Year: 2019

How B2B Companies Can Turn Their Inbound Leads into Loyal Customers

Winning new businesses has never been so challenging as it is today since in the present time both digital upstarts and existing market players compete to win customers, and therefore brands need to make the most of new business opportunities to thrive and survive in this highly competitive marketplace. Now, mostly it is the company that knocks on the prospect’s doors. Therefore, in rare cases when a B2B company is fortunate enough to have prospects arrive knocking, it should immediately roll out the red carpet, throw open the doors and cater to that individual’s needs. However, unfortunately not all B2B establishments do this when prospective customers express interest in demos.

Winning new businesses has never been so challenging as it is today since in the present time both digital upstarts and existing market players compete to win customers, and therefore brands using easy to use CRM solutions need to make the most of new business opportunities to thrive and survive in this highly competitive marketplace.

Now, mostly it is the company that knocks on the prospect’s doors. Therefore, in rare cases when a B2B company is fortunate enough to have prospects arrive knocking, it should immediately roll out the red carpet, throw open the doors and cater to that individual’s needs.

20 percent personalization of emails leads to two times the email opening and reply rate. - Salesloft Click To Tweet

However, unfortunately not all B2B establishments do this when prospective customers express interest in demos.

Therefore here a three fruitful ways B2B companies can (and should) position themselves to drive in maximum value from prospect demo request:

  1. Strike While The Iron Is Hot

When prospects in your easy to use CRM database are willing and ready to schedule a demo, businesses need to act fast and make it convenient and easy for the prospects to take actions.

Always keep in mind that hot leads only stay for a short time, for those hot leads that stays too long can very quickly become cool or get waylaid by hungry competitors in the marketplace.

Therefore, when your sales reps fail to respond in a timely manner to a qualified sales-ready inbound lead, it is often due to lack of an effective business tool like an easy to use CRM which rectifies human errors.

Now, the good news is that brands are slowly getting better at answering inbound leads.

The two most important factors that have contributed to this positive development are a dramatic improvement in sales and marketing technologies and a decrease in the prices of products and services all across the globe.

This is because, brands in the competitive marketplace nowadays understands the value of being first to get engaged with a prospective lead, and know that responding within five minutes or even less at times yields the best possible results.

Hence, one can assume a lead is both available and interested to get engaged if that prospect is reached out at a particular time, since all bets go off once minutes, hours and days pass that makes the lead fall through the crack.

  1. Make Demo Scheduling Easy

Many B2B organizations entice their prospects with demos, which is an effective approach for B2B brands with complex offerings that requires managing implementation and setup, like easy to use CRM software vendors and many others in the B2B marketplace.

This is because, when prospective customer’s interest levels are at their peak, providing them an effortless way to commit to a product or service demonstration of your offerings aid to lock down the opportunity.

Moreover providing a demo even satisfies that prospect since it provides instant gratification to their needs.

Now, if you are a startup organization and is using a Salesforce Alternative CRM solution for your small business, it is a wonderful business tool that makes scheduling frictionless for prospects and customers, which can otherwise also be done by putting demo calendars on their business websites or embedding such functionalities in an automatically generated email response.
Nevertheless, one thing that B2B organizations must take care to avoid is employing ‘social auto-fill’, as this method needs prospects to click on a social button like LinkedIn or Facebook or any other social platforms that require entering personal information in the fields, which is most often denounced as an infringement on their privacy by B2B customers.

In other words, asking for “social auto-fill’ for providing a demo to an inbound prospective lead is maybe asking too much from the prospects too soon, as less is more when it comes to requesting prospect information to a demo.

  1. Use Persistent and Personalized Communications

Another great way to get engaged with prospective customers throughout their life-cycle with your brand is to use personalized and professionally persistent massages using easy to use CLM CRM software.

Personalization exemplifies that sale reps have invested their time in understanding the prospect.
In a recent survey, done by Salesloft (which offers products focused on sales development) showed that just 20 percent personalization of emails which can be done by speedily using MA (Marketing Automation) integrated into easy to use CRM software leads to two times the email opening and reply rate.

