Year: 2018

ConvergeHub wins 2018 Rising Star Award for CRM Software from FinancesOnline Directory

2018 is shaping up to be a great year here at ConvergeHub. We’re all incredibly proud to announce that ConvergeHub has earned the prestigious 2018 Rising Star Award from FinancesOnline, one of the most respected and popular business software review platform. According to FinancesOnline, this award is given to SaaS products that “are currently getting very good traction with the customers and are viewed as a service that’s really efficient for solving problems users face now.”

2018 is shaping up to be a great year here at ConvergeHub. We’re all incredibly proud to announce that ConvergeHub has earned the prestigious 2018 Rising Star Award from FinancesOnline, one of the most respected and popular business software review platform. According to FinancesOnline, this award is given to SaaS products that “are currently getting very good traction with the customers and are viewed as a service that’s really efficient for solving problems users face now.”

For being an easy to use CRM software for managing one’s entire customer relationship processes, ConvergeHub also received the 2018 Great User Experience Award from FinancesOnline. “This award is granted to products that offer especially good user experience,” and with User satisfaction rating currently at 100%, ConvergeHub certainly qualified.

While evaluating ConvergeHub for the 2018 Rising Star Award and 2018 Great User Experience Award, FinancesOnline’s team of experienced software analysts reviewed and compared ConvergeHub against its competitors using a set of specific evaluation criteria.

ConvergeHub was also chosen by Finances Online as one of the top 5 CRM software for small business in 2018.

According to their review, here are some of the reasons that make “ConvergeHub a special CRM solution compared to its competition”:

  • Single platform to manage all customer-facing business functions. Manage all sales, marketing, customer service and billing from one software.
  • Workflow Automation that enables businesses to automate a major part of their sales, marketing and customer service tasks and save time and resources.
  • Easily customizable application that allows businesses to customize and adapt to their own unique processes and requirements without requiring any technical wizardry.
  • Friendly and intuitive user interface that allows quick adoption without a steep learning curve.
  • Drip marketing campaigns that automate follow-ups and user engagement
  • Multi-channel marketing and customer engagement through email, voice, SMS, fax, online and social
  • Easy assignment and management of support tickets that lead to quick resolution and high customer satisfaction
  • Project management to take care of tasks, subtasks, milestone, deadlines and resources

B2B software experts from FinancesOnline also commented that “Basically, ConvergeHub lets businesses take control of their Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Collaboration activities from a single source point.”

And finally, they wrapped up their overview with the statement “Unlike other CRM applications where businesses get trapped within unnecessary features and functionalities, ConvergeHub offers an intuitive graphical user interface that involves an easy and smooth flow of control of actions.”

The entire ConvergeHub team is proud of what we have built so far, and we’re humbled by FinancesOnline’s recognition of our efforts as an efficient CRM software for small business. The 2018 Rising Star and 2018 Great User Experience Awards serve as acknowledgement that we are on the right track to help our customers grow their businesses.

We will continue with our efforts to serve our customers with the best software and friendly service and we can’t wait show you more awesome features we’re building!

Thank you for your support.

Reasons to Stop Using Your Inbox as a To-Do List and adopt an Easy to Use CRM

Even after using an easy to use CRM software, whether we admit it or not, using our email’s inbox can be addictive. After all, checking an email is as uncomplicated as refreshing a web browser or tapping on an app. Checking emails gives us the hope that our aspirations will be realized soon. Be it for an exciting business opportunity waiting for a reply, or an update on your shopping cart list etc. Nevertheless, keeping the addiction aside, email inbox, in reality, makes an awful to-do list. Unfortunately, there are still several business organizations those that use email to structure their day-to-day works. In spite of, the prevalence of affordable project management apps, there are many among us those that just cannot break free from the age-old shackles of email.

Even after using an easy to use CRM software, whether we admit it or not, using our email’s inbox can be addictive.

After all, checking an email is as uncomplicated as refreshing a web browser or tapping on an app. Checking emails gives us the hope that our aspirations will be realized soon. Be it for an exciting business opportunity waiting for a reply, or an update on your shopping cart list, etc.

CRM almost makes everyone in your organisation a sales person, since they are selling your business in one way or another. Click To Tweet

Nevertheless, keeping the addiction aside, email inbox, in reality, makes an awful to-do list. Unfortunately, there are still several business organizations those that use email to structure their day-to-day works.
In spite of, the prevalence of affordable project management apps, there are many among us those that just cannot break free from the age-old shackles of email.

In this article, we shall discuss a few reasons as to why you should discontinue using your email inbox and instead use the best small and medium business CRM software to manage your new to-do list:

Your Inbox Does Not Worry About Importance

As a small or medium business owner in a typical day’s work, you need to pitch new clients, deal with employee issues, develop game-changing marketing and support strategies, and others. With so much on your plate, you surely cannot afford to lose time and waste your work hours on non-value-adding tasks.
However, all these being said, why do you then spend so much time hunting between emails? Granted that it is truly impossible to make out when a vital email will arrive, keeping a close watch on your email’s inbox indeed makes sense from this standpoint. Nevertheless, we can wager that more than 90% of the emails that you receive every day are far less than important.  Mostly your inbox gets a lot of stuff like these:

  • Promotional emails from your vendors
  • Industry newsletters
  • Emails from sales reps, who want to sell you things
  • Low-priority requests from employees, vendors, or clients
  • Social media alerts and others

Additionally, your email’s inbox does not put the most important task related emails at the top, and therefore, important request sinks down into obscurity as additional emails arrive every day.

Surely, you can keep the pace by archiving or deleting unimportant emails. However, is this the best use of your precious time? Probably not.

You Cannot Mark an Email as “Done”

Let us take for granted that you have somehow even managed to devise a process by which only “important” emails make it to the inbox. For this, you have unsubscribed all non-essential emails, have set filters to auto-forward any business emails to your assistant, and have convinced your customers and team members to reach you out sparingly.

However is your email inbox the perfect to-do list now- we still assume it is not so much.

To illustrate this point, let us guess you have the following emails anticipating your attention:

Email Subject: Finish Slide Deck for next week’s presentation

Email Subject: Select a venue for your company’s vendor meeting

Email Subject: Please Sign Up for ConvergeHub 14 Day’s free trial

Being an efficient businessperson, you may be able to complete all these tasks within an hour. However, sadly your all these three tasks are still in your inbox. What should you do with them now? Delete them? Move them to another folder? Do you need to answer to each person, indicating that your job has been done?

Would not it be nice if you can just mark your tasks as ‘done’ and move on with your work? Sadly, emails do not work that way.

Delegation is Messy

 

To include another layer of complication, not every chore fits precisely into a single email exchange tread.

For an example, let us take up this subjected email “Select a venue for your company’s vendor meeting”. Now, what seems like a relatively straightforward decision can very fast evolve into several separate email threads. Shortly after sending your email for approval, you can receive dozens of added emails from coordinating staffs at the venue. Even their accounts department may need you to make an advance payment by the close of your day’s businesses. You can receive a 20-page PDF document, containing all kinds of menu options, information on sitting arrangements, and other important details.

Will it not be more productive for you if you can allocate all these different tasks to some other members in your company? Nevertheless, here lies the lacunae of using an email inbox, since delegating tasks from your inbox can be really messy.

In the modern times, you virtual assistant may not take much time to forward messages to your marketing and accounting department, however, the problem is there is no guarantee that your staffs will remember to follow up on the issue, as their inbox is also overflowing with tasks. Therefore, using the inbox of your email, you have no way to check whether your delegated job has been accomplished within the deadlines.

There Is a Software Designed Specifically For Organizing Your To-Dos

By now, you must be agreeing with us that your inbox is indeed letting you down.

