Year: 2019

Why Post-Purchase Experience is Critical for Eliminating Churn

Here is a pack of eight best practices for retailers using easy to use CRM which explains and aptly illustrates why post-purchase experience is most needed for eliminating customer churn.

It is a well-accepted fact that existing and repeat customers are of more value to any B2B business than the fresh and new ones, although in a recent report from BRP (Boston Retail Partners) e-commerce retailers still pay attention to acquiring the later ones.

The BRP field report also states that online businesses even misses another important opportunity, especially after the consumers make online purchases, as they enter a zone of uncertainty of remaining unsure of whether the product will arrive in one piece and on time.

Now, by providing seamless updates on the status details of the purchased order, retailers can transform this window of doubt into a trust-asserting one, by using easy to use CRM and therefore by eliminating that risk, make consumers more likely to make repeat purchases.

86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.- Temkin Group (2019) Click To Tweet

Hence, with this in mind, the BRP report lays out a pack of eight best practices for retailers using easy to use CRM which explains and aptly illustrates why post-purchase experience is most needed for eliminating customer churn:

  1. Provide the customers with the right expectations before the click on “Buy”
  2. Communicate tirelessly
  3. Set a competitive and fair return policy
  4. Simplify the goods return process
  5. Deliver the goods in professionally packed condition
  6. Turn the digital experience of your customers into an omnichannel one
  7. Use stores for something more
  8. Gather customer feedback using easy to use CLM CRM software on a regular basis

According to the senior VP and practice lead at BRP, for setting expectations before the customer clicks on the ‘Buy’ button, retailers need to assure their prospective customers with shipping and return information that must be stated in a clear, convenient and concise manner.

Moreover, businesses must provide notifications to the customers at five key stages in the delivery process, which includes:

  • Order confirmation
  • Item dispatched
  • In transit
  • Out for delivery
  • Delivery

Since doing so will keep the customers engaged and informed about the status of their purchases.

Moreover in order to provide transparency to the customer businesses should deliver these updates through different channels, like outbound automated calls, text and even via Alexa.

It is also imperative that e-commerce retailers should have a return policy that is as generous as its competitors, which can fetch tremendous loyalty for the company.

For example, businesses can include preprinted, adhesive, and prepaid shipping labels with every packaging so that it can help the customers to return their goods.

Additionally packaging also plays a big role in reflecting the style of the brand, as it not only increases brand awareness but also helps customers to create a more personal connection with the brand and so packaging should be sized appropriately and may include additional unexpected gifts in the package (like thank you cards or samples of other offerings as a way for cross-selling and boosting customer loyalty) to enhance the customer’s connection with the brand.

Next, to turn your brands experience into an omnichannel one businesses need to encourage their customers to return their items to brick-and-mortar physical stores.

This is because according to the aforesaid BRP report, doing so creates yet one more shopping opportunity for the buyers that not only helps brands to increase its brand equality but it also helps the customers to keep the store in the top of their mind.

Providing customers with the opportunity to order online and pick up their purchases in stores is another excellent way to transform digital experiences into an omnichannel one, which also helps in boosting extra foot traffic and additional sales.

There are several brands those that use our small business CRM software across the globe that are even using their brick-and-mortar stores to serve as miniature distribution points, shipping their offerings to their customers from local stores to cut down on delivery times and shipping costs rather than sending it from central warehouses.

Last but not the least reviews are most important to enhance the trustworthiness of a shopping experience, and therefore brands must use easy to submit review processes that can be provided by voice, apps, or emails.

Hence, it is advisable that brands must begin by asking for a simple star rating, after which a more complete post-purchase review can be solicited from the customers.

Businesses can also do well by offering consumer coupons for a percentage off in the next purchase as an incentive for providing the reviews that can also fetch-in more sales, reduce customer churn and thereby bring business growth to the retailers in the modern omnichannel marketplace.

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Easy to Use CRM Trends To Follow For The Success Of Small Businesses in 2019

Keeping in line with the development of technological advancements is most important for businesses both big and small. Likewise, it is also extremely vital to update your marketing and customer interactions as per the latest easy to use CRM trends for users of this software, especially in small businesses. Because remaining aware of the constantly evolving business growth technology and tools, helps SMBs to drive present customers to do recurring purchases and also attract new customers, which further increases their ROI.

Keeping in line with the development of technological advancements is most important for businesses both big and small.
Likewise, it is also extremely vital to update your marketing and customer interactions as per the latest easy to use CRM trends for users of this software, especially in small businesses.

Because remaining aware of the constantly evolving business growth technology and tools, helps SMBs to drive present customers to do recurring purchases and also attract new customers, which further increases their ROI.

About 79% of leads do not convert without CRM - ThomsonData (2019) Click To Tweet

On a comprehensive and wide-ranging note, users of best CRM for small business, while they watch these latest trends, it helps the small and medium firms to expand their customer connect and increase sales for consistent revenue growth.

Considering the same, here are some of the important and best small business CRM trends of 2019, which can add more viability to your sales and marketing skills:

  1. Increasing Requirement for Adoption of Mobile App

In recent years, both small and mid-sized firms across the globe have started deploying easy to use CRM as their new-age marketing tools.

However, in 2019, due to the rising sale of mobile and handheld devices, it has been noted that CRM integration with mobile apps will also escalate for assisting the customer care representatives.

Mobile CRM will also help the sales reps to receive notifications, capture relevant notes and contact or call the customer from their mobile devices, using an online mobile CRM app, for consistent sales growth.

Therefore, mobile CRM, which was earlier just an option for owners of the best CRM for small businesses, is fast becoming a very important part of managing customer relationships successfully.

  1. Improved Predictive Analysis

All best CRM software for small businesses helps their users to find out the number of interested customers, their preferred mode of communication and the preferred time of communication for their customer base.

However, going by the easy to use CRM trends of 2019, the latest improvement in the predictive analysis will not offer greater insights pertaining to ideal engagement approach for small businesses, but it will also aid in digging out their customer transaction history and other customer details for executing ideal customer sales.

  1. Improved Integration

In the past, small business owners who are fully aware of what is CRM technology also faced several obstacles while integrating CRM solution with all the main elements of their businesses.

Considering this fact, in the present times, CRM integration leading to better connectivity is going to expand radically as SMBs will be able to include new products and services into their CRM software.
For example, the use of QuickBooks CRM software that even helps in integrating accounts with CRM platforms.

These integrations will include powerful solutions for workflows, social media, customer sales, and product tracking, which will no doubt offer a holistic solution for a 360-degree customer view during communication by the users of CRM software.

  1. Importance of Social Media Networking

Finally, it is natural that your customer support team will have their own timing and a specific day off. Nevertheless, customers nowadays always expect faster responses online. Hence, customers when they fail to communicate with their preferred brands through conventional communication channels, they tend to follow their brands on social media to get the latest news and developments about new product launches in the company.