Surprisingly in the same survey on B2B organizations, it has been found that 82 percent of B2B brands ask for phone numbers on their lead generation forms, but even less than a third of the leads submitted receive phone calls or voice messages from the brands that asked for such information.

Therefore, it is advised always remember to follow up on the warm lead with personalized messages, and never be afraid to pick up the phone as doing so will make you enjoy better response rate and help your business to prosper and reach its goals.

Bottom Line

The state of sales in today’s marketplace calls for multichannel modern tools like easy to use CRM software solutions that offers frictionless user experiences and so B2B organizations must take the effort and time to ensure their prospects, customers and also their sales teams the use of right technology so that they can leverage a higher-level view of their prospects and customers, allowing more business to be closed with personalized messages leading to rapid business growth .

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How To Grow Your Easy To Use CRM Program From Its Infancy To Adulthood

Just imagine what it would be like if we all had been treated like adults right from our birth. Lead a life without guidance or assistance, just trying hard to comply with expectations that are challenging to meet. If this would have really happened, indeed none of us would have reached far, while others may have also found themselves disappointed by our lack of progress and more. Now, the business processes based on technology that we use today on a day-to-day basis such as an easy to use CRM program, need the same kind of support, attention and care to flourish, just as we needed in our infancy, so that CRM solutions can provide the best experience for customers, and users of the software that predicts consistent business growth.

Just imagine what it would be like if we all had been treated like adults right from our birth. Lead a life without guidance or assistance, just trying hard to comply with expectations that are challenging to meet.
If this would have really happened, indeed none of us would have reached far, while others may have also found themselves disappointed by our lack of progress and more.
Now, the business processes based on technology that we use today on a day-to-day basis such as an easy to use CRM program, need the same kind of support, attention and care to flourish, just as we needed in our infancy, so that CRM solutions can provide the best experience for customers, and users of the software that predicts consistent business growth.

Worldwide spending on customer experience and relationship management (CRM) software grew 15.6% to reach $48.2B in 2018. - Forbes Click To Tweet

The Infancy Stage Of An Easy To Use CRM

At its very start of life, a brand new CRM solution and program will inspire enthusiasm and energy for a bright future of your company, which will make you and your teams think that something really exciting has arrived.

User adoption of the system boosted by positive encouragements, and regular check-ups around data compliance and quality of the CRM database , along with its usage will ensure it is developing in the right direction into a healthy system.

Therefore be it a robust enterprise-level CRM like Salesforce, or a price-performance leader like most Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms used by small businesses and startups, the basics of the program will be mastered during its infancy along with a few hiccups and late-night feedings, which will always remain, irrespective of any CRM you buy along the way.

The Adolescent Stage of An Easy To Use CRM

Now that the CRM program has been well adopted and established, and users have mastered the core skill sets of the system, it is time to start school and introduce certain challenges.

Well these challenges should be adult-sized challenges, and should be appropriate and at par for the development of the easy to use CRM program, as this is the right time to begin the evolving processes to take the CRM solution to the next level of functional complexities in terms of steps, tasks, and requirements, ask the software to provide reliable insights back to the business, and see what has been learned.

This is the time when the management should lead by example, and show their teams how an easy to use CRM can be used be it an enterprise-level tool like Salesforce or other popular Salesforce Alternative CRM to run the business, providing its users a role model by standing in front of the training class.

This is because; now that the CRM program has passed its infancy, it is already a part of your company’s culture, and working for your organization there can be lurking dangers of complacency.

Therefore as an executive owner of your CRM program, keep setting the homework(s) and let the users of your system in marketing, sales, support, and even accounts (if you are using a QuickBooks CRM that assists in accounting) keep turning it in, on a day-to-day basis.

The Teenage Years of An Easy To Use CRM

Often noted as the most rebellious years, this is exactly when an organization needs to begin showing the impact and business values found out of a CRM program.
This is because, if the customers see no value, they will begin questioning why they are using the easy to use CRM program, and if the software is worth its salt.

Therefore in this stage, if a process which has been introduced in the CRM’s infancy stage is no longer effective, it needs to be changed.

Well, this is also the most critical stage in any CRM program’s life when it can be disillusioning.