However, there is good news, as we alluded on the beginning of this post; there are several online SaaS platforms that can structure your company’s works. ConvergeHub CRM, which is best known for its sales management tasks, also provides a suite of integrated business productivity tools.

Let us find how this best small business CRM software can solve many of your headaches right away.

Sequencing important tasks: Unlike your email inbox, ConvergeHub brings clarity to your most important tasks. Using this easy to use CRM software, you can assign due date, the priority of the job, completion report, and status update of your important tasks with just a few clicks.

Tracking completed tasks: Tasks tracking best CRM for small business like ConvergeHub, will also fulfill your desire to check tasks off your to-do list. Using this customer information database software marking any task as “Done” is as easy as clicking a button on your computer or mobile screen.

Delegating tasks to others: Getting all the members of your organization working in sales, marketing, support and even finance departments into ConvergeHub, can be really beneficial for your company. Rather than delegating works from your email inbox, this convergence CRM provides a more structured workflow. Using this easy to use CRM software you can create tasks to occur on a repeated or single-time basis, which makes the very act of delegating your works more efficient.
To start assigning jobs to your other employees, just select the correct team member’s name from an intuitive drop-down in the CRM and connect the task to a larger project.

You can also add detailed notes as you allocate your jobs, to ensure that your teams find no more excuses.

Connecting Sales and To-Dos: For added context on sales and marketing related tasks, you can seamlessly link items to opportunities in your sales funnel. With just a click or two using an easy to CRM software, your team can have access to information that would have otherwise resided only in your mind.

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Takeaway:

Leadership comes from the top, so by continuing to rely on email inbox dependent processes, you are just telling your employees to do likewise.

Therefore, take a bold step now and find a better approach to streamline your tasks for enhanced productivity.

Doing this you can be sure that your team will thank you- and so will your bottom-line.

Reasons Why Easy To Use CRM Software Help To Amplify Small and Medium Businesses

When evaluating any software for business, we always want to accomplish the most out of the application, so that we do not end up with the necessity of implementing and accessing multiple software. Our elementary goal of using any software for business is to consolidate processes, business intelligence, and data into a single application, which can either by itself or through integrations, create efficiencies previously unknown. An easy to use CRM software is commonly this solution, which once adopted successfully becomes the nucleus of an organization. So, exactly how does easy to use CRM platform amplify your business? Well, there are hundreds of real-world examples to pull from but here are our top 5 to consider.

When evaluating any software for business, we always want to accomplish the most out of the application, so that we do not end up with the necessity of implementing and accessing multiple software. Our elementary goal of using any software for business is to consolidate processes, business intelligence, and data into a single application, which can either by itself or through integrations, create efficiencies previously unknown.
An easy to use CRM software is commonly this solution, which once adopted successfully becomes the nucleus of an organization.

So, exactly how does easy to use CRM platform amplify your business?

80% of all sales, occur after approximately 5 followups- Gartner Click To Tweet

Well, there are hundreds of real-world examples to pull from but here are our top 5 to consider:

 #1. Understanding the Client Relationship

If you are an owner of an SME (Small and Medium Enterprise), you will always consider the best small and medium business CRM for your business that integrates well with the emailing, documentation, and financial software of your organization. Per say, since QuickBooks is the most popular accounting software for businesses in the U.S. customer relationship management software that allow QuickBooks CRM integration free help to find an instant snapshot of client relationship lifecycles. Using a QuickBooks CRM , you can easily see in one centralized location, what your customers have purchased, when they purchased, how often they purchase, or if they faced any problem while purchasing your products or services. Easy to use CRM software records every touch in the client management processes.

#2. Easy Collaboration

 

When we have an online lead management software solution like an easy to use CRM it becomes simple for anyone in your company to have an access to specific information at a moment’s notice. Since most best CRM for small business is located in the Cloud, anyone in your organization (at any time, and from anywhere) can find access to their desired information, provide feedback, make additions to the CRM database and more. Cloud based CRM systems ensure real-time data and allow seamless collaboration among employees.

#3. Easily Manage and Maintain Tasks

When running a business organization it is most essential to have a clear visibility of what tasks has been completed and jobs that remained outstanding. Using the best small and medium business CRM software like ConvergeHub, you can easily view your progress reports as well as notes contained within the customer database in CRM.
This CRM database is updated instantaneously; hence, there is no need for making second guesses if you are wasting time, resources, or money on tasks that have already been completed. Easy to use CRM software even provides visibility into bottlenecks that needs immediate attention for resolving the issues.

#4. Track KPIs

Key Performance Indicators or KPI can be tracked within the best CRM for small business as the data is pulled from the CRM database. With the help of this data, you can easily evaluate the health of your business by viewing the key performance indicators, which include:

  • Monthly number of unconverted leads
  • Sales conversions to leads
  • Email click-through rate
  • Email response rate
  • Number of lost opportunities
  • Funnel drop off rates
  • Average collection period
  • Number of complaints per month
  • Installation problems per unit sales
  • Time to first call response
  • Time to complete problem resolution
  • On-time delivery
  • Average time to problem resolution
  • Cost per call
  • Call length
  • The volume of calls handled
  • Number of customer complaints
  • The volume of calls handled
  • Customer ratings of service
  • Number of escalations and others

You can also view extended KPIs using easy to use CRM software like:

  • Average customer retention period
  • Average time to last follow-up (sales)
  • Customer attrition rate
  • Average customer lifetime value (by using a CLM CRM)
  • Post sales per unit sold
  • Average profit per customer
  • Survey ratings
  • Upsell revenues etc.

Therefore, while CRM software helps to keep track of all your touch points with the customers, KPIs are measurement benchmarks you can use to assure your product and service delivery remains consistent.

#5. Improve Sales Conversions

Finally, if you are looking to amplify your business, increasing revenue should always remain at the top of your list. When working with an easy to use CRM software, you can increase sales as more data on the client gets tracked and tasks that your employees would have to perform manually gets automated, providing sales reps more time to focus on what they do best- Sales.

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According to a report by Gartner 80% of all sales, occur after approximately 5 follow-ups. A QuickBooks CRM for sales teams , not only helps the sales reps by showing previous purchase and transaction histories of the prospects and customers, but it also makes sure to remind your sales team of all the necessary touches and therefore an easy to use CRM does not let any appointment fall through the crack.

5 Time-Saving Ways To Use Your Easy To Use CRM For So Much More Than Just Sales

Your easy to use CRM can do tasks greater than just monitoring and managing sales. For most, typically you would use your easy to use CRM tool to manage your sales activities. Nevertheless, you should not just think of your small and medium business CRM as a tool designed for daily monitoring of your prospects and leads. There are so many ways you can use your best small and medium business CRM software! Therefore, whether you are looking for competition tracking, accounting and bookkeeping, HR support, or even any task as uncomplicated as making a content calendar- a proper CRM system can carry out all these jobs for you and more.

Your easy to use CRM can do tasks greater than just monitoring and managing sales.

For most, typically you would use your easy to use CRM tool to manage your sales activities. Nevertheless, you should not just think of your small and medium business CRM as a tool designed for daily monitoring of your prospects and leads.

CRM applications can help increase sales by up to 29%, sales productivity by up to 34% and sales forecast accuracy by 42%.- Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

There are so many ways you can use your best small and medium business CRM software!

Therefore, whether you are looking for competition tracking, accounting and bookkeeping, HR support, or even any task as uncomplicated as making a content calendar- a proper CRM system can carry out all these jobs for you and more.

Here are 5 other ways to use your CRM system to help you automate time-taking manual works.

#1. Integrate Email Marketing Processes

Any monotonous email marketing task can be automated and enhanced with the help of CRM platform. You can use an easy to use CRM like ConvergeHub to gauge the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Here is a snapshot of what you can do:

  • Fully sync your inbox to any major email provider
  • Send emails to your contacts directly from ConvergeHub, which will then be synced back to your inbox
  • Use customizable templates to save work time preparing recurring communications
  • Look at a specific deal or contact and see all emails associated with that deal or person at-a-glance

#2. Account Management

 

There are many who think that they can only track their primary preliminary sales in the CRM, but you can also use your small and medium business CRM software to up-sell or create stronger relationships with your customers over time.