Therefore the best CRM for small businesses in 2019, will be trying to upgrade their technology to become pioneers in social CRM (SCRM) functionalities, whereby they can promote their business via social media channels, which will allow their users to find 24/7 accessibility with their customers.

Conclusion

Therefore to conclude in 2019 and beyond an easy to use and effective CRM solution can not only provide your startup or small business with an opportunity to unify and streamline disparate areas in business but it will also proactively contribute to anticipate and understand the needs of the customers which will improve your businesses’ bottom line.

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4 Principles to Go Beyond Just Customer Satisfaction And Achieve More

Before we discuss about the use of business growth technology to go beyond just customer satisfaction and achieve more, here is what the research from Gallup (an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C) and other research organizations says: “If you are trying to boost up your rate of repurchases and overall customer loyalty, then for that customer satisfaction is never just enough.” This is because, in order to increase the advocacy levels and customer loyalty of your brand, you need to exceed customer satisfaction. Rather you need to buy a business growth technology solution like easy to use CRM and conduct a customer feedback program that will provide you with all the insights to illustrate how to improve.

Before we discuss about the use of business growth technology to go beyond just customer satisfaction and achieve more, here is what the research from Gallup (an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C) and other research organizations says:

“If you are trying to boost up your rate of repurchases and overall customer loyalty, then for that customer satisfaction is never just enough.”

This is because, in order to increase the advocacy levels and customer loyalty of your brand, you need to exceed customer satisfaction. Rather you need to buy a business growth technology solution like easy to use CRM and conduct a customer feedback program that will provide you with all the insights to illustrate how to improve.

If you are trying to boost up your rate of repurchases and overall customer loyalty, then for that customer satisfaction is never just enough. Click To Tweet

Therefore, here are four fundamental guidelines for creating a solid customer feedback program after you buy CRM – since failing to follow them can make you veer off course.

However, primarily we must know what can good customer feedback do for our businesses?

High-quality customer feedback can provide your business with the desired insights to take your company’s customer satisfaction scores to the next level.
In fact, at its best, customer feedback is a discipline that is research-driven which therefore requires solid insights to improve the customer experience of your brand.
This is because customer feedbacks help in exploring friction points, customer successes, and missed opportunities in your business and hence it is a way to stay on top of customer issues with your business processes and offering(s).

Customer feedback can address critical customer-facing questions like:

Did our representatives answer your questions in totality?

Was your product repaired to your desired satisfaction?

Perse, it can also tackle strategically placed concerns like:

What would you like us to do to make our customer service better than our competitions?

How can we boost our customer satisfaction and also sales?

When these questions are asked correctly customer feedbacks can provide you more insights, greater accountability and a lens in the details that will ultimately boost the happiness of your customers.

Now, onto the Principles…

Principle #1

Be Objective

What is the point in doing a customer feedback survey using your email campaigning feature in easy to use CRM, if the data captured cannot reflect what is really going on with your customers?

We say this because we have observed several customer satisfaction surveys and many other customer feedback methods that suffer from biased and uneven representation of facts and data.

The complete guideline for the objectives can fill an entire book; nevertheless here are three best practices:

  1. Use an accurate sample
    Try to find out, by asking yourself, how well the customer feedback sample represents your customer base.Ensure that your sample is statistically valid, random and representative. That implies if only one type of customer is providing feedback then your data can be skewed.
  2. Abolish bias
    Eradicate leading statements, double-barreled questions, skewed scales, and other subjective constructs.For example, instead of asking the customer in the feedback survey: “How satisfied you were with our services?” (Thereby suggesting that the customer was at least somewhat satisfied) ask questions that are more pertinent and neutral like “How would you rate the quality of our service?”
  3. Ensure replicability
    The information collected from the customer feedback surveys in your CRM database must be such that any analyst with your data should be able to apply your methods and finally arrive at the same conclusion, be it by coding, assessing or categorizing the data.

Principle #2

Use the Best Methods

Even though in general surveys are the default method for evaluating the customer satisfaction of any brand, however sometimes there are even better tools.

These other methods for evaluating and measuring customer satisfaction include:

  1. Mystery shops
    This customer satisfaction gauging method reveals real insights into customer service, especially in specific scenarios. In fact, this is also a great way to compare your brand to your competitors.
  2. Customer interviews
    This customer satisfaction gauging method provides an in-depth view of your customer’s expectations pitted against their true experiences and is also a great way for uncovering issues that you did not know to ask about.

Principle #3

Engage Your Customers

Creating the right engagement is the ultimate foundation stone of customer satisfaction. Therefore keep your surveys relevant and short as if they are too long or ask irrelevant questions, it can alienate your customers.

Now, in the context of your surveys it means:

  1. Ask compelling questions
    Use conversational style verbiage in your surveys so that your customers feel at ease and actually want to share their experiences with your company.
  2. Use dynamic logic to keep the questions relevant
    All customers are different, so apply branching logic to allow your customers to answer only those questions that apply to them.
  3. Add small tokens of gratitude
    Thank your customers for their effort and time by providing them things like gift cards, priority codes and others, so that they will give their valuable feedbacks even in the future days to come.

Principle #4

Take Analysis Seriously

This is where insights found from easy to use CRM software platforms and other business growth technology solutions come into play.

Provide your customer feedback processes its due diligence and use the right insights to find the signals among all the noises while doing your analysis, which implies:

  1. Evaluate what drives your outcomes
    Simply viewing and analyzing the NPS (Net Promoter Score) and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score is not enough. Rather you must prioritize them to take your next steps and actions.
  2. Parse and categorize the comments
    Segment your customer feedback data to uncover themes by scientifically categorizing and parsing unstructured data like open-ended comments of your customers in your CRM database.

Conclusion

These principles are all interconnected and therefore naturally affect the outcomes of each other. Hence, do your research before creating your customer feedback survey and sending them using Sales Force Automation in your CRM.

As we even said earlier, customer feedback is a research discipline, and so if you are not scientific in our approach, you will not be able to gain any actionable insights that can boost customer satisfaction and thereby grow your businesses’ bottom line.

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What To Do And Avoid With Lead Management Using Best Small Business CRM Software

Lead management is vital for any sales company using the best small business CRM software. Since, without lead management software that offers necessary features, your business will be left with a chaotic and bewildering mess of data that will not be useful to anyone in your company. Therefore, it is imperative that you must use your easy to use CRM software platform’s lead management system appropriately and effectively, and ensure that each member of your sales team is also using it proactively to generate more sales and revenue.

Lead management is vital for any sales company using the best small business CRM software. Since, without lead management software that offers necessary features, your business will be left with a chaotic and bewildering mess of data that will not be useful to anyone in your company.

Therefore, it is imperative that you must use your easy to use CRM software platform’s lead management system appropriately and effectively, and ensure that each member of your sales team is also using it proactively to generate more sales and revenue.

85% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their most important content marketing goal. Click To Tweet

In this article, we shall explore how you can best manage the leads in your sales pipeline in order to increase your profits and ROI.

What is Lead Management?