This is because; once the glamour and exuberances of a new CRM adoption has worn off, and the daily grind has set in, the executive owners of the CRM are required to show that they are just as energized and invigorated as they were before, when they primarily saw the program, and allow the program to keep moving on its upward journey.

The Adulthood of An Easy To Use CRM

It is time to expand, now that the easy to use CRM program has reached its adulthood. Therefore the developments and changes in this stage will be much less radical, which even if they happen according to the tastes and preferences of the organization.

For example, it might be that you started with a sales automation program with your CRM and this is the stage you want to bring in marketing automation that would help in providing greater visibility of your prospects.

Since, just because the CRM program has developed into a well-adopted and popular member of your company it necessarily does not mean that the scope for growth and expansion has stopped, which is truer as your customers and industry are constantly evolving and so your CRM program should also evolve and scale accordingly.

How will you know when your easy to use CRM program is ready?

All CRM programs develop from childhood to adolescence, teenage and then to adulthood just like us at different times.

Therefore there is no set timeframe as to when your CRM program should reach any of the above-stated stages, as the time needed to evolve and progress completely depends on how you as a user of the CRM manage the processes, implement the changes and also take care of the technology and people along with it.

The readiness of your CRM program will also be based on the speed of your industry and your customer ecosystem.

It must be remembered that there can be many hazards of speeding up your easy to use CRM program to develop and evolve before it and its users are ready.

For example just like you would never provide your children with sharp utensils to eat when they are young, exactly in the same way you should never provide the users of your CRM with tools that are advanced for the stage they are in.

Now, this does not mean that your CRM program should get stifled when you are ready to move on. Since while preserving the existing functionalities if you do not increase the advanced functionalities of our CRM platform, you will be left far behind as other aspects of your business and your competitors will get their driving permits and aim for the horizon to find rapid business growth .

Determine Your Stage And Take Action

In order to understand at what stage your organization is regarding the CRM program, you are required to go through a critical self-evaluation on these three key elements which need to be considered that includes:

  • User sophistication
  • Supporting technologies
  • Process definition

This is because; evaluating and challenging an easy to use CRM program across these three elements mentioned above, along with the said four growth stages, will aid in highlighting any gap in the CRM adoption process.

Therefore, as a primary goal ensure that everyone in your organization is on the same page before taking your steps forward and have a clear road map to proceed and evolve the entire CRM program with all the stated elements in sync for business growth.

Hence to conclude, expecting any CRM program to have a well-established and intelligent process right from the day one is a perfect set up for a disaster.
Rather you must always ensure that your CRM program is well cared and nurtured as it scales up with your business and also ensure that it provides everyone, right from the executive owners, through the users of the software, to your customers with the service and experience they deserve and expect for boosting sale and customer experience from this awesome relationship-building tool.

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Half a Dozen Unassailable Ways to Boost Your Customer Retention Plans

Customers in modern times do not buy your products; instead, they buy your services. Therefore, once you provide your customers with the right products along with world-class service, they will surely come back for more. Hence, in the present times, customer retention is the topmost priority for any brand to improve cultural norms, increase its value, and boost revenue. According to a recent survey, it has been found that major corporate industry specialists agree that 90 percent of customers are the ultimate treasures for brands to keep for a lifetime. In fact, existing customers are not just mere customers but they are the true marketers of your brand.

Customers in modern times do not buy your products; instead, they buy your services. Therefore, once you provide your customers with the right products along with world-class service, using easy to use CRM software to assist in the process, they will surely come back for more.

Hence, in the present times, customer retention is the topmost priority for any brand to improve cultural norms, increase its value, and boost revenue.

According to a recent survey, it has been found that major corporate industry specialists agree that 90 percent of customers are the ultimate treasures for brands to keep for a lifetime. In fact, existing customers are not just mere customers but they are the true marketers of your brand.

80 percent of businesses surveyed rely on email marketing for customer retention. - SmallBizTrends Click To Tweet

Therefore irrespective of what you are selling the right customer support policies help to build an amazing relationship with our customers, as to them by providing world-class support you do not remain just a seller, but customers trust you with their hard earned money as you are capable of providing them value in return with your services.

There are even those customers who crossed your path once and never came back since there are chances that they might have found your service average or they may have been acquired by your competition, or they do not need your offerings anymore.