Remember your job is not done once you make a sale or sign a deal. Churn is the enemy of sustainable growth in any organization. Therefore, you must use your CRM software to handle the customer’s complete buyer journey, to aid you in growing higher revenue per customer and keep up that ever-necessary average-lifetime-value of your purchasers over time.

#3. Accounting and Bookkeeping

By integrating QuickBooks Online with your best small and medium business CRM software you can use your CRM for allowing your employees to create new transactions (such as sales orders, estimates, invoices, and payments) in your CRM- without requiring direct access to an accounting software like QuickBooks.

QuickBooks CRM like ConvergeHub helps you to find a measurable increase in convenience, efficiency, and productivity, whereby users can view any customer payment status and history within the CRM platform.

Moreover, by creating QuickBooks CRM integration free with your CRM software you can get rid of dual data entry by linking payments, invoices, and estimates to opportunities, customer contacts, or projects.

#4. Deal and Commission Tracking

If you are using Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, which is customized for Alternative Funding industry, you can track deals from leads to underwriting, through collection. Support refinancing of existing funded deals and syndication of deals with individual investors and other funders.

Additionally, you can also administer commission payout to brokers and other funding companies. Easily compare scheduled amounts to settled amounts both within your organization and with external sources.

#5. Create and Store Files

Many CRM systems like ConvergeHub and others can create, organize, and store files for things like applications, contacts, briefs, and more.

Once these documentations are in your easy to use CRM, you can easily categorize and thereafter use them to suit your marketing, sales, and support processes. Storing files in the CRM help find any of the documents quickly without trawling through your computer or depending on your email service provider’s basic filing system.

Conclusion

This entire article is dedicated to helping you learn how you can make your easy to use CRM software your new virtual assistant since there are plenty of practical ideas to inspire you to use your customer relationship management software in more innovative ways.

Per say any business procedure that needs a well-thought-out series of actions, and steps can be managed and automated with ConvergeHub CRM.

Therefore, whatever be your business necessities, CRM is a tool that will be able to help you in making all areas of your business operations more proficient.

Just remember, your best small and medium business CRM software is not only for sales, but almost every department in your company can benefit from it.

However, the question is- are you making the most out of your best small business CRM?

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Sales (do not) hate an easy to use CRM- Yet why they do not want to use it?

If you are deciding on implementing easy to use CRM software for your small or medium business, chances are you had come across several blogs, articles, and statistical reports discussing the various reasons why even the best small and medium business CRM software implementation fails. Nevertheless, easy to use CRM solution is one of the most crowded markets and even a competitive one, with more than 100 vendors in the race. Moreover, Gartner’s prediction on this market being a $36 Billion market in 2017, only prove that Customer Relationship Management solutions are going to continue growing even in the long run, as relationships with the customers will always remain critical to the future of any business.

If you are deciding on implementing easy to use CRM software for your small or medium business, chances are you had come across several blogs, articles, and statistical reports discussing the various reasons why even the best small and medium business CRM software implementation fails.

Some of these myriad reasons are so common, that you can find them in almost all discussions, like:

“We do not want to learn another business tool.”

“CRM is just too complex.”

“Our sales teams just do not want to use it.”

Now, let us be pragmatic. Nobody likes using software applications that are complex, which slows us down, or are difficult to get started with. None has patience in this modern world anymore. Especially salespersons, those who are always pressed for time and therefore perceive the idea of using another tool to manage their work, as an unhappy means to monitor their performance and change their work routine.

91% of SME with over 11 employees now use SaaS CRM platform- BuyerZone Click To Tweet

This is exactly the reason there are so many writing on the Internet that talks about salespeople hating to use even an easy to use CRM.

But do they?

Easy to use CRM solution is one of the most crowded markets and even a competitive one, with more than 100 vendors in the race. Moreover, Gartner’s prediction on this market being a $36 Billion market in 2017, only prove that Customer Relationship Management solutions are going to continue growing even in the long run, as relationships with the customers will always remain critical to the future of any business.

Additionally statistics like the increase in CRM usage from 56% to 74% (an 18% jump) in small and medium businesses, only proves that CRM adoption in SME companies has not slowed down between 2016 and 2017, and shall grow even higher in the years to come.

Dividing these stats even further in terms of the number of staffs in a company it has been noted that 91% of SME with over 11 employees use small and medium business CRM software, while 50% of companies with less than 10 employees even use an easy to use CRM.

These stats are enough to make us think positively that salespeople probably do not actually have an apathy in using CRM software – not anymore.

Not if they use the best small and medium business CRM software, like ConvergeHub that helps sales reps to prospect better, follow their potential opportunities and track sales conversations, never let them miss a task or appointment, and at the end, boost their overall growth and productivity.

Per say using an easy to use CRM software is faster than searching through a pile of old business cards, hunting though fading sticky notes, updating spreadsheets or trying to turning your memory into a high-speed computing system.

Even another statistics on an interesting study done by Gartner shows that a well-implemented small and medium business CRM application can increase a business’s revenue by 41% per salesperson. – that indeed sounds promising.

Why sales reps will not use CRM

The decision to adopt CRM or change an existing customer relationship software usually comes from the top brasses in the company, because there are process and budget involved while implementing it. Most of the time the management of any small or medium business ends up choosing a SaaS CRM that is either well-known in the market, or one that provides insights on the sales trends or helps monitor sales performance to aid the management structure a better sales strategy- an application that is not apparently helpful for any sales rep.

This chosen CRM can involve a lot of customization to get up and running and there can be an even longer learning curve to coach the entire team and get them onboard.

Salespersons do not really have a say in this CRM adoption’s decision-making process, while at the end, all they are forced to do is to update the CRM platform so that the management can generate insightful and complex reports.

The hard fact is that traditional CRMs are dead, in these modern times. For on its own, legacy CRM software neither automate all that much nor does it provides the required context needed for effective selling.

Therefore, ever burdened with targets, sales reps sooner or later start looking for sales productivity tools that can help them make sales. Mostly, these sales tools come with an expensive price tag, and so businesses eventually start spending on multiple sales applications, and at the same time jeopardize sales productivity- by making the sales reps waste their time juggling between these tools.

Just think of, nobody forces salespersons to use phone and emails. Since, sales reps are naturally aware that it aids them to get in contact with their prospects, build connections with their leads, and eventually make sales.

This is exactly how a CRM software should be. Easy to use CRM needs to be smart, provide invaluable insights to the sales reps, which should eventually help the sales team to sell more in less time.

An ideal easy to use CRM should remind the reps of what they should be doing, help them to recall their last conversations with the customers and provide a ‘history’ with the customers, which include:

  • Communication
  • Issues
  • Wins

After all, the secret of success in sales is working with people, and an easy to use CRM software should act as an essential sidekick for the sales team.

So here is what we say to all sales reps out their- if you are using a CRM software that is not helping you to get better at your skills and make more sale, but is just there to measure your tasks, you should never accept it.

Yes, you should never use a CRM, which is not built for you, and hence it is not in a position to help you sell.

Here it leads us to the crucial question, which CRM software should small and medium businesses put their funds on?

Investing your money in the right pot

This is the age of value selling. The customer does not like to be sold, rather they prefer to work with someone who can help them to accomplish their objectives and goals, and, sales is just the result of good help offered to the leads.

Therefore, sales teams always have to remain equipped with the right insights, about their prospect’s expectations and goals, so that they can offer the right help and value to the customers.