A sales pipeline of an organization is a diagrammatic representation of its sales prospects, and to find the exact place where these leads and prospects are in the purchasing process. Visualizing a sales pipeline also provide an overview of any sales person’s account forecast and how he is to accomplish his sales quota, as well as, how a sales team as a whole is capable of reaching its target.

Sales lead management enables sales managers and reps to forecast the numbers and revenue generation of deals that are predicted to close in a given span of time.

In other words, a sales pipeline aggregates individual prospect and customer’s sales funnel into a composite visual representation that weighs the health of all the sales prospects of an organization. The sales pipeline also helps in illustrating the lifecycle of various customers and prospects from their initial interaction with your business to the closing of the deals.

These steps in lead management include:

  • Help to collect incoming leads.
  • Qualify a sales inquiry into a marketing-qualified lead by using methods such as lead scoring and thereafter into a sales-qualified lead.
  • Help to validate a qualified lead into a sales opportunity.
  • Register the deal as ‘closed’, ‘on hold’, or as a ‘lost opportunity’.

Therefore, having sales lead management embedded in your best CRM for small business helps to manage the task more efficiently.

The health of a sales pipeline is most often measured by the following metrics that include:

  • The total number of deals in a pipeline.
  • The average size of the deals in a pipeline.
  • The average percentage of deals that have been won or the close ratio.
  • The average time that is taken to close the deals or the sales velocity.

Common mistakes- what to avoid while managing the leads

Sales managers using lead management embedded in the CRM for small business most often tend to think only about numbers and statistics. Therefore, they fail to focus on what is happening with each opportunity. Sales managers do not look at people they are positioned with, the customer’s goal or buying process, the relationship strength with the customers, the competitive position of the offering, or what is in for the customer for purchasing the product or service provided by the organization.

That means sales managers who use lead management software often miss coaching opportunities and therefore produce poor results.

Here are certain things that you should not do with lead management:

  • Avoid keeping focusing only on the numbers. Instead, look into a more in-depth study of the status of the opportunities and how they can be moved forward through the pipeline.
  • Do not confuse lead management with sales forecasting.
  • Remember, sales lead management is just a coaching tool.
  • Do not believe in the idea that a bigger pipeline is a better pipeline, as smaller pipelines can be more productive, since it can be devoid of the junk deals that will never amount to any revenue, allowing sales reps and managers to focus on selling to lead that are more qualified for faster closure of the deals.
  • Do not focus on only late-stage

Best practices for Lead Management using small business CRM

Overcomplicating what you are trying to measure drives low adoption of lead management software. Therefore keep your sales pipeline management simple and to the point.

Believe in creating holistic skill development of your employees in the sales and marketing teams. Let your sales managers help the reps to execute necessities required for managing the sales pipeline across all stages of the process, and so create targeted training for each step for every individual in the team.

Create account plans that illustrate the sales rep’s position within the organization, what are their opportunities. The strategies that you need to employ, the resources needed to be successful, and recognize the key players to help move the opportunities through the pipeline.

Train the sales team how to prospect the leads, which should include things like asking questions, writing emails and motivating potential prospects to act.

Takeaway

Once you buy CRM, be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM used by small businesses and startups, allows users to manage multiple sales pipelines.
For example, suppose you run an automobile dealership and make money by selling cars, automobile parts and also provide repairs. Many customer relationship management software, will allow you to configure only one pipeline, which means you will not be able to accurately analyze or track multiple lines of business and profit centers using such CRM platforms.
Therefore, keep this in mind while choosing your lead management software embedded in the CRM for better use of business growth technology and tools that will help in the generation of more business and predict better ROI.

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Five Easy Steps For Creating A Easy To Use CRM Strategy For Business Growth

If you are still not aware what is CRM, then for them this is a software which is an extremely powerful tool that helps in acquiring new leads, boost customer relationships, and thereby drive customer loyalty, resulting in rapid business growth. But for all this, you must know how to use it. Alarmingly according to studies done on CRM it has been seen that only 14 percent of sales reps actually use the full capability and all the functionalities found in their CRM, while more than 30-60 percent of CRM projects fail to kick-off due to low adoption rates that ultimately results in dismal returns on investment.

If you are still not aware what is CRM , then for them this is a software which is an extremely powerful tool that helps in acquiring new leads, boost customer relationships, and thereby drive customer loyalty, resulting in rapid business growth.

But for all this, you must know how to use it.

Sales teams that are productive and have effective workflows are 81% more likely to use a CRM system consistently.- Aberdeen Group Click To Tweet

Alarmingly according to studies done on CRM it has been seen that only 14 percent of sales reps actually use the full capability and all the functionalities found in their CRM, while more than 30-60 percent of CRM projects fail to kick-off due to low adoption rates that ultimately results in dismal returns on investment.

Now there is nothing worse for any business than to invest money, labor and time into a CRM solution and thereafter fail to use it properly for business growth.

Hence, here are five steps below that you can use as a roadmap to build your own brand’s cross-departmental and scalable easy to use CRM strategy that can help you to elevate relationships with your customers at every stage in their journey with your businesses.

  1. Identify your easy to use CRM solution’s strategic goals

The primary and foremost step for creating an effective CRM strategy is to identify its goals, which in other words means what exactly you will be using your easy to use CRM for.

It must always be remembered that CRM software is a platform that must be used collaboratively across all the departments in your organization.
Therefore irrespective of whether you are using Salesforce, or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM, which are mostly used by startups and small businesses high-level CRM goals will remain constant for the company as a whole; however the approach to achieving them will depend on departmental roles and responsibilities.

Hence, for this reason, it is extremely necessary that all departments in your organization must work together on the goal-setting process.

Therefore encourage your marketing, sales and support teams to sit together and thereafter break down large goals into actionable CRM tasks that align specifically with their job roles and responsibilities.

  1. Identify core challenges and weaknesses

To ensure that your easy to use CRM strategy is proactive, instead of being reactive, identify your team’s main weaknesses and challenges early for proper adoption of the software.

For example, if you discover that cross-departmental communication is one of your team’s key weaknesses, or your support tickets are not getting resolved in time, you can be proactive about ensuring that your CRM strategy utilizes highly collaborative processes and transparency which it comes to sharing resources and knowledge management and for that create required knowledge base and resources that are readily discoverable and available within your CRM database.

  1. Create CRM processes to streamline workflow

Most CRM systems will include integrations and features for streamlining workflow across the entire company.
Therefore, depending on the capability of your CRM tool use the system to improve the efficiency and internal communications of your teams.

For example, create definite responsibilities and roles when it comes to CRM tasks, segment and organize your leads and customers into manageable groups, integrate external business applications to eliminate multi-platform tasks, set up notifications in the software so that your teams can utilize their opportunities promptly, customize the dashboard in your CRM to display the key insights at a glance, and more.

  1. Decide on the right KPIs

You just cannot measure the effectiveness of your CRM strategy without defining the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) relevant for your business.

For this, you are required to revisit your business goals and identify how best you can measure them.