 

Now whatever be the scenario, return customers always brings the bulk of businesses, as your loyal customer and so here are six secrets by which you can encourage your existing customers to come back.

  1. Boost customer service

As we mentioned earlier, the customer buys your services even more than your offerings. Hence customer service is everything that makes or breaks any business.
Hence complains and feedbacks, both good and bad, are signs that your customer support department requires improvements.

Feedbacks are also important as it is a good sign that shows your customers wants your business to be perfect.

Therefore by being open for improvements and by providing the best possible service, you can assure your customers the gold standard of service which can be improved considerably by using easy to use CRM software for business growth.

  1. Offer loyalty discounts

Offering discounts to your existing customers to fill up your customer pool is a true and tried way to get them back. You can also entice your customers by introducing shopping credit points and loyalty vouchers that may help your existing customers for the next purchases.
After spending a certain amount or making a purchase for a certain number of times you can even offer your customers an incentive in form of gifts (as per your policy)  to keep them happy and return for more.

For companies that are dealing in big consumer durable markets, like digital appliances or furniture, another option for retaining customers is by offering free service to them for an extended specific period of time, which is one of the best ways to encourage them to come back.

  1. Advertise future deals

If you are using CRM software platforms like Salesforce, or even a Salesforce Alternative CRM mostly used by upstarts and small businesses, you can use marketing automation in the software to send emails to your existing customers on your upcoming deals or make them aware of future sales or promotions of your brand.

  1. Utilize social media

The power of mouth advertising strategy has always proved its worth and therefore social media is a perfect tool to get your customers back or even retain the existing ones.

As in this present digital world, most customers follow their preferred brands in social media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others you can post regular updates of your business news, testimonials from your happy customers, product updates and even promotional offers to get your existing and new customers and prospects in your loop.

Also always remember to include all social media links in every post to boost the chances of being followed to your lead generation page.

  1. Respond to feedback

Responding to either negative and positive feedbacks or survey results provides your valuable customers a sense of your care and responsibility.

Therefore, thank your customers those who leave positive feedback, for using your products and trusting your services and listen to the needs for customers those are facing issues and satisfy them by providing free service.

Doing this not only encourages your unsatisfied customers to provide your business with another chance, but you can also use this opportunity to mark your brand as a caring company by converting unhappy customers into loyal advocates.

  1. Keep an eye on your competitors

The most common reason as to why most customers do not come back is that your competitor has taken them up with an edge.

Hence by having knowledge about your competitors’ activities, you can offer better deals to your customers and get them back within your fold.

For this analyze the gap in your market, play with your brand’s USPs (Unique Selling Points) and do not get caught up chasing the competition.

Wrapping Up

Be it in any business, retaining existing customers is never an easy task. This is because it is true that brands do not build their worth overnight.

However, if you have patience, a good team and using easy to use CRM for building and supporting customer relationships, you can easily take your existing customers back to your brand.

For this, just figure out your customer’s expectations and needs and make your moves accordingly.

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What Is Customer Journey And How Does It Accentuate Your Business Growth

The process of buying looks completely different today than what it was a decade ago. Smartphone, online reviews, one-click ordering, social commerce, easy to use CRM technology, and the democratization of the internet- all these have over the course of time revolutionized how modern consumers research, discover, purchase and use products and services of all types nowadays. Now, as a result of all the factors and more mentioned-above in the last few years companies across B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) markets have been investing time and resources on defining ad understanding their customer’s interactions in the context of a journey with their brands over time.

The process of buying looks completely different today than what it was a decade ago.
Smartphone, online reviews, one-click ordering, social commerce, easy to use CRM technology, and the democratization of the internet- all these have over the course of time revolutionized how modern consumers research, discover, purchase and use products and services of all types nowadays.

65% of buyers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising.-Temkin Group Click To Tweet

Now, as a result of all the factors and more mentioned-above in the last few years companies across B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) markets have been investing time and resources on defining ad understanding their customer’s interactions in the context of a journey with their brands over time.

Nonetheless:

How do we define a “customer journey”?
How has it evolved over the last few years?
How does customer journey accentuate and impact our business growth?