Sales need an easy to use CRM system, like ConvergeHub, which is designed with them in mind. A CRM software, which is not only simple but also intuitive. After all, when the sales teams are happy and have the necessary tools to increase their productivity, the management will be happy with profits rolling in.

Here are some factors to look out for when selecting the best small and medium business CRM software:

#1. One with less data entry

Sales reps hate manual data entry. They abhor typing the same email repeatedly, filling up endless forms, updating profiles in multiple systems, saving emails from the inbox folder to CRM and creating reports. According to a Forrester data, sales reps spend just a little over 35.9% of their work hours selling, while the rest is consumed by these menial tasks.

Therefore, your easy to use CRM software should be able to automate most of these time-wasting activities so that the sales reps can focus on what they do best- Sales.

#2. Communication tools within the CRM

Sales and marketing practically live within their system’s inbox. So why not purchase an easy to use CRM software that brings the inbox into the CRM. This way all sales reps will find complete control to access the customer’s data along with all the sales conversations from the CRM, which will aid them in nurturing their prospects more efficiently.

#3. Help add value to conversations

In 2015 in an interesting report published by Forrester, titled “Death of the B2B Salesman” (after Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949), brought to light one useful piece of information- sales reps those who provide value-added information becomes more important to their prospects and customers over time.

Hence, your easy to use CRM should be equipped with advanced features that cater to essential context, which includes:

  • Insights on the customer’s buying process
  • Interaction with your emails
  • Experience with your product or solution

That will make your sales team members better prepared to provide a valuable experience to the prospects and customers on their next sales call.

#4. Easy to get started and use

Save yourself and your sales teams from languishing in utter frustration by choosing a small and medium business CRM that is quick to configure, aids in seamlessly migration of any form of data (without help of a consultant), easily adapts to your existing sales processes, and most essentially one that does not call for endless hours of training.

Always make sure that your easy to use CRM integrates with all your existing tools like project management, customer support, marketing automation and so on.

#5. Scalability

Your business may be very small now, but this not how it is going to stay after a few years. You might triple your sales team, invest substantially more in marketing activities, and generate more leads. Therefore, make sure that you buy a CRM that is scalable in the end and is fit to grow along with your company.

Conclusion

Let us face it. Sales hate changes, which can disrupt their productivity. Hence, for once give the baton to your sales team, by making them a part of your CRM buying decision making process, and let them decide which easy to use CRM would work best for them.

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You can remain sure, once the members of your sales team select a CRM, they would not want to switch to another business management software for a long, long time.

Ways Invoicing Can Improve Business Processes and Customer Service with QuickBooks CRM

As businesses grow and expands, billing becomes more time-consuming and complex. This is where companies can resort to end-to-end invoicing and billing solutions. Specialized technology providers such as QuickBooks CRM integration for free not only offers automated solutions for generation of invoices, but it also helps in customer intimation, and the billing processes. In reality, easy to use CRM software, simply adds an extra layer of analysis to the entire invoicing and billing process. In general, invoices and bills are not considered as a part of the communication process with the customers and are hence not analyzed. However when invoice data gets automatically store in the CRM database after being integrated with an accounting software like QuickBooks, this can be a great starting point for studying purchase and payment behaviors of the customers for cross-selling and up-selling of products and services by relying on QuickBooks CRM or the best CRM software for QuickBooks.

Even if you have not heard about QuickBooks CRM, you must be aware of these expressions:

“Our Customer is the King.”

“We do not consider customer satisfaction. We believe in customer delight.”

“Our customer is at the center of our business model.”

You surely must have heard many of these sayings, or have read them in the annual letter to the investors. Since there are many executives who like to associate themselves with the team of customer-friendly business leaders.
However, this is also true that according to Shep Hyken (a renowned Forbes contributor) businesses lose as much as $65 billion every year because of inefficient customer service.

There are many who think that customer service is all about sending that extra email to receive feedback or assure customers with certain additional discounts. However, in reality, that is not even close to quality customer service, which only happens when communication between a brand and its consumers is such that the consumers completely feels satisfied with the value that they get from their purchases when they compare it with the value they paid for buying that product or service.

Businesses lose as much as $65 billion every year because of inefficient customer service- Shep Hyken Click To Tweet

This implies that every minuscule of conversation and communication that occurred between the brand and the consumer should have just one core focus- to provide the consumers with a positive perception of the value received by the customer.

The communication between a company and its consumers begins with the marketing channels, and then graduates to sales and winds-up as a bill sent to the customer, ending the loop until the next time. This makes billing and invoicing a vital aspect of the communication process. Still it is astonishing to see that despite the advanced business models of the present times; many establishments still use primitive invoicing and billing technologies.

Nevertheless, if you do not want the communication loop with your customers to remain outdated, here are a few steps that you should consider to improve your billing and invoicing processes:

Use technologies like cloud computing and automation

Many small and even medium businesses still find using handwritten bills helpful instead of electronic ones. To the owners of these business establishments, this can seem to be a cheaper short-term option, although it can result in a negative effect on the long-term business goals of the company.

On the other hand, when online billing is used instead of handwritten ones by using QuickBooks CRM or a best CRM for QuickBooks online like ConvergeHub that seamlessly integrates an accounting and bookkeeping software with customer management system, both these platforms increases efficiency in the business process and even reduces costs and increases customer retention in the long run.

As businesses grow and expands, billing becomes more time consuming and complex. This is where companies can resort to end-to-end invoicing and billing solutions. Specialized technology providers such as QuickBooks CRM integration free not only offers automated solutions for generation of invoices, but it also helps in customer intimation, and the billing processes.

In reality, easy to use CRM software, simply adds an extra layer of analysis to the entire invoicing and billing process. In general, invoices and bills are not considered as a part of the communication process with the customers and are hence not analyzed. However when invoice data gets automatically store in the CRM database after being integrated with an accounting software like QuickBooks, this can be a great starting point for studying purchase and payment behaviors of the customers for cross-selling and up-selling of products and services by relying on QuickBooks CRM or the best CRM software for QuickBooks.

Maintain consistency

Consistency is an element that should be present in everything, like, the look of the invoices and bills, their format and the carrying effect of the bills. Per say, the format of the invoice and the bills, which refers to the branding, typography, the contact details; when they are uniform, it communicates to the customers that the company handles even the minutest of details with exceptional care.
Finally, by using a QuickBooks CRM, you can also bring uniformity of the carrying effect of the invoices and the bills, which means terms of payment and any other conditions present in the invoices and the bills, which are needed to be clearly laid down on each of these financial documentations of the company.

This consistency in invoicing and billing should be maintained for each and every leads, prospects and customers through all business processes, which by using a QuickBooks CRM make it easy to find relevant data and documents of the customers, when needed.

Establish a timeline

 

Most small and medium businesses have a standard rate at which accounts receivable are to be collected from the customers. However, how does a company puts special emphasis on its key accounts? Is it by providing its key accounts with a flexible timeline? Well then to put it into a perspective, a company must have a clear policy on the tenure on its accounts receivable laid out for its key customers. These timeline policies of accounts receivable should be explained in the details of the bills that the key customers receive. Customers who have been with the brand long enough to prove their reliability.

Treat your customers like humans and not just account numbers

When starting a fresh business relationship with your customers, make it amply clear that you have performed your due research on the new customer before setting up the payment terms, which can include extended credit lines or lump sum payments. Therefore, once you use an automated invoicing and billing system by using the best QuickBooks CRM for sales teams , like ConvergeHub, you can create a unique relationship with every customer that will be reflected on their payment terms.

Additionally by using a QuickBooks CRM, you can send a polite reminder to your customers by using its automation feature, if any customer misses their payment.

At the end of the day, you must always remember that your customers are human and so it is natural that they can make mistakes, just like everyone.