For example, some of the KPIs you can consider is Customer Retention Rate, Number of new prospects over a span of time, Renewal rate, New revenue generated, Closing Rate, Time to Resolution, and more.

  1. Develop a thorough onboarding process

Take your time to develop a methodical onboarding process to make sure that your teams have the right CRM training they require for their success.

For this, you can create detailed and thorough documentation of the training materials and make it easily discoverable and organized within your CRM database .

Now, as written information is sometimes not simple enough, you can also record how-to videos as a guide, apart from creating knowledge base articles, customer support forums or real-time chatbox for supporting simple inquiries.

Improve the customer experience with a CRM strategy

The following five steps above, not allows you to create a CRM strategy that you help your teams to work more efficiently, but it also provides you teams an opportunity to identify their key customer touch-points, to find out what is working and what is not, pinpoint new opportunities and discover areas of improvements for business growth.

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4 Lead Management Tip Using Business Growth Technology And Tools

Once you are trying to find out ways to boost revenue and find growth, one of the most basic processes you require to take into consideration is to look into the lead management program in your company. This is because, leads can arrive through a myriad different channel, and it is often times found in several organizations that there are many loosely held structures in place to react and manage these leads. As your businesses’ ability to accomplish the desired revenue targets essentially starts with good lead management skills, working around these four important tips can aid you in revamping your lead management efforts dramatically for rapid business growth.

Once you are trying to find out ways to boost revenue and find growth, one of the most basic processes you require to take into consideration is to look into the lead management program in your company.
This is because, leads can arrive through a myriad different channel, and it is often times found in several organizations that there are many loosely held structures in place to react and manage these leads in absence of proper business growth technology and tools.

In 2008, only 12% of businesses used cloud-based CRM–This figure has now increased to 87%. Click To Tweet

As your businesses’ ability to accomplish the desired revenue targets essentially starts with good lead management skills, working around these four important tips can aid you in revamping your lead management efforts dramatically for rapid business growth.

  1. Create a Solid Definition of a Lead and Make Sure All Employees Value It

One of the biggest challenges that the sales team and the rest of the company face is in understanding the definition of a ‘Lead’.
It has been estimated by Gartner that more than 80 percent of leads that are sent to the sales team are never acted upon. This happens because of two primary reasons.

  • Firstly, the leads are routed to the wrong person and not in a timely manner.
  • Secondly, the leads sent are not ready to engage with the sales persons yet.

Hence, for effective lead management with business growth technology and tools and for finding better sales, you need to provide and educate your sales staffs with a more granular knowledge of as to when a lead becomes a prospective customer and should be forwarded to the sales for necessary actions.

  1. Adopt an Effective Customer Management Tool

For ultimate effectiveness in sales, you need to buy CRM and provide your sales reps with lead management tool that captures information about every interaction that your sales personals are having with their leads, prospects and customers.
Modern easy to use CRM software for managing leads, prospects and customers integrates different channels of communication, which includes emails, SMS, chat, social media listening, and more.

  1. Follow the Source

Your prospects most often hear about your business and your brand through referrals, ads, online banner ads, or any other forms of advertisement.
However, it is mandatory that you need to keep track of what actually caused your prospects to raise their hand so that you can understand which channel of communication works and does not work for generating your leads.
As a part of effective lead management strategy using easy to use CRM software, it is important that your sales team need to capture the source of all intervening events, so that you can understand how many times you need to touch your prospects and leads before converting them to customers.
Therefore, if you do not capture the source of your leads using a CRM for SMB or large enterprises, you will have no way to find out which lead sources are working for your business.

  1. Quickly Distribute the Leads

Lastly, studies have confirmed that if you can respond to a lead within 12 hours of a prospect establishing contact with you, your sales closing rate falls back drastically.

Just think about your own experience. How many times have you tried to contact a business establishment to request information and they never got back?
Hence, respond quickly and set your brand apart from your competition.
Using lead management software platforms like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions mostly used by small businesses helps in providing automatic reminders to your sales reps, since business growth technology solutions like easy to use CRM assists sales teams not to miss any calls and thereby stop leads falling through the crack.

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Time-Tested Tips On Prospecting For B2B Sales Professionals

Even if you are using an easy to use CRM tool prospecting is one of the most important stages of the sales process- and yet it still remains as one of the more difficult ones. In fact, in a certain report, it states that 42 percent of salespersons named prospecting as the most challenging stages of the sales process. But why is it so challenging?

Even if you are using easy to use CRM tool prospecting is one of the most important stages of the sales process- and yet it still remains as one of the more difficult ones.
In fact, in a certain report, it states that 42 percent of salespersons named prospecting as the most challenging stages of the sales process.

But why is it so challenging?

Well, this is because; prospecting as an activity is never as thrilling as closing a deal. Hence it is mostly postponed for when the “other important things” are done.

50% of buyers like speaking over phone, compared to 70% of reps. This percentage increases the higher up the ladder (VP or C-suite) you go.- Spotio Click To Tweet

However, without a sales pipeline filled with excellent leads, no other fresh sales are going to happen. This is the reason why it is so important to understand that it is prospecting which kick-starts sales and ascertains to a lot extent, whether or not a deal is going to be closed in time.

Over here the logic and math are simple:

The more prospects you have the more chances you find to close a sale, as each prospect equals an open opportunity.

Now, even though traditionally speaking, it was always the marketing teams that had been entrusted with generating leads for sales, however, it necessarily does not mean that sales reps should abort their own prospecting efforts and only wait for sales qualified leads to pour in.

Therefore, sales reps still have to embrace ways for prospecting and harvesting self-generated leads.

There is another more fact that you need to acknowledge about prospecting- leads will not just fall on your lap, and so you got to take actions for something to happen like book a consistent time in your work-calendar to prospect every day, which will go a long way in making sure that this important activity happens on a regular day-to-day basis.

Therefore here are 5 trending tips on sales prospecting, which is one of the most time-consuming and challenging tasks that sales face for finding potential customers who are the right fit for their offering(s).

  1. Create an ideal prospect profile

Take some time to discover what your ideal customer’s profiles look like after doing research on the information stored in your CRM database.
Find out who are your major customers, who are the worst customers, who are your most profitable customers or which customers are least profitable and thereafter create a profile for each of these groups.

Never assume that just because a customer is there in your easy to use CRM database they fit your brand’s ideal customer profile.
In fact, it has been found in a new study that more than 50 percent of your prospects are not fit for whatever you are offering to your customers.

If you are doing an ABM (Account-Based Marketing) once you have completed this homework, use the profile list and also your existing company list in your easy to use CRM to find other businesses that match your existing company’s profiles which will help your sales to focus on the bigger catches in the sea.

  1. Actively work on your call lists

You have got the warm lead list, cold call list and even list of lost leads in your CRM database .

Therefore, prioritize on each list and find out time each day to call the people in the lists after writing down a list of questions for all the prospects in your database.

Never underestimate the power of phone calls. In recent research, it was found that 67 percent of consumers accepted calls from new sales reps within the last one year and 27 percent of sellers declared that establishing phone calls to new contacts is extremely effective for sales growth.