Hence, to answer these critical questions let us take a closer look.

Defining The Customer Journey

At face value, as the term suggests “Customer Journey” seems like a catchphrase that can have more than a dozen potential meaning.
However according to Forrester Research a ‘Customer Journey’ is illustrated as:

“The series of interactions between a customer and a company that occur as the customer pursues a specific goal.”

Now customer journey is not as easy and simple as it sounds like it has been explained above.

This is because; given the plethora of information that is available online nowadays, most B2C purchasers do not just walk in into a brick-and-mortar business establishment and write a check on their very first visit.

Identically, B2B buyers do not issue purchase orders without conducting a reasonable amount of research before buying their needs.

This is because, all modern buyers irrespective of whether they are B2B or B2C purchasers know that this age of information has provided them with an upper hand, which is the precise reason as to why businesses need to join their customer’s in their journey with their company- rather than trying to circumvent it as it was in the past.

Understanding The Customer Journey: Goals And Personas

Therefore how can your brand and business begin to adopt a customer journey oriented mentality?

Now before making any drastic changes to your marketing and sales workflows, it is critical to primarily gain a fresh perspective of your customers to find out and evaluate their common goals.

Moreover, it must be also remembered over here that inconsistent and silo data repositories can lead to costly misconceptions about buyer’s behaviors with brands across all industries, as when you are incapable of apprehending who your customers are or what they need, it is practically impossible to completely understand their interactions in the context of a journey with your brand or company.

It is therefore important for marketing and sales leaders to align on two essential concepts “Buyer Goals and Personas” to understand customer journey with your company.

Goals

Not all interactions with your customers involve the exchange of money.
In fact, it is very much possible that most interactions with your customers will be non-transactional by its nature.

For example, with a cloud-based small business CRM software company like ConvergeHub at the highest level customers use this all-in-one easy to use CRM software to achieve their primary goal of tracking and managing their leads, customers, and projects under one roof.
Hence the customer’s journey from primary awareness to purchase and thereafter adoption and use of the CRM consists of countless other non-transactional goals, which are bound to develop, such as:

  • Downgrade or upgrade the current plan
  • Share feature enhancement ideas to make the business tool more useful
  • Participate in training webinars
  • Request added information about new features and integrations
  • Publish rating on user satisfaction on online websites…and more

In other words, the behavior of the customer is largely dictated by their motivation or until the point of flexion- when a customer enters a company’s realm by providing information or completing a transaction, after which the company has more opportunities to maneuver customers through the desired journey.

Therefore, businesses and brands that understand the “why” which lies behind the interactions of the customers at each point are well on their way in perceiving the customer’s journey and hence create a consistent world-class customer experience.

Personas

It is also a fact that no business can understand their customer’s goals without defining who the customer is.
Hence, personas (which are in reality fictitious characters but nevertheless based on actual data) can be highly useful for understanding your customer and their journey.

Now if you are unaware as to how you can develop accurate and detailed personas for your brand, as your frontline sales and support staffs a variety of open-ended questions to foster an in-depth conversation about:

  • Buying cycles and their patterns
  • Common objectives in their sales processes
  • Psychological and demographic considerations for sale
  • Typical pre and post-sales interactions with leads and customers…and more

Moreover incorporating quantitative data from your easy to use CRM is another vital step for supplementing the accuracy of your buyer personas. For this, there are several cloud based CRM platforms that even offer built-in business intelligence dashboards, which can accelerate your persona creation process.

Customer Journey Mapping

Now once you have researched and developed a solid understanding of your brand’s typical personas and goals, it is time to begin customer journey mapping process.

Well, it must be noted over here that mapping the customer’s journey can be a tedious and complex task, especially for businesses that have established lifelong relationships with their buyers.

This is because; just like with any other personal relationships, long term business relationships also expands over time, making it difficult to understand how to start the mapping process.

Since it is but natural to get confused once you have to ‘map’ something that involves hundreds of relationships and an untold number of interactions.

Therefore start your mapping process by asking yourself these questions:

  • When do your personas interact with your brand?

(Discovery, Pre-sales, Sale, Post-sale, support, and others)

  • How do your personas interact with your brand?