Use an invoice like marketing collateral

Billing is the last stage in the entire communication process with your customers. A bill shows the product or service provided, along with price, quantity, and taxes levied on the sale. Therefore, you can always use it as marketing collateral as well. A bill, in general, contains the all the essential information of your customers. Hence, you can leverage the bill as marketing collateral by putting a social button within it (once you generate an electronic bill by using QuickBooks CRM), which allows the bill to provide all the necessary closure to the entire sales process and your communications with the customer.

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7 Factors To Evaluate Merchant Cash Advance CRM For Financial Services

If you are in financial business, before making a decision as to which Merchant Cash Advance CRM software to go with, you need to consider a few factors that include: 360-degree view of the customer, Intelligent cross-selling/marketing campaigns, Tracking buying behavior, Auto alerts and reminders, Collaboration capabilities, Size and scope of your business, Integration with other systems.

If you are in financial business, before making a decision as to which Merchant Cash Advance CRM software to go with, you need to consider a few factors that include:

  1. 360-degree view of the customer
  2. Intelligent cross-selling/marketing campaigns
  3. Tracking buying behavior
  4. Auto alerts and reminders
  5. Collaboration capabilities
  6. Size and scope of your business
  7. Integration with other systems
There is currently $80 to $120 billion dollars worth of unmet funding needs among SMB, and MCA companies are in the best position to meet this demand.- Oguz Konar Click To Tweet

360 Degree View of the Customer

One of the primary factors to look at while adopting a customer relationship management software for cash advance business is what type of information the Merchant Cash Advance software can collect and display for each of your customers and if it is easily available around the clock. Moreover, you also need to find if the CRM solution can display a holistic view of the customer to all the stakeholders in your company, which can assure quick response in crucial circumstances.
When working for a cash advance industry in the financial sector, businesses need to collect a large amount of information of their customers for compliance and for serving the customers better in the longer run. So apart from tracking basic information such as name, address, and phone numbers, in alternative funding industry, you need to track other vital information and analytics, if you want to provide better service to your customers. For example, in cash advance business, you have to keep track of conversations you had with your customers about specific investments, their risk appetite, and goals. Storing this information in your Merchant Cash Advance CRM software allows alternative funding businesses to readily refer to these data before offering any advice and therefore helps in cross selling its products to its customer base.

Intelligent Cross Selling/Marketing Campaigns

Most of the easy to use CRM software allows the users to send customized marketing messages to their customers on the information collected and analyzed by the CRM platform. For example, if you are promoting cash advance, you can also scan through customers who are interested in mutual funds and bonds or looking for other investment opportunities, based on the discussion you had with them in the past.
At this point, Merchant Cash Advance CRM software can send out customized emails to each of your customers in the CRM database with pertinent verbiage using customized templates prebuilt in the software.
You can also send monthly newsletter related to various investment scenario and other key financial trends to any specific mailing list, using a mail-blaster from within the CRM.

Tracking Buying Behavior

Another functionality that you may want to look for in your MCA CRM solution for finance businesses, is the ability of the Merchant Cash Advance CRM software to track customer decisions and activities. For example, like most cash advance firms if your company is also selling small business loans and investment products to your customers, you need to keep track of what products or which loan each customer prefers and purchases from your financing organization. By tracking this data, you can create a profile for each customer and ascertain what type of investment or loan he or she likes. This way, when you have a new product available in your portfolio, you can easily select the list of customers that may be interested to purchase your new offerings. Tracking the customer’s past purchase decisions will provide you with an idea of how much they might be willing to invest in the future and the most appropriate product that you can offer to them, which might pique their interest.

Auto Alerts and Reminders

When choosing a Merchant Cash Advance CRM for your alternative funding industry business, you also need to find an easy to use CRM software that generates reminders on the basis of configurable settings. Like any other business, one of the most vital factors of being successful in the financial service industry is to develop relationships with your customers. Most Merchant Cash Advance CRM software like ConvergeHub and others nowadays incorporates exiting social networking features to help view comments, profile information, and mutual friends. It reminds you of important dates in your customer’s lives such as his or her birthday, anniversaries, and other, which can go a long way in helping you to grow your relationships. By using automation functionalities in the CRM, you can even program the software to automate mailing services to send birthday cards and other greetings to your customers.

Apart from this, you may approach a customer about a particular product that you want to sell and the customer tells you to check back after a fortnight. If you are using CRM software, you can easily input this data into the CRM program and set a reminder for the appropriate data and time, whereby you can get an alert a few hours before the scheduled task. Therefore equipped with all up-to-date information you can now call on the prospect, which increases your chances of winning the sale.

Collaboration between All Stakeholders

Depending on the size of your cash advance business, you may need to be able to collaborate with multiple partners, departments, and customers. If your MCA CRM solution offers the ability to allow multiple users to input and access information, this will not only boost synergy in your business but even help to serve your customers in an effective and efficient manner.

Ideal Business Size

Your business size also plays an impact on the type of Merchant Cash Advance CRM software you should implement. While in large alternative funding company, where scalability, integration, and processes are more demanding and complex than small and medium-sized businesses you may require on-premise CRM.
However, for small and medium cash advance firms, cloud-based CRM like ConvergeHub is more popular and effective as it considerably reduces cost and implementation time of the software.

Integration with Other Systems

Last but not the least, before choosing a Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, you must find out whether it integrates with other programs that you are currently using to store important customer and product related information.

For example, if your MCA CRM allows you to integrate with Google Calendar, Gmail, MS Outlook, DocuSign, QuickBooks, Box, Zapier, and other third-party software seamlessly it will help you to integrate your billing, call management, e-signature solution, and others, for a complete customer data and smarter selling.

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Takeaway

Therefore, in a gist CRM software, not only has the potential to improve user experience by making the marketing and sales processes easier and effective, but CLM CRM also helps in Customer Lifecycle Management to keep your customers coming back for more.

6 Things to Do Before You Buy Your Easy to Use ConvergeHub CRM for Yours SME

Getting your very first easy to use CRM software is a lot like getting your first automobile. You just cannot hop into it and go speeding around, you have to get a license plate first, buy insurance, buckle up your seat belt, adjust your rear mirror, check the controls and so on. Similarly, there are certain preparations you need to do before diving into a brand new company-wide software platform, which is your gateway for generating better sales volume by nurturing enhanced customer relationships.

Getting your very first easy to use CRM software is a lot like getting your first automobile. You just cannot hop into it and go speeding around, you have to get a license plate first, buy insurance, buckle up your seat belt, adjust your rear mirror, check the controls and so on. Similarly, there are certain preparations you need to do before diving into a brand new company-wide software platform, which is your gateway for generating better sales volume by nurturing enhanced customer relationships.

CRM software returns an average of $5.60 for every dollar spent. Click To Tweet

Small business CRMs are in vogue among SMEs, to put it mildly. In a recent CSO Insights research study, it has been found that 80% of sales organizations in small and medium businesses are now using best small business CRM software, which is nearly double the adoption rate that was a decade before. However, easy to use CRM usage does not just end with sales. Innumerable other verticals and niche markets from customer service to car wash companies are also adopting CRMs to track and manage their customer relationships.

Nevertheless, there yet remains a widely held belief that CRM initiatives are plagued by instability. If you look into the web, you will easily find that analysts quote precipitous fail rates for CRM software, which is as high as 68% in certain instances. Although these statistical findings are somewhat based on thin evidence, even partial accuracy would be a cause for such an alarm.

However, the truth be told, there are more than a few opportunities between purchasing a new easy to use CRM software and achieving successful returns on your investment.

So, how do you protect your investment in your best small business CRM software?

To do this, you need to create an environment that optimizes the value of your new customer relationship management system through impeccable preparation, effective use, and precise performance measurement of your CRM data.

For this do not forget to do these six most essential things before make your CRM go live in your business establishment.