Hence while making your calls learn about the needs and wishes, pain points and most importantly where your leads are in their decision-making processes, since if you can uphold an interesting conversation the act of qualifying leads tend to become a lot more easier which in turn boosts conversion and sales growth.

  1. Send personalized emails

Never think that email marketing as a sales tool is dead.

Since in reality, it is just the opposite as email marketing using an easy to use CRM software is alive and kicking, as more than 80 percent of buyers say that they prefer to be contacted by brands via email, as stated in a study published by Rain Group.

Nevertheless what is really dying as we speak is mass or bulk email, as with 26 percent higher open rates than bulk emailing, personalized emails are now on the run.

Therefore, after primarily ensuring that the contents in your emails are customized and tailored to each prospect’s needs, your first task is to astonish your leads on how much you are aware of their company, and thereafter make sure that the contents are specifically addressed to your prospect’s needs.

Additionally, to make your leads open and read your emails, ensure that your personalized emails looks well on handheld mobile devices, as in the modern times even more than half of all emails sent are opened on Smartphone(s), and so emails that are mobile-optimized receives 15 percent higher click-through rates than those that are not.

  1. Ask for referrals

Nothing can be more beneficial for any business than having happy customers since customers who are happy with your offerings spread the happy word.

According to research, more than 91 percent of B2B buyers are influenced by word-of-mouth when they make their purchasing decisions and hence in the B2B landscape referral-based sales closing ratio stands in between 50 to 70 percent.

Hence ask your existing customers for referrals, since the truth remains that only 40 percent of salespeople do so.

Now, if you are not sure when to ask for referrals, the best time to ask for a referral is just after the sale is made as this is when according to research more than 83 percent of customers would remain happy to make a referral for your brand.

Therefore share whitepapers, send an invitation to events or email other contents that you think would be valuable for your customers, just to make sure that your brand stays on top of your customer’s minds.

  1. Build your social media presence

If you are still unsure, let us assure you that social media is not a fad, but is really here to stay.

Perse, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other similar social media websites are channels that your potential purchasers visit to know more about your offerings.

Now, according to social selling statistics as more than 91 percent of B2B buyers are presently involved and active in social media, and more than 65 percent of sales reps use social media to fill their sales pipelines, therefore, if you have not created your social profile, do it immediately as social media presence adds to your prospecting arsenal, without replacing your other prospecting activities.

Finally- Follow up, follow up, and do more follow up

It can be concluded by stating that as your fruits of labor normally do not show up on the very first contact with your leads, timely follow-ups are an excellent means to build up relationships and demonstrate trustworthiness and your determination for selling to your prospective customers.

Therefore, use Sales Force Automation in your CRM to set follow up reminders with your prospects as according to research it has been found that you always have 21 percent more chance to find a reply to your second email if the first email goes unanswered.

Therefore let us begin our journey for B2B prospecting right from here, after reading this blog, as it is high time that sales reps and businesses must start paying attention to their buyers, leveraging their contents and understand who their buyers are and what all they need for providing your brand a rapid business growth.

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Proven Means For Providing “World-Class” B2B Customer Service

Faulty and poor customer service cost companies billions of dollars every year. Therefore, if your business delivers poor customer service, it is natural that not only you will lose money but your customers will stop shopping with your brand and move to competition within a few days of receiving pitiable customer service. In fact, in a survey done by Bain & Company in 2005 on 362 firms they found that only 30 percent of businesses organizations uses the functions of their company to deliver “best-in-class” customer service, although it was even found that more than 80 percent of brands that assume they deliver great service only 8 percent of their customers believe that they have received great service from these companies.

Faulty and poor customer service cost companies billions of dollars every year.
Therefore, if your business delivers poor customer service, in spite of using an easy to use CRM for boosting relationship with your customers, it is natural that not only you will lose money but your customers will stop shopping with your brand and move to competition within a few days of receiving pitiable customer service.

After one negative experience, 51% of customers will never do business with that company again.- NewVoiceMedia Click To Tweet

In fact, in a survey done by Bain & Company in 2005 on 362 firms they found that only 30 percent of businesses organizations uses the functions of their company to deliver “best-in-class” customer service, although it was even found that more than 80 percent of brands that assume they deliver great service only 8 percent of their customers believe that they have received great service from these companies.

Nevertheless, over the last 12 years there are also several businesses in the modern times that have stood out from the rest of the group, and were able to deliver high quality support services that just ticked all the boxes needed for delivering world-class service to their customers which we have highlighted in this article, since providing such excellent service is not just a buzzword, rather it is the lifeline for ushering business growth .

Respond to all customer service questions

According to a survey done by a CRM vendor of repute, it was found that while the average response time for best in class businesses was 3 hours, most company’s average response is pitiably 12 hours 10 minutes.
This means while the right departments at the best in class businesses that have the correct support procedure in place receive the requests in the right time and thereby handle it accordingly, most companies do not respond to their customer support emails.

Hence if you are also looking forward to providing world-class support to your customers primarily respond to all your customer support emails, and create rules in your customer service software (like an easy to use CRM) that will allow you to automatically forward the requests to the correct departments in your organization for faster resolution of their problems.

Create automated responses to accept a support request

Companies that provide world-class services to their customers let their customers know that their support request has been received and are begin handled.

While most than 90 percent of companies do not use auto-responders for acknowledging that an email has been received, according to a survey more than 10 percent of customers state that “waiting too long for a response” is one of the biggest problems that customers face when it comes to finding appropriate customer service.

Hence, do not make your customer wait, instead set up an auto-responder in your easy to use CRM solution integrated with your email client, and use an email template in the acknowledgment mail that will include a unique ID and support work hours to track the request, along with supporting links to a self-service online FAQs or knowledge base.

Follow up to see if the customers are happy

Even though most companies forget to do this, follow up on your customers to see if they are happy with your service, since this is an easy opportunity to get your brand ahead of the competition in the marketplace.

For this much like creating an automatic acknowledgment email, you can use market automation in your easy to use CRM software to set the follow-up to be sent after 3-5 days after your service response to see if your level of service was satisfactory.

Answer all questions in the first response

It has been found in surveys that only 20 percent of businesses are able to answer the support service emails in full upon their first reply.

A good customer service is all about answering your customer’s questions in full.

Therefore if you want to provide world-class support to your customers answer as many questions as possible and for the ones you cannot answer include a footnote in your reply that you will surely follow-up on them at your earliest with regards to any unsettled and unresolved issues.

Make it easy for the customer to contact support

For your customers always remember finding a businesses’ contact details is the first step to getting their problem solved.

Therefore, if you want to provide best-in-class customer service to the consumers of your brand make your email address, social media links, and phone number(s) clearly visible on the homepage of your business website, making it easy for your customers to contact your company for resolving their issues.

Moreover including these details on your website also adds an element of trust as best companies never feel afraid to hear from their customers.