(Marketing websites, Review sites, Support portal, Social media, and others)

  • What are the different types of customer interactions?

(EBook downloads, Website visits, Trial requests, Blog comments, Social media comments, Support tickets, and others)

  • Where you will get the data needed for accurate answers to these types of questions?

(Easy to use CRM, Website analytics platforms, Data warehouses, and others)

  • How do all these fit into the context of the journey?

Now as you begin to ask these questions you will soon realize that your idea of finding your brand’s “ideal” customer journey is a farfetched idea that is miles away from reality.

This can be for a number of reasons, like:

Perhaps your digital marketing teams are slow to respond to unsolicited lead inquires.  Or your support team is more responsive to customers who are especially vocal, resulting in prolonged waiting time for customers who are polite.

Nevertheless, do not allow this misalignment to snub you down, as you must always remember that there is no such thing as an unblemished and ‘perfect’ customer journey, especially in today’s world of the self-guided customer journey as Lori Wizdo at Forrester recently pointed out:

“The evolution toward a self-guided journey is changing the role of B2B marketers and sellers, which is why sales and marketing need to better align, share information, and work hard to keep the buyer’s attention throughout the journey.”

Continue The Journey

Hence seek to continuously elevate your brand’s understanding of the customer and strive to structure internal conversations in the context of a journey and thereafter align your teams (relying on data-driven analytics) at every step of the process.

Be sure, in time this approach will surely pay a big return- both for your business and your customers.

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How To Improve The User Experience Of Your B2B Website

Your business website is in all probability the most vital digital modern-day asset your SMB or startup has in today’s world, as nowadays more small businesses than ever do their businesses exclusively online for business growth. Now, even if you do have just a brick-and-mortar operation, your web presence is probably still necessary as the primary method for reaching out to your customers. In fact, it is much easier now to compete with major players in business those that have a stronger and larger brand recognition than it was just a decade ago in the past. This is the reason as to why carving out a profitable niche for your business requires superior-quality web presence, and these standards for quality are getting higher as more-and-more of our everyday activities are moving online.

Your company website is in all probability the most vital digital modern-day asset your SMB or startup has in today’s world, as nowadays more small businesses than ever do their businesses exclusively online for rapid business growth.

Now, even if you do have just a brick-and-mortar operation, your web presence is probably still necessary as the primary method for reaching out to your customers.

The average CRM user adoption among sales professionals is 73% and the average ROI period is 13 months. - G2’s CRM Software Research (2019) Click To Tweet

In fact, it is much easier now to compete with major players in business those that have a stronger and larger brand recognition than it was just a decade ago in the past.
This is the reason as to why carving out a profitable niche for your business requires superior-quality web presence, and these standards for quality are getting higher as more-and-more of our everyday activities are moving online.

Hence positive UX (User Experience) is absolutely indispensable to succeed online. Since website visitors do not have the tolerance for viewing websites that do not work well, and therefore you got to make sure that you are engaging potential leads and customers, while you have the opportunity to sell them your offerings.

So are you ready to improve your business website and convert more customers?
Since once you get the handle on how you can boost and maintain your site’s UX, it will be easier than ever to build a relationship using an easy to use CRM with your prospects and customers online.

Therefore, before we dive into the big-picture strategies, it is extremely necessary to be familiar with the building blocks for creating a stronger UX that any website should offer in order to not unknowingly turn off new prospective visitors which can hamper your business growth.

  • Fast website loading speed

As all web-visitors are edgy when it comes to viewing websites these days, your business website needs to load quickly for better engagements on your site.

  • Intuitive and clear navigation

Make it easier for your visitors to find quickly what they need. For this ensure that all your web pages are clearly labeled with links to the main sections of your website and place your contact info in the header and footer section on every page.

  • Think about landing pages

Try to anticipate what your visitors needs from your business website and as sending someone directly to your homepage when someone clicks on a link of your site via a social media post or a particular ad might not always be the best way to keep them engaged, create spectacular and informative landing pages where you can collect the contacts of your visitors and store them in your CRM database for nurturing of the leads.

  • Optimize your site for mobile

The majority of website traffic nowadays comes via mobile devices. Therefore, your website needs to be optimized and responsive to work well on small screen devices as it does on desktops.

  • Do not forget about design

Simply put, your website needs to look good, bold and up-to-date. Hence redesign your existing website if it is cluttered and is of an outdated design that might turn away customers or even make them raise the question whether you are still in business.

Now having discussed the above-stated points, it is true that even the best-designed website can always be improved to create a more engaging experience for the users of the site.

Well, you might probably already know that your website could use improvements, so take the time now to find out exactly what those might be.
Therefore to do this try to determine at what point in the buying process do your visitors tend to drop off, or what are your most seen business pages and which are the pages that cause your website visitors to turn away.

This is exactly where web analytics services like Google Analytics can be of real help, so if you do not have Analytics set up on your business website, do it, right today.

In fact, Google Analytics provides your business a free and easy way to measure how your customers are interacting with your website and even point out technical issues that need are needed to be addressed for providing an enhanced experience to the users of your site.

  • Offer social proofs

When a friend, colleague or a family member recommends a brand, we are much likely to actually check it out, rather than if we would have simply seen it in an advertisement.

This is called social proofing- which can a game changer for startups and small businesses.

This is because viewing reviews from other real people (even if they are strangers) can go a long way in creating further engagements.

Hence, incorporate social proofs in your business website by creating a strong testimonial area in the main homepage, upload reviews of your brand on third-party aggregator websites, and mention or share them on social media sites.

You can also integrate tools on your website that displays your brand’s Instagram and Twitter feeds to encourage your website visitors to get engaged with your brand on social media as smart companies know their customers are their best marketers and so increase in public support means a lot for generating consistent business growth.

  • Focus on organically marketing your brand

Traditional email marketing with the help of the best small business CRM software, and digital advertisements can certainly be effective for startups and small business, but it is equally vital to remember that today’s consumers are bombarded by these promotional materials and are have so become somewhat blinded to them.

Now, by marketing by the term more “organically” we indicate creating a web strategy around inviting your consumers to get engaged with your business and brand rather than merely telling them about it.

Some of the ways you might do this for your SMB include:

  • Engaging followers and customers of your brand on social media websites
  • Proactively interacting with reviewers on aggregator sites
  • Building a business partnership with local brands, non-profits, and other related businesses

Now, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is another highly effective means to boost your business website’s visibility online around ‘key terms’ used for your business.

For example as a vendor of a cloud based CRM software vendor, we use “Easy to Use CRM”, “Best CRM for small business” or for the Merchant Cash Advance version of our software we use “MCA CRM” and similar keywords in our whitepapers, articles, social media posts and blogs which helps in attracting more qualified leads to our B2B website, and reduce the use of pop-ups and annoying lead capturing techniques that ruins the UX of the websites of most brands.

Therefore, work with a digital marketing agency or read on some basic SEO tips and strategies to get started on your own.

  • Streamline UX whenever possible

Never needlessly complicate how your customers and visitors engage with your website.

Remember the UX element of your business website need to offer a streamlined experience for the visitors of your site and support the goals for offering a deferential experience for any visitors to your website- existing and new customers alike.

It should also be noted over here as pop-ups and manipulative languages are also a big turn-off, therefore never coerce your visitors to complete an action like creating an account or to log in unless it is absolutely necessary for your lead generation and business growth.

Finally- Integrate with a business tool

On the tech side of things, integrating your website with business tools like an easy to use CRM software , makes it much easier for your business to manage your digital efforts across multiple channels and platforms as CRM is a software that can provide a comprehensive view of your data, which includes web analytics that helps in granting insights on your website’s engagements to further refine your UX strategies and thereby create an effective online presence of your brand that ultimately helps in increasing your businesses’ bottom line and revenue growth.

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The Utility Of Facebook For Lead Generation In MCA Businesses

Finding MCA (Merchant Cash Advance) leads for Merchant Cash Advance software has become a challenging task nowadays with the rise in demand and competition especially by owners of small businesses. This is over here the requirement for Merchant Cash Advance lead providers for MCA CRM software comes to play with high-quality leads that have the highest conversion rates. These MCA leads providers make use of various marketing techniques for harvesting a pool of reliable leads under one roof. Among these lead providing platforms for Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, Facebook is a wonderland for connecting and bonding with prospects to create a sense of trustworthiness that is capable of converting them into customers at some point of time.

Finding MCA (Merchant Cash Advance) leads for Merchant Cash Advance software has become a challenging task nowadays with the rise in demand and competition especially by owners of small businesses.
This is over here the requirement for Merchant Cash Advance lead providers for MCA CRM software comes to play with high-quality leads that have the highest conversion rates.

According to the Federal Reserve, 59% of business owners applied for financing to grow and expand their company - 2018 Click To Tweet

These MCA leads providers make use of various marketing techniques for harvesting a pool of reliable leads under one roof.

Among these lead providing platforms for Merchant Cash Advance CRM software, Facebook is a wonderland for connecting and bonding with prospects to create a sense of trustworthiness that is capable of converting them into customers at some point of time.

Are you aware of how many users log in to Facebook across the globe every day?

Well, according to recent statistics published by Hootsuite 1.47 Billion people log in daily on this social media platform, with over just half of them those that check-in even multiple times every day.

Therefore, with such a great number of daily users on this social media website application, Facebook since the last couple of years has grown to become the ‘numero uno’ choice and destination for marketers worldwide nowadays.

This is because using Facebook; you can generate high quality and authentic leads, increase web traffic to your alternative financing business website and thereby become the MCA market leader in your business space.

Now while there are several businesses that are still unaware of the true potential of Facebook for generating leads, there are also, on the other hand, many businesses that have tried their luck with this platform but hopelessly failed to find the returns the desired, with their Facebook lead generation strategies.

Hence as one of the award-winning vendors of Merchant Cash Advance CRM software for small businesses here are the basics that will certainly help you to execute marketing campaigns of your alternative funding business on Facebook to generate the best quality leads that can aid you in achieving rapid business growth.

Sharing Posts On Merchant Cash Program

The fastest and the easiest way to spread the word about your Merchant Cash Advance service is sharing it on the social media platforms.

This is because, the moment people comment, like, or share your posts; their activity automatically and instantaneously appears of their friends’ news feeds.

Therefore, social media is one of the most effective ways of promoting your alternative financing services and generate leads for your MCA CRM as it will be automatically referred to your social networks on the website.

Hence Facebook helps to easily promote your business and get referred to potential customers in your friends’ circle, which provides the prospect to generate more solid and reliable MCA leads, as well as secure new customers.

This is because, you can use ‘Page Insights’ to track your posts and shares on Facebook and thereafter learn more about your prospects.

Website Traffic Equates To Customers

Several companies use Facebook to increase their web traffic. Hence by posting engaging and appealing contents you can generate highly targeted web traffic and drive visitors who are genuinely interested in learning about your alternative financing services.

To generate high-quality leads for your MCA CRM software, create posts that provide information related to your Merchant Cash Advance business and share useful offers and advice on your services.

Additionally, as pictures catch more attention of the social media users which can help in finding a boost in share, comments and likes; it is advised to post contents with high-quality images.

Now, all website traffic that you get can be tracked and view in Google Analytics.
Hence always remember to keep an eye on the stats that are shown by this analytics tool to boost your posts for increased engagement and generating a way higher conversion rate.

Lead Generation Through Insights

It is equally important to add an appealing CTA (Call to Action) with all your Facebook posts. Since, with the help of this modern marketing strategy, potential customers can click on the provided link that will redirect them to your MCA businesses’ landing page which may provide complete information on your MCA offerings.

Moreover, you can even benefit from an increase in the number of article subscriptions by asking your visitors to fill in a short contact form for their respective names, email addresses and other information needed for providing financial services whom you can later on email at least once or twice every week to remind them of your offerings.

Easy Data Processing

One major benefit of using Facebook for generating MCA leads is the endless treasure of data available online.

Being a free social media platform Facebook is a place where you can find information from thousands of active users without much hassles, data that you marketers can use for trimming the niche of your target customers and thereby bring more business for your MCA firm.

This is because using Facebook Insight tools you can gather useful data about your audience, such as their age, language, gender, location, and others that can help in creating targeted email marketing campaigns on the right audience for improving your business growth .

Paid Ad Campