied again.

  1. Arming representatives with the right resources

Sales enablement is also about sending the right resources and content to the leads, prospects, and customers at the right time. Therefore using easy to use CRM software platform, your reps can check where each lead are in the sales funnel, and provide them contents that correctly aligns with the sales process, which can be leveraged by using marketing automation functionalities of the CRM software.

  1. Automated tasks and alerts

You can use small business CRM software to send alerts to sales reps instantaneously when leads become sales qualified that help to remind reps that they need to reach out immediately and start a conversation with the prospect. It is like striking when the iron is hot.

Moreover, using CRM software when speaking to a lead that would benefit from a particular resource, sales reps can simply open the saved email and hit send, which lets them quickly provide the resources and content that leads need at each stage of the sales funnel.

  1. Understanding results

Sales and marketing teams need constant insight into their efforts to improve their results. With a robust sales enablement software like ConvergeHub CRM , you can use its powerful reporting functionalities to view how they are performing against their goals. Sales CRM software helps in checking the health of your sales pipeline, see growth reports, check your rep’s call rates and much more, to identify areas that need improvement or fix broken processes and make data-driven decisions they need to improve to close more deals.

 Conclusion

Now that you know what is CRM software and how it can help you as one of the most efficient sales enablement tools, use ConvergeHub the award winning CRM platform for small businesses, to unlock the benefits described above to make your reps work faster, smarter, and convert more leads into customers in less time.

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Myths About Using A QuickBooks CRM For Sales Teams Exposed

Customer Relationship Management solution or CRM software has been around for decades. However, over the past few years the usage of CRM has skyrocketed and today both small and enterprise level businesses use CRM for sales, preferably a QuickBooks CRM that is capable of offering QuickBooks CRM integration free. Here are some of the some of the primary myths debunked about sales CRM software like QuickBooks CRM for sales teams.

Customer Relationship Management solution or CRM software has been around for decades. However, over the past few years the usage of CRM has skyrocketed and today both small and enterprise level businesses use CRM for sales, preferably a QuickBooks CRM for sales teams that is capable of offering QuickBooks CRM integration free.

CRM technology has evolved considerably over the years, but still, there are several misconceptions what a CRM solution actually is, or what it does, remains in the minds of the prospective buyers of CRM. Especially, customer relationship platforms that integrate with software solutions like QuickBooks, which helps integration with financial and accounting software platforms, and therefore, aid the sales teams to do their work more efficiently.

We will call them CRM myths.

Here are some of the some of the primary myths debunked about sales CRM software like QuickBooks CRM for sales teams.

A CRM software can greatly help in cutting costs, and using one can lead to reduced marketing costs by 23% - Cloudswave Click To Tweet
  1. Sales CRM is too complicated

During the early days, sales CRM software was non-intuitive, clunky, and complicated, which came with an extremely steep learning curve. The market took notice of this issue and hence CRM software gained a reputation that it is a complicated piece of technological marvel that requires advanced computing skills to manage its functionalities.

However, those days are gone, and CRM technology has evolved by leaps and bounds. Today easy to use CRM software platforms have intuitive drag and drop interfaces like ConvergeHub that allows even the most non-technical users to quickly learn and use the platform.

This is the exact reason CRM systems like ConvergeHub, which are built to be accessed by small and growing businesses, have an extremely short learning curve.

  1. CRM is too expensive

Another prevailing myth about CRM systems that were born during the early days of the technology is that CRM solutions are prohibitively expensive. Since, at that time, businesses would have to normally spend more than $1000 per month or even a larger sum for CRM implementation in a company.

Unfortunately, this perception still exists and is as-of-date believed by many.

However, the truth is that prices of CRM software solutions have dramatically dropped in the recent years, which has happened primarily because of the growth in cloud based CRM software and the exceeding numbers of many new vendors that have entered the CRM marketplace.

For example, ConvergeHub CRM not only offers a 14-day free trial of the software but also allows you to use ConvergeHub on a pay-as-you-go subscription-based service (quarterly or annual), with its Starter Pack billed as low as $9 per user/month if it is billed annually.

  1. If I buy a CRM, I must still purchase a marketing automation system

In the present times, an innovative and new type CRM technology has entered the market. It is known as the Converged all-in-one CRM software, which includes full customer relationship management for sales, marketing, customer support, and even accounting on the same platform. Therefore, once you buy a QuickBooks CRM for sales teams like ConvergeHub, you no longer need to buy different automation systems for customer support, sales, marketing, or accounts, as they are built within the CRM.

This means all data centrally stored in the CRM database, be it from sales, marketing, support, or accounts is for all to see, which help align your various teams and makes everyone in your organization work more efficiently.

  1. CRM is only used to store contact information

Easy to use QuickBooks CRM software that supports marketing, sales, accounts, and customer support is used for a plethora of activities. Therefore, when you bring a Converged CRM like ConvergeHub into the picture, the list of processes that can be automated with best CRM for QuickBooks online grows exponentially, which include:

  • Billing and Invoicing
  • Email marketing
  • Drag and drop landing page and web form creation
  • Multichannel campaigning
  • Lead generation and lead scoring
  • Online appointment scheduling
  • Creating advanced metrics and analysis to drive data-driven decisions
  • Creating eDocs and electronic signatures
  • Advanced telephony for streamlined sales calling
  • Helpdesk and customer support automation
  • Social CRM and social listening capabilities
  • Creating project management workflows
  • And much more

  1. CRM for sales will not integrate with my other systems

This is absolutely a myth in the present times, since on the contrary most CRM solutions like ConvergeHub are sold as SaaS (software-as-a-Service) systems.
This means, most cloud based CRM have open APIs, which lets you integrate almost any third-party applications like QuickBooks and others that you want with your easy to use CRM.

These integrations opens the door for the users to complete most complicated tasks using the right plugin and API, like accounting, invoicing, billing, and creating eSignatures, and others, without having to leave the CRM. Modern CRM solutions, not only allows you to integrate billing and invoicing apps like QuickBooks, but also combine emailing, telephony, social media apps, and others with the CRM platform.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the legacy CRM software of the late 90’s and the early 2000s are gone and obsolete in 2018.
As most customer relationship management software solutions like ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM live in the cloud, they are extremely cost-effective, and highly intuitive that empowers your business to be more competitive in your field, which in turn increases productivity while decreasing costs, and enables your sales teams to spend more time closing deals.

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The Ultimate Benefits Of Keeping A Centralized and Clean CRM Database

Still, in the present times, there are many businesses that maintain different databases for their customers and thereby often find it becoming a nuisance to keep everything well managed and synchronized. Exporting data from one software platform to another and trying hard to resolve dependencies and conflicts can become really cumbersome, especially when you are dealing with a very large amount of data. Therefore, it is recommended that you should practice keeping one centralized database, a repository to maintain all your useful data, as we find in a CRM database. Here is how a central database can help you in making your business operations more efficient in the long haul.

Still, in the present times, there are many businesses that maintain different databases for their customers and thereby often find it becoming a nuisance to keep everything well managed and synchronized. Exporting data from one software platform to another and trying hard to resolve dependencies and conflicts can become really cumbersome, especially when you are dealing with a very large amount of data. Therefore, it is recommended that you should practice keeping one centralized database, a repository to maintain all your useful data, as we find in a CRM database.

Here is how a central database can help you in making your business operations more efficient in the long haul.

Bad data sources result in 30% of all leads failing- Cyber Sphere(2017) Click To Tweet

Inbound marketing strategies have altered the fate of hundreds of business establishments (for the better) all across the globe. However, this is also true, that not all the leads generated are useful. Moreover, in addition to your prospective leads and customers, you will also find many competitors filling out your forms, just to find the feel of your services and eventually try to bulwark a way into your customer database in your online lead management software system.

Additionally, vendors those who have the singular objective of promoting your company something may also break into your CRM database and remain there without ever thinking of being your customer.

Therefore, over a span of time, if you do not periodically clean your customer database, it will eventually accumulate unsought for data that can become a problem in the long haul.

Here are a few steps that you can take in the attempt to make your CRM database cleaner and therefore more optimized.

  1. Delete Inactive Contacts

Implementing an easy to use CRM solution is indeed a step in the right direction, however, in order to maximize upon customer relationships, and productivity, you should always keep a tab on your customer database in CRM. Contacts, that have remained inactive and silent for an extended period of time should be essentially pruned, if and when it is viable to delete their records. Since, hopelessly following leads that are clearly not interested in your offerings can be very damaging for your company’s reputation over time.

  1. Identify Duplicates

Your marketing database software is the golden key to your company’s success, and that is why it needs to be kept clean and efficient at all times. Therefore, it is most needed that you must ensure that every single duplicate identification is removed from your CRM database. It is a common fact that as soon as your business grows and gains a reputation, it is inevitable that duplicate information will start piling up in your customer database in CRM.

Therefore, it is advisable that you must run a periodic check on your CRM database to find and remove duplicate entries or scrutinize both the lead and customer records and after finding out which entry has better information, merge both the records for optimal performance of your customer relationship software system.

  1. Set Up Alerts

Any good easy to use CRM database software allows its user to set up alerts that trigger when certain actions take place so that you keep everything under check. For example, with ConvergeHub CRM you can use time-saving tools like “Manage Duplicates” and “Merge Duplicates” that can prove to be essential in a scenario where two customers or leads have the same name, last name but different phone numbers or emails.

  1. Uniformity Is Key

A CRM database cannot remain clean if uniformity is not maintained- and by no means is it a child’s play. For an example, let us assume that you allow your leads to type their country where they reside instead of allowing them to choose from a drop-down list. In this case you will eventually find a lot of inconsistency in your database, as people hailing from the United States of America, will provide you entries like “USA”, “US”, “U.S.A”, “U.S” and others which will be a sucker blow to your CRM database’s uniformity that can only be rectified by manual correction of data.

  1. Say No-No to Junk Contacts

Your CRM database will inevitably have anonymous leads that will enter fake email addresses like asdfglkjh@gmail.com or blahblah1234@hotmail.com. These junk lead data often pollutes the CRM database, which a good CRM software can run a search and identify and thereafter remove or suspend the information from the online lead management system.

  1. Monitor Email Campaign Results/Feedback

Lastly, it is also recommended that you should keep a close watch on your email campaign’s results and look for opt-outs and, bounced emails. Because based on your findings and observations, you can clean your CRM database after every email campaign is fired for optimal utilization of the resources in your CRM database.

Now that we have learned how to keep a CRM database clean, let us talk about some of the tangible benefits of why you must do so, and what payback a clean CRM database can offer for the growth of your business.

  • Cut Costs

One of the most pertinent benefits of having a clean CRM database is that it saves your business a lot of money. No one wants to send emails to addresses that do not even exist. Therefore, when you run a periodic check on your CRM database to maintain a clean repository, your email list delivers positive results.

  • Precise campaign stats

If your contact database in CRM contains erroneous email addresses, several emails that you send will never be opened, or engaged, which as a result will never be able to paint an accurate result of email campaign’s statistics or your marketing efforts. Whereby, a clean database in CRM, which is devoid of any unwanted lead and customer records, will go a long way in ensuring that your campaign stats are authentic and thereby help you to create your business strategies accordingly.

  • Sender reputation protection

Spam complains, and bounce rates determine how good your reputation is as a sender of your emails, which plays an important factor in email deliverability. Therefore, keeping a clean CRM database ensures that your sender reputation remains protected and trusted by email marketing services.

  • Elevate Revenue And Conversion Rates

Finally, a clean CRM database helps in avoiding a bad sender reputation whereby the chances of emails being placed in the spam folder (instead of the inbox) more frequently is reduced to a lot extent. Therefore a clean database, which engages people, is bound to increases conversion rates and thereby revenue which is the bottom-line for the growth of any business today.

Conclusion

Therefore, implementing an easy to use CRM system, which ensures that the customer database in CRM remains devoid and clean of any unwanted errors can be a real asset to the organization. A Converged CRM like ConvergeHub can easily bring an end to all data management worries as ConvergeHub is the one-stop-solution for online lead management that can save your resources by targeting the most deserving leads.

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