#01. Consider the alternatives

Maybe you have already selected a specific brand for you are confident that it is the best small business CRM in the market. One that is ideal for your needs. Still, as a rain check, never sign a contract until you have considered other easy to use CRM solutions. The CRM market is notoriously competitive, which implies for every “best of breed” options, you are likely to find one or two more online lead management software systems with similar features and pricing.

#02. Create executive buy-in

Getting your leadership team on board with the new customer information database software or your CRM can have a great impact on its long-term success. However, it necessarily does not just mean getting your CFO to sign off on the purchase. What we mean over here is that you must sit down with your future stakeholders (CMO, Director of Sales, CIO/CTO, etc.) and let all of them unanimously agree on the business need for your new CRM and accept your game plan for the project.

According to us, the ideal way to build a business case is by showing your executives the value your best small and medium business CRM software will add to their respective departments.

For an example, best small business CRM is obviously a financial incentive, as it is a known fact that CRM software returns an average of $5.60 for every dollar spent.

#03. Negotiate a safe contract

Whether you are selecting an on-premise or an easy to use cloud-based CRM like ConvergeHub, most vendors will be willing to compromise on certain points. Your contact with the CRM company will serve as a map for your future and ongoing relationship with the vendor. Therefore, it is most important that you must read the fine prints on fees and pricing, CRM data ownership, renewal terms, updates and security measures laid by the vendor of your easy to use CRM. In case you find anything that unfairly favors the vendor, lay down your concerns. You should also ask for a copy of the SLA (Service Level Agreement), as the SLA will define your expectations for support and performance of your purchased system.

#04. Train your employees

End-user adoption is one of the most widespread and most exasperating reasons for the failure to launch a CRM initiative. According to a study done by Forrester, it has been revealed that 22% of the CRM adoption problems arise because of slow user adoption, unsuccessful training, and for challenges which lie in adapting to the new workflow. Therefore, your easy to use CRM software training program should focus on the value gains (e.g. automation, time saving features) of the new system. The length of the application training should be determined and measured by the CRM system’s complexity.

#05. Customize the software

Although a formal training is truly a top-down approach for proper adoption of your best small and medium business CRM software, however, you can balance the scales also by taking a bottom-up approach for the implementation of your online lead management software.

In other words, customize your new CRM software to match the user’s preferences. For example, is there a specific pipeline procedure your sales teams prefer? If it is so, recreate the process in your new easy to use CRM software.

Another important aspect of customization includes creating role-based access controls and integrating any third party programs (like QuickBooks Online for accounting, Dropbox for file sharing etc.) through the CRM provider’s API. All critical integrations should be set up and made alive before your CRM goes online.

#06. Establish a framework for evaluating ROI

The only assured way to find whether your easy to use customer information database software is failing is to carefully track the ROI (net gain as a percent of the overall cost). This is exactly where most businesses feel uncomfortable, as “cost” is much more complicated than the CRM’s price tag, and “net gain” is much more complex than revenue.

Therefore establish a baseline before your CRM implementation and then compare the new data against the previous baseline.

 Here are some metrics that you should consider while doing your calculations:

Total Cost

  • Upfront or subscription licensing
  • Vendor service and support fees (implementation, data migration, consulting, maintenance, etc.)
  • Paid upgrades
  • IT maintenance costs
  • Cost for adding/removing users

Net Gain

  • Overall revenue
  • Average revenue per sale/account
  • Number of new accounts
  • Cost and time savings from increased productivity
  • Cost savings per lead
  • Cost savings from increased customer retention

Takeaway

Setting up your first easy to use CRM software system can seem to be a daunting task, but this process depends more on the scale of your business’s needs than on any inherent complexity of your best small and medium business CRM software.

In fact, if your small business deploys a cloud-based CRM like ConvergeHub, it can be up and run in less than a day.

Just keep it in your mind, that the more planned your strategies are on the front end, the more value you will get out of your customer information database software on the back end.

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Missing Important Goals with your QuickBooks CRM for sales teams? Here Are the Sales Objectives You Need to Track

Building the perfect sales team is always the first priority and the highest challenge for any organization. Since, tracking your leads, customers, and prospects using the best QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, and measuring your sales metrics are close to redundant, if you do not have the right salespeople who are capable of using your sales process. The best sales managers in all organizations across the globe always understand the human inside the sales reps and trust in the spectrum of emotions involved in the day-to-day roles acted by their salespeople in the team.

Building the perfect sales team is always the first priority and the highest challenge for any organization. Since, tracking your leads, customers, and prospects using the best QuickBooks CRM for sales teams, and measuring your sales metrics are close to redundant, if you do not have the right salespeople who are capable of using your sales process.

The best sales managers in all organizations across the globe always understand the human inside the sales reps and trust in the spectrum of emotions involved in the day-to-day roles acted by their salespeople in the team.

Integrating QuickBooks and CRM helps your business deliver a better customer experience. Click To Tweet

We all know, each stage of the sales process comes with its own distinct challenges and anxieties that sales managers must factor in while making decisions around the sales metrics, which you want to track.

Therefore, even after using the best QuickBooks CRM making sure that you pick the right people for your business, which is of utmost importance. For, it is the personality, ability, and determinations of your employees, which are the most crucial factors that will directly determine the growth and success of your business.

Once you have the right salespeople in place and you are using the best CRM software for QuickBooks, it is up to the management to create the right environment for the people to thrive with the flexibility, opportunity, and support to perform what they do best.

In other words, the clarity around your employee’s performance, your expectations, and motivation are the main parameters that will deliver the arena your team needs to make the most out of their professional skills.

Simplifying your sales tracking and structure

You can never get the optimal performance out of your salespeople even if you are using the best small business CRM software if you are too bogged down with useless tracking.

According to a user of our Merchant Cash Advance CRM, stripping things down and getting back to the basics will always help you to create a simple sales process that aids your sales team focus on their primary objectives. This simplicity in the sales process should also combine with a powerful corporate ethos that you must communicate constantly. Therefore, keep reminding yours sales team to focus primarily on selling and make them find the assurance in your words that it is your task as an employee or a manager to make sure that the rest is taken care of.

However, it does not mean that you should neglect and ignore the CRM data you receive from your QuickBooks CRM or Merchant Cash Advance CRM software.

What is really implies, is that you need to expend your efforts focusing on what can really make a difference for your sales team and thereafter filter all the most important and actionable insights from your CRM software that integrates with QuickBooks.

Rather you need to refine your tracking and focus on a few (or just one) key metrics from your CRM data, at each stage of your sales process.

This will help your salespeople using your small business CRM from clogging their work with reporting and other administrative tasks.

Focus on the “Indicator” rather than the result

Once you are a user of QuickBooks CRM or a Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, you just cannot escape talking about KPIs, however, we too often ignore the real meaning of KPI- that it should not be viewed simply as a result.

KPIs are indicators of performances. Elements that should be taken into consideration to find a better understanding of how certain results are being achieved and how things can improve in the future to grow your business.

According to some of the veteran sales managers those who use our Merchant Cash Advance CRM, to them, they found that salespersons too often get obsessed with the result, rather than focusing on getting their process right.

Here is one of the most commonly used CRM metric in sales:

Wins

When we talk about wins, we specifically talk about closed deals against a monthly or quarterly quota.

Clearly wins in sales helps you to know how your team is performing in a broader sense, but nevertheless, this metric in your QuickBooks CRM or any other small business CRM software provides very little insights into the “Why”.

Wins are an outcome and not an indicator, for they can never tell what your sales reps can do differently or how you can optimize your sales process to achieve better results.

Therefore, knowing the number of wins is just a CRM data without any insights, since knowing the results does not help you drive more sales.

Sales metrics that you should focus on:

Therefore, these are certain sales metrics that you should be spending your time, which can measure what develops the action at each stage of the sales process, as opposed to simply focusing on the results.

  • The total quantity of deals in your sales funnel
  • The average size of the deal in your pipeline
  • Close ratio (Average percentage of the deals closed)
  • Sales velocity (Average time taken to close a deal)

Sales reporting of any small business CRM software provide a detailed look at every stage of your sales pipeline. As each of this reporting is generated automatically in the QuickBooks CRM, it becomes easy to visualize your sales process and pinpoint the areas, which requires immediate improvement.

Most best small business CRM like ConvergeHub QuickBooks CRM and MCA CRM software, allows visual display to view the above metrics that helps in simplifying the sales process, enabling you to proactively measure the performance of your sales team and make necessary changes as and when it is needed according to the nature of your business.

More specifically, you can evaluate the following sales metrics of your sales team:

  • Sales Pipeline Coverage
  • Opportunity Win Rate by individual sales reps
  • Historical Sales Cycle Velocity

What is Opportunity Win Rate?

Opportunity Win Rate details the percentage of the closed deals that were won.

Simply speaking, if you can increase this metric, you will be able to bring in more revenue for your business.

With this metric, you can:

  • Measure the impact of new business development initiatives
  • Look into sales strategies that you have implemented across customer segments
  • Compare the performance of different sales reps in your sales team

Most importantly, if you look at the different stages of your sales funnel and analyze where the opportunities are being lost for your sales reps individually, using a QuickBooks CRM software you can recommend training plans for them to improve their skills in certain areas, which include:

  • Rapport building
  • Improving product knowledge
  • Improving demo skills
  • Improving negotiation and closing skills

By deconstructing the sales funnel and having the CRM data in your hand, you can work with your sales reps on a personal level, to build their confidence and skills in their weakest areas of performance.

Remember to always think in this logical path:

  • Data
  • Analysis
  • Action

Working with your sales team using a QuickBooks CRM in this manner is more pertinent, pragmatic, and useful than merely tracking the number of dials, measuring talk times, or demos scheduled, and then asking your sales team to “do more”.

What is Sales Cycle Velocity?

Sales Cycle Velocity is the average time taken by your sales to win any deal. You can also measure the average time taken by your sales reps for individual stages in the sales process, which is termed as “duration in stage”.

Looking into the average historical sales cycle can help you to build a picture of the likelihood of closing your current deals and understand likely buyers and at-risk opportunities.

This metric can help your sales reps to understand which deals need their time and efforts.

Using this CRM data you can also create a weighted sales pipeline when forecasting (opportunities with higher likelihood are assigned more value), enabling you to forecast your sales results more accurately.

Simplify your metrics to help your team focus on selling

Now using the metrics of a QuickBooks CRM, since you are aware where your team is, you can evaluate each stage of the sales pipeline, forecast more accurately, and coach your sales reps individually in specific areas where they are weak.

Therefore, use your Merchant Cash Advance CRM or QuickBooks CRM to assign just one key metric to measure the performance at every stage of the sales process and start un-complicating your sales metrics so that your team focus on one primary thing that matters for any sales managers and representatives- Selling.

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Proven Methods for Using CRM Database Driven Sales with Best Small Business CRM

Whether you engage with your leads through organic search, social media engagements, or your sales team prefer cold calling a list of prospects- there are multiple ways to drive sales through your best small business CRM. However, when we get down to the real fact, it all comes back to data. In fact, making use of data to facilitate sales is on the biggest foolproof methods for collecting leads and closing those deals. To understand how we collect data to boost our CRM database, here is what we do to create a data insight cycle for escalating sales.

Whether you engage with your leads through organic search, social media engagements, or your sales team prefer cold calling a list of prospects- there are multiple ways to drive sales through your best small business CRM.

However, when we get down to the real fact, it all comes back to data. In fact, making use of data to facilitate sales is one of the biggest foolproof methods for collecting leads and closing those deals.

As businesses will continue to increase investments in CRM solutions CRM sector is projected to become a $40 billion industry by the end of 2018- SuperOffice Click To Tweet

To understand how we collect data to boost our CRM database, here is what we do to create a data insight cycle for escalating sales.

Using the data insight cycle, you can not only track your data, but you can also analyze the CRM data in order to gain insight into the buying patterns of your leads. Therefore, this process can be effectively used to inform improvement in marketing, help in product development and even coach your sales team.

Here is a rundown as to how you can gather data to increase the CRM database in your small business CRM and how you can use it for the betterment of your business.

COLLECTING YOUR DATA EFFICIENTLY

Collecting data for your CRM database can be a cumbersome procedure. Fortunately, you can aid to streamline the discovery process by focusing on the metric that you need.

For example, if you want to collect information on what your prospects are willing to pay for. In this case, your sales reps can collect information you need by talking to them that can include:

  • Whether your prospects are willing to pay for quarterly, monthly, or annual payment plans?
  • How much they are willing to pay per seat?
  • If there are any training or implementation services they demand as an addition?
  • What are the values of those services?

However, for everything else you can use an automated system like the one that is found in most small business CRM software, to capture the data, which in turn aids in speeding up the data collection path. This way, sales reps do not have to waste much time on data collection for your CRM database and instead they can focus on their sales processes.

The automated system in your best small business CRM will capture things like:

  • Which industry vertical the prospect or lead is in
  • Their geographical location
  • The source of the lead (email campaign, marketing events, blog, eBook downloads, etc.)
  • Whether the leads came from your affiliates (sales consultant organization, referral partners, etc.)

CRM DATA AS A COACHING MECHANISM

Once you collect your data in your CRM database, you can use it to find trends around your product. You can use it to ponder at what is working, what you can do to improve your sales process, your product, and thereby your business.

For example, the data that you have collected can help you to implement better educational content on your business website. Similarly, the information gathered about your client’s locations can help you to identify trends related to where the leads are coming from, and so assisted with the information collected and analyzed in your CRM database you can better assist your sales team with optimized leads.

You can also use this data to take a look at your sales statics, like how many sales were closed over the month and how you can implement better selling practices. So that, by looking into each sales rep’s performance stats, you can create a better picture of how you can assist your organization and improve as a team.

BOTTOM LINE

To conclude, if you want to remain efficient with the CRM database that you have collected, make sure that it aids in identifying the pain points within your sales process, by recognizing your salespeople’s area of strengths and weaknesses.

CRM database in best small business CRM software solutions is also necessary to identify trends around your clients and make them make better investment decisions, which all lead to a successful closing of a sale.

Therefore, it is needless to say that CRM data is an extremely powerful tool, however, it is also true that you must understand how to use it.

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Now, if you are keen on getting your hands wet and explore more about how data-driven sales work in reality, sign up for a 14 day free trial of our ConvergeHub CRM software, which is one of the best small business CRM platforms in the Customer Relationship Management software industry.

Why Your SME Needs Small Business CRM Software or a Lead Management Platform

Lead management is a procedure of working with leads starting from the marketing funnel to the sales pipeline. It is a process to track, manage, and thereafter qualify the leads, with the ultimate goal of turning them into a sale. It all seems so very simple- right? But what happens if you have hundreds of leads pouring in every day? How can you nurture each of them individually? You cannot just do it manually, and so that is the exact reason you need a lead management platform like a small business CRM software to help your sales team stay organized and prioritize on hot leads by nurturing them towards a sale. However, before we discuss how this small business CRM platform works and can benefit your small business, let us talk over the basics of the lead management workflow.

Lead management is a procedure of working with leads starting from the marketing funnel to the sales pipeline. It is a process to track, manage, and thereafter qualifying the leads, with the ultimate goal of turning them into a sale.
It all seems so very simple- right?
But what happens if you have hundreds of leads pouring in every day?
How can you nurture each of them individually?
You cannot just do it manually, and so that is the exact reason why you need a lead management platform like a small business CRM software to help your sales team stay organized and prioritize on hot leads by nurturing them towards a sale.

Why Your SME Needs Small Business CRM Software or a Lead Management Platform Click To Tweet

However, before we discuss how this small business CRM platform works and can benefit your company, let us talk over the basics of the lead management workflow.

What is Lead Management?

Lead management consists of four key elements, which include:

  • Lead Generation
  • Lead Capturing
  • Lead Organization
  • Lead Nurturing

Each of these four components aids the procedure of converting a lead to a sale.

To understand more of this framework, let us dig deeper into each before we talk about small business CRM software.

Lead Generation

From a higher perspective, the lead generation process primarily gets started in the marketing department of any organization. The purpose of lead generation is to attract prospects who match your ideal customer persona or profile for your business.

Lead generation is further classified into inbound and outbound marketing campaigns. Campaigns can include anything from blog posting, social media advertisements, e-book and whitepaper distribution, email campaigns, cold calling, referrals, and others.

Lead Capturing

When any prospect responds to the advertisements or a marketing campaign sent from your best small and medium business CRM software, the next step is to learn more about them.
This process is known a ‘lead capture”, and generally occurs on the internet using a web form.

Some of the most common lead capture strategies are to offer a free trial, e-books, or a registration to a webinar in exchange of personal information like a contact information, name, company information and others. As this information gets captured these individuals’ moves through the funnel from being a prospect to a lead.

Lead Organization

Once the lead’s information and data have been captured, the distribution process initiates. The lead distribution process sorts and categorizes the leads based on their potential to become a sale. Marketing and sales team members mostly use “lead scoring” technique to ascertain which leads should be passed on to sales, and which among them demands future nurturing.

Lead Nurturing

With the end goal of turning them into a sale, the process of lead nurturing depends on how the initial contact goes with the leads to determine whether it needs to be followed up before transferring the leads from the marketing department to sales.

Therefore, while lead management makes marketing and sales team more efficient, it is extremely hard to control or complete the process without the aid of a secondary organizational platform.

This is where lead management platform like best small and medium business CRM software comes into play.

What is Customer Relationship Management software?

A small business CRM or Customer Relationship Management software for small businesses helps SMEs to manage and streamline their lead management process.  This lead management software helps organizations to organize their prospects, leads and, sales and keep track of them as they move down through the funnel.

While different small business CRM software vendors have their own unique features built into the software, they all come with the same blueprint, which consists of certain basic functionalities that include:

Tracking Leads

The best small business CRM software is a platform that will allow you to tag where the leads are coming from when they are initially captured into the CRM database. Ideally, any good small business CRM software should allow you to demarcate the origin of the leads on a geographical level as well as how the leads found your brand or how they filtered on your website. For example, did the leads come from a trade show, or from e-book download web form etc.

By performing this documentation of registering the point of origin of the leads, companies can better assess how to use their marketing channels for getting more leads into their pipeline.

Assign and distribute leads

Another essential feature of all best small business CRM is the ability to assign leads to the members of the sales team. With the help of CRM software, you can easily monitor each sales rep’s track record as well as their current lead to sale conversion rates providing a better picture as to how you can improve the performance of your sales team.

Status tracking

Once the marketing team passes on the matured and qualified leads to the sales team, CRM software helps to track the leads as they move through the sales pipeline. Most best small business CRM software allows the sales reps and the management to view the status of where the different leads are in the sales process, as well as when and how long they are taking to turn into a sale.
Most small business CRM software provides the user with the ability to view and track the complete lifeline of any lead- from the start to the end.

Therefore, if you see that your leads are starting to drop off, you can set the software to put in certain lead nurturing method to keep the leads alive before they culminate in a sale.

Conclusion

Hence, to conclude, lead management is a powerful tool that helps you to track and guide your prospective leads through the marketing and sales funnel into a sale.

Therefore, investing in lead management platform such as a best CRM for small business is an ideal decision that helps to improve your lead management results and make your marketing and sales team members much more efficient at their job.

You can even start by trying out ConvergeHub’s free 14-day trial since you never know what you are missing unless you give it a try.

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How Data In Small Business CRM Can Improve Your Sales Pipeline

One of the greatest advantages of using a small business CRM system is access to a centrally located CRM database related to your leads, prospects, and customers. In fact, more than 75% of CRM users say that CRM system indeed offers enhanced access to customer data. In the beginning, sales reps can be resistant to small business CRM implantation, because using a CRM may seem like a lot of work, which can disrupt their current processes. Nevertheless, having an access to historical CRM data pertaining to sales, such as, contact details, buying patterns of the customers, past orders, implies that the key intelligence from your sales pipeline will always be available to your sales team.

One of the greatest advantages of using a small business CRM system is access to a centrally located CRM database related to your leads, prospects, and customers.

In fact, more than 75% of CRM users say that CRM system indeed offers enhanced access to customer data.

In the beginning, sales reps can be resistant to small business CRM system implementation, because using a CRM may seem like a lot of work, which can disrupt their current processes. Nevertheless, having an access to historical CRM data pertaining to sales, such as, contact details, buying patterns of the customers, past orders, implies that the key intelligence from your sales pipeline will always be available to your sales team.

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This key intelligence found from the CRM database is also important because it improves customer experience and therefore allows your sales team members to follow up on leads and prospects, quickly armed with all relevant information.

Here are 3 ways in which you can use your small business CRM data to improve your sales pipeline:

  1. Lead Nurturing

Your small business CRM keep a record of all transactions that will make your sales reps remain informed about the communications with current and potential prospects. It has been found that business establishments that excel at nurturing of the leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lesser cost and therefore the opportunity to follow up on leads and prospects is crucial for the growth of any business.

However, for success in lead nurturing, some type of lead scoring criterion is by and large needed that allows the sales reps to prioritize leads relying on how hot or likely they are to close, for without lead scoring often a lot of time is wasted by the salespeople as they chase unqualified opportunities.

Therefore, look for the best small business CRM to fit your organization that will help in simplifying the lead prioritization process, particularly by using automation, to gain control of your sales pipeline.

  1. Accurate Sales Forecasting

Not all CRM platforms provide the same functionalities, so discussing with your CRM vendor about your specific requirements is a critical part of the CRM selection process.

When selecting your best small business CRM, choose a system that comes with reliable reporting options along with good analytics that can aid you to predict sales growth, illustrate conversion rates, and help you to get an idea on the prospect’s journey through the sales pipeline.

Customer data from your small and medium business CRM database is more likely to make your sales forecast reliable and accurate.

This is absolutely necessary if you want to motivate your salespersons to reach their optimal yet achievable targets consistently. Your small business CRM system can not only escalate a sales rep’s productivity, but it can also make your sales process more efficient and therefore contribute to the continued growth of your company.

  1. Smarter Working with CRM Integrations

Proper CRM integrations with other third-party software can go a long way in assisting a busy sales team by aiding them to focus on the right thing at the right time. For instance, calendar, mail, and marketing integrations can automate previously complex tasks, eliminating the requirements for manual CRM data entry across multiple software platforms.

It must be remembered, that small business CRM system like ConvergeHub and others, which can operate nicely on mobile devices is also an added advantage for your sales team.

Research indicates that salespersons those who have mobile access to their CRM are 24 % more likely to achieve their annual targets, where remote access to CRM data is the key to their performance.

As for sales reps, having data from the CRM at their fingertips even when they out of the office and on the go, means that they can follow up on time-sensitive leads and thereby stay away from missed opportunities.

The long and short of it?

The access to sales data in real time by using a mobile enabled small business CRM is really valuable for closing leads at the right time, which is why mobile CRM technology and integration capabilities of any Customer Relationship Management software are the most sought after functionality of all best small and medium business CRM systems nowadays.

Wait! If you have 2 minutes to spare… leave a comment below letting us know what your biggest takeaway was!