According to a survey done by KoMarketing Associates, it has been found that more than 79 percent of B2B buyers will abort purchasing from any brand if the contact information is not visible in their websites.

Use an all-in-one CRM to empower your team

Companies that end up delivering great customer service usually do so since they have the right business growth technology and tool (like an easy to use CRM) and the right process to accomplish their job.

All-in-one CRM software platforms that are capable of helping marketing, sales, and support teams allows businesses to set up automated internal processes that aid them in acknowledging, tracking, managing and create reports on all customer support requests and tickets, which in turn helps your support teams to respond and answer to more customer requests easily.

Therefore if you do not have a customer support tool in your organization, it is high time that you must get started and invest in easy to use CRM, so that your support strategies can help your company become best-in-class by having the right business growth technology and tool, to begin with.

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Is NPS (Net Promoter Score) Still Useful Or Is It Ineffective

The metric NPS (Net Promoter Score) was introduced by Fred Reichheld from Bain in the year 2013 and is still considered as the most popular metrics used in business to evaluate and measure their customer experience while using an easy to use CRM for consistent business growth. Now, at its core, NPS is a metric that illustrates customer loyalty that is used as an index score between 0 to10 and is evaluated by asking the customers about the likelihood to recommend your brand and business or your offerings to anyone in their friend’s list. The easiest way to calculate Net Promoter Score is by subtracting the Detractor from the Promoters of your offering(s).

The metric NPS (Net Promoter Score) was introduced by Fred Reichheld from Bain in the year 2013 and is still considered as the most popular metrics used in business to evaluate and measure their customer experience while using an easy to use CRM for consistent business growth .

Now, at its core, NPS is a metric that illustrates customer loyalty that is used as an index score between 0 to 10 and is evaluated by asking the customers about the likelihood to recommend your brand and business or your offerings to anyone in their friend’s list.

Businesses that leverage CRM software see sales increase by 29%, sales productivity increase by 34%, and sales forecast accuracy increase by 42%. Click To Tweet

The easiest way to calculate Net Promoter Score is by subtracting the Detractor from the Promoters of your offering(s).

Customers who scored:

0-6 are conceived as Detractors (customers those who have a negative perception about your company or your offerings and are therefore less likely to spend on your brand.)

7-8 are conceived to be Passives (customer who are somewhere in between Detractors and Promoters.)

9-10 are conceived to be Promoters (customers who have a positive perception of your company or your offering and so are more likely to purchase from your brand and even recommend your offerings to their friends, neighbors, and relatives.)

Therefore while calculating Net Promoter Score a scale of 0 to 10 is used for measuring which customers are Promoters, Passives, and Detractors of your company.

Now, given the changes and evolution in Customer Experience (CX) evaluation techniques, new and fast-emerging technologies and Big Data- does NPS (Net Promoter Score) still remains the best and effective metric to determine the health of your company’s CX and predict customer loyalty?

Well, there are several organizations using Salesforce or even Salesforce Alternative CRM for startups and small businesses would argue that NPS is still useful and relevant to their company for reasons as mentioned below:

It is simple to implement

Companies just need to ask one single question to predict the customer’s loyalty for their brand, which can be easily done via surveys over email (using easy to use CRM ), phone or even third-party survey providers, without the requirement for waiting for more complex and detailed researches.

It is easier to benchmark CX against competitor and industry

The measuring methodology of NPS is a globally standardized method, which makes it convenient for brands to compare an “orange” with an “orange”.
This is because the likelihood to recommend the specific brand, rather than attributes of products and services or different components of the customer journey (which may be unique to each brand) makes it simple for everybody to understand and interpret that if the NPS is going up or down.

Moreover, businesses can ask follow-up questions to the customers in order to understand why they are providing the scores, which can help businesses to more effectively pinpoint the drivers of loyalty for their organization.

Additionally, NPS is capable of driving collectible accountability in delivering Customer Experience and so having a steady and dependable KPI for all employees that can persuade employees to work together more effectively and collaborate for a common and unified CX goal.

Nevertheless, putting these benefits aside, there are also many constraints and limitations of NPS, which are often linked with the methodology design and implementation approach of this metric as explained below.

Therefore the most common NPS challenges that we view include:

Although NPS may be one of the most popular metrics, however, NPS provides limited insights into the true health of a customer’s experience and cannot be relayed upon as a true predictor of a customer’s inclination to be loyal and therefore purchase more from your brand.

This is because understanding any customer’s desire to buy would more often than not require a more specific intent to repurchase questions along with the standard NPS question that you ask your customers for measuring their loyalty for your brand.

While there are organizations those that implement NPS more successfully than others frequently include follow-up questions in their Net Promoter Score surveys to perceive the root cause of their NPS, these insight are most often not translatable as these are mostly generic questions and hence the customers might not be too specific about answering whether they had a product or service-related issues or the customers were generally dissatisfied with one small aspect of their experience with the brand.

Additionally, most often several companies measure the NPS of a specific customer channel like a recent interaction with a caller or a website visit rather than an integrated and ongoing review of the customer’s interaction with the company or a broader review of the customer journey with the brand.

Conclusion

Hence to sum up, just relying on NPS insights and metrics alone to make decision is likely to result in fruitless CX investment decisions and so it can be finally said that instead of getting bogged down by Net Promoter Score companies must also look into metrics like CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score and CES (Customer Effort Score) to measure the effectiveness of their brand’s Customer Experience to ensure increase in customer loyalty and improve business outcomes over the long haul.

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5 Rocking Tips To Build A Steadfast Relationship With Your Prospective Leads

We have been hearing all along “People purchase from companies and persons they like”. Nevertheless, how much people may believe in this clichéd words, it is simply not true. In reality, people do not buy from persons and companies they know, but rather they purchase from places and people they respect and trust. So if you intend to be your prospects’ best buddy by mechanically uttering ‘Yes’ to whatever your prospects ask of you, know for certain that you are not always earning respect from your prospective leads- and consequently not closing as many sales as you could have done otherwise using your easy to use CRM for revenue growth.

We have been hearing all along “People purchase from companies and persons they like”.
Nevertheless, how much people may believe in this clichéd words, it is simply not true. In reality, people do not buy from persons and companies they know, but rather they purchase from places and people they respect and trust.
So if you intend to be your prospects’ best buddy by mechanically uttering ‘Yes’ to whatever your prospects ask of you, know for certain that you are not always earning respect from your prospective leads- and consequently not closing as many sales as you could have done otherwise using your easy to use CRM for revenue growth.

After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember stories. Only 5% remember statistics. Click To Tweet

Hence, instead of fighting hard to be always liked, it is high time that you should refocus your attention for building deeper connections with your leads and prospects, which is built on belief and respect of your leads, prospects, and would-be customers.

Therefore here are 5 rocking tips to help you learn how you can do so, right away:

  1. Curtail the phony enthusiasm

All sales reps and managers had been taught at some point in their professional run to display enthusiasm about their brand.
They had been mentored, that in order to sell their offers, their enthusiasm must shine through first.
Nevertheless, this old school thought has in fact resulted in all salespeople trying to give the identical over-the-top introduction to prospects, which is undoubtedly wrong.

It sounds more like this: “Hi, how are you? I am really so excited to meet and explain to you all about what my organization does and can do for you right now.”

Now, if you think this sales-y intro sounds perfect, try recording your next few phone calls and check if your voice becomes louder, over the pitch, when your prospects answer the calls.
If it is so, hang on, that is exactly the “fake-enthusiasm” we have been talking all along.
This is the fake enthusiasm that you need to drop off.
Hence lower your tone, speak slowly, and be authentic in your presentation.
Remember, fake exuberance sounds extremely very sales-y, but an authentic tone of voice pulls together both trust and respect.

  1. Focus only on your prospect

This might sound obvious, but it is startling to find that most salespeople start their conversations with their prospects by talking about their company, or what are the offerings they can provide to their prospects.
Now, before you make a guess and think, “I don’t do that” just grab a pen and paper and answer the question “Why should a prospect do business with you?”
Next, read what you wrote.
Did it look like you just talked about your offering(s) – or did you concentrate exclusively on your prospects, how they may profit and find advantage from working with you?
Always take it as thumb rule before you talk with your prospects in your easy to use CRM that prospects only care about themselves. Hence, make them the center of your conversation, so that it can help your prospects to find a connection with your offerings.

  1. Offer some value

Make a difference, set yourself apart from other salespeople, enhance your knowledge base, and try to offer some value right out the gate.

For small and midsized businesses that use CRM for small business, the customer relationship management software it provides a unique 360-degree holistic view of the prospect to the salesperson using the easy to use CRM software.

Therefore, use this knowledge provided by the CRM application software to list a few challenges that are common among your prospects, challenges that you can solve, and also share what you have observed in your prospect’s industry during your lead nurturing phone calls.
However, as a matter of caution, do not blab and jump into your solutions too quickly, but rather utilize the conversation as an opportunity to share helpful insights with your prospects while getting your prospect talking about their own pain point, inhibitions, and challenges for fortifying your relationship.

  1. Create a transition with a question

After you have asked your prospect about a few recurrent challenges that you have seen in your prospect’s line of business it is time to get the prospect talking. Hence, try to simply ask your prospect, “Do any of these challenges ring true to you?”

Although this approach may sound a bit provocative, where you stand the chance of coming out clear, this question will immediately ring the bell with a prospect that is going through those same challenges.

You can always think, “What may happen if they say no?”, but if your prospect does not have the challenges that your business solves, then considers those prospects simply misfits.
Rather let go of those prospect in your CRM database and move on with the next call, and find someone who truly needs what your business has to offer to its customers.

  1. Get your prospects talking about their challenges

Once you have successfully offered your prospects some value, elaborated a few key challenges and transitioned the conversation with a question, it is the time that you must keep your prospect talking. After all, prospects will only have faith in you if you can really show them that you have an ability to resolve their key challenges, and you can never do that unless you understand their pain points.

Probing the prospect with multiple questions in most cases will prompt the prospect to open up. As an apt analogy, it is like acting like a doctor who needs to know about all the symptoms of the patient’s malady to properly diagnose and offer a treatment plan.

Using this approach, you will be seen as an expert or a ‘doctor’ in the eyes of your prospect, which can easily build a connection between you and the prospect and so make the relationship move further on and surely close the deal.

Conclusion

We are very sure that by following these tips you will not only start building deep connections with your prospects and customers but holding on to these approaches will help you to connect prospects with better conversations and subsequently move towards fetching in more sales that lead to rapid business growth .

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How To Make The Best Use Of Customer Data Using Easy To Use CRM For Business Growth

In order to be successful in business nowadays, you have to go beyond selling your offerings and have to nurture and build your relationship with your customers. The good news is that thanks to technology like easy to use CRM, there are plenty of opportunities today to understand your customer and their requirements, and remain engaged with them regularly. Customers in the present times interact with businesses more than ever before via email, phone, online purchases or social media platforms. Moreover, brands often encourage their consumers to offer opinions and share purchase preferences, provide feedback, at every interactions in their journey.

In order to be successful in business nowadays, you have to go beyond selling your offerings and have to nurture and build your relationship with your customers.
The good news is that thanks to technology like easy to use CRM , there are plenty of opportunities today to understand your customer and their requirements, and remain engaged with them regularly.

93% of executives expect that using more customer data in their campaigns will create a noticeable shift in their ability to meet disruptive and competitive challenges. - Forbes Click To Tweet

Customers in the present times interact with businesses more than ever before via email, phone, online purchases or social media platforms.
Moreover, brands often encourage their consumers to offer opinions and share purchase preferences, provide feedback, at every interactions in their journey.

However, when customers think that those revelations are going unnoticed, they shift to more engaging brands in the blink of an eye.

Hence failing to listen to the customers has never been more injurious to the success of businesses than what it is now.

Nevertheless, the same technological advancements that permits so much of customer interaction also helps smart organizations to manage and act upon the data resulting out of these communications.

Scalable and modern cloud-based storage options like CRM database, computing technologies, intuitive API integrations, and others have created unprecedented opportunities for businesses nowadays to know their customers, decrease the time needed to act upon this knowledge and thereafter finally create more profitable and stronger customer relationships.

Now, the key for doing this is to deploy the right technology and understand how to use it and so you need to understand how data can help to build stronger relationships.

Therefore, here are three smart ways for data collection and its use that can help your business create meaningful and profitable relationships over time.

  1. Provide a more complete understanding of customers

Many large organizations have already figured out means to leverage data to build better relationships with customers of their offerings.
Nevertheless, SMBs have been hampered by a paucity of resources to appropriately collect and manage customer-facing information even a few years back in the past.

Now as the tools to generate customer data proliferated with the growth of Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, many SMBs began collecting data only to become overwhelmed with how they can manage and apply that information for their businesses.

However, by centralizing marketing and sales activities in a well-integrated CRM database, you can even easily merge artificial intelligence through CRM integrations and recognize opportunities and intersections for sale, operation and customer support reps once you are using all-in-one CRM software for your business growth.

This centralization of information not only allows enhanced personalized and accurate up-selling of products and services but it even aids in better and faster resolution of customer-facing issues that helps in building long-term relationships and trust between businesses and their customers.

  1. Eliminate bottlenecks to better customer sales and service

No customers like to reply to the same question(s) times and over again. Conversely, no organization likes to deploy different resources to serve its customers because their internal business process discourages or prevents effective internal communications.

This is exactly where an integrated customer data in a CRM database solves both of these above-stated issues by aiding to eliminate or reduce internal barriers between siloed business responsibilities.

For example, an easy to use CRM software that enables all team members to securely input data make sure that at every step customers are treated with non-redundant and relevant interactions.

With the help of a small business CRM software, SMBs can not only note customer details which includes email communications, key conversations, customer preferences, project requirements and more, so that every internal touch-points gains a comprehensive and holistic view of the customer, but it also helps to make the employees know their place in the process.

Hence consolidating information about the customers in a CRM database helps in streamlining delivery of services which results in maintaining appropriate follow-ups when required which makes the customers feel that they have a cohesive team working on their behalf.

  1. Encourage long-lasting relationships

Like any relationship, communication is the key for all businesses. However maintaining an ongoing understanding of your customer’s requirements (and truly relate them with your business) is what helps in nurturing and maintaining long-lasting and meaningful relationships.

Now, customizing features in easy to use CRM software enables businesses to build these more productive (and more profitable) relationships with their customers.

This is because by using easy to use CRM you can easily collect and use key data, such as customer interests, and also payment and financial information if you are using a QuickBooks CRM and other relevant information, with available technologies like CRM and email integrations, mobile CRM apps, web forms, as these tools ensures that all data in the CRM database are accurately tracked and reported throughout the pipelines.

Hence information in your CRM database not only aids in delivering custom offering(s) to your consumers but also makes them feel like they have a partner they can count on, which results in loyalty, referrals, and most importantly rapid business growth .

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How To Generate Leads Without A Marketing Support In SMB

No matter how revolutionary or good your offerings are, you need to be a great seller to succeed in your business, especially if you are a startup or an SMB for rapid business growth. According to a review conducted by Forrester, it has been found that lead generation is one of the most critical challenges among 61 percent of marketers. This is because generating leads for sales can be a challenging task for anyone, and so here we have some proven methods to share with you which you can implement for your business growth.

No matter how revolutionary or good your offerings are, you need to be a great seller to succeed in your business, especially if you are a startup or an SMB for rapid business growth.
According to a review conducted by Forrester, it has been found that lead generation is one of the most critical challenges among 61 percent of marketers.

This is because generating leads for sales can be a challenging task for anyone, and so here we have some proven methods to share with you which you can implement for your business growth .

Lead generation is one of the most critical challenges among 61 percent of marketers. Click To Tweet

Hence let get started.

Definition Of A Sale Lead

In sales, a lead is defined as a company or an individual that may eventually become a purchaser, even though it also refers to data (stored in CRM database) that represents a potential customer who is interested in your offering(s).

Now all leads can be broadly grouped into two categories:

  • MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)

MQL represent all those organizations or individuals who are interested in your offerings and are likely to be receptive to the marketing teams, although it may be that not all of them are ready to become your customers.

  • SQL (Sales Qualified Leads)

SQL represents all those organizations or persons who are not just searching for a specific offering(s) but are willing to purchase it/them right away.

Lead Generation Challenges      

Despite the variety of methods and channels, it has been found that companies still struggle to generate sales leads. This is because; the reasons can be different, which ranges from constant and increasing competitions in the marketplace to incessant growth in customer demands to an overflow of information which is too hard to track in the ever-growing marketplace.

Here are some of the most common challenges that you face while generating quality leads:

Limited resources: You will always remain restricted by money, time and/or other similar resources (especially in small businesses) you can spend on lead generation for your brand and therefore you can will never be able to try every single lead generation methods and so should concentrate on strategies and tactics that suits requirements and fits within your budgets.

Quality of the leads: You can find a gargantuan number of leads and still have low sales rate if those leads are not interested in making a purchase. Therefore, once you are generating leads you must primarily focus on the target audience and ensure that they are ready to purchase your offering(s).

Tracking ROI (Return on Investment) from leads: Another most commonly found challenging task is to apprehend how effective your lead generation strategies are working, by trying to compare the cost of finding a lead vs. the amount of profit your business is generating, to find whether it is worth your investments or should you look for a cheaper strategy instead.

Converting leads to customers: This may be surprising, but the stark truth lies in the fact that 96 percent of visitors checking on your business website are not interested in making a purchase.
Therefore, nurturing and motivating potential leads to become the actual buyers of your offering(s) might be a daunting task even for experienced sales professionals, although this is also the top priority of 69 percent of marketers across all industries.

MOST EFFECTIVE WAYS TO GENERATE LEADS WITHOUT A MARKETING SUPPORT

There are several businesses that run expensive marketing campaigns using marketing automation in their easy to use CRM and hire professionals to generate a steady flow of leads; nevertheless, this is not the only option since here are a few more creative ways to find sales leads that do not require marketing support:

  1. Use Social Media

According to Google, approximately more than 42% of the present world population uses some kind of social media to take advantage of its wide coverage across the globe.
Therefore if you are a B2B startup or a small organization try focusing on LinkedIn as it provides awesome networking for businesses and thereafter expand your lead generation efforts to Twitter and Facebook.

Using social media you can not only tell more about your company but also find recommendations from your existing customer. Additionally, post special offers, as social media is an amazing channel to reach your targeted audiences and thereby generate sales leads online.

  1. Get Referrals from Existing Customers

The best way to vouch for your businesses’ professionalism is to allow your happy and satisfied clients speak about it. Hence, try to reach out your existing customers in your easy to use CRM and thank them for liking and doing business with your brand and ask them to share their experiences, reasons to see what can be improved in your work and finally use this interaction to ask for other contacts who might be interested in your offering(s).

  1. Attend Networking Events

Face-to-face communications still work exceptionally well even in this digital era and therefore you can take advantage of it to generate leads by attending networking events.

According to a report published by Marketing Charts, majority of the high-quality SQLs for B2B companies are generated while attending networking events and therefore, it is advisable that you should make such business events a part of your business growth plans.

  1. Develop Your Website and SEO

It has been found that more than 88 percent of consumers abandon a website after a bad experience. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that your business website must be attractive, user-friendly, intuitive, and filled with necessary information as relevant contents helps to generate 3X more leads compared to traditional marketing techniques in this ever-growing digital world.

Moreover, instead of investing in expensive marketing campaigns, you are required as a small business with limited budgets to optimize your website for the search engines to generate organic traffic.

Therefore to adopt a basic SEO strategy, update your information and blog, focus on delivering quality contents relevant to your offering(s) and thereby make your website rank higher naturally on the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) which ensures generation of new and quality leads from visitors landing on your website.

  1. Offer Promotional Items or Freebies

If your small business is struggling to find qualified sales leads, providing free promotional offers can help you to attract more people to your brand.

Therefore use all the channels that you have to spread the word about your promotions among all your potential customers, create discount offers, free trials, and other promotional items to let your leads find advantage from free add-ons.

This is because these types of actions just do not attract customers, but it also boosts the loyalty of existing ones to promote business growth.

Finally- Adopt Easy To Use CRM

Businesses be it big or small usually have to deal with a large amount of customer data, so if you are a startup or an SMB you should use the best small business CRM software to organize this information in the CRM database, to automate simple workflows in your business processes which not only save money and time but using automation in the CRM software can increase revenue up to 10 percent in just six to nine months.

Hence to conclude, use an easy to use CRM to automatically collect email addresses, segment both prospects and customers and thereafter send relevant personalized messages to your consumers for generating new leads for rapid business growth.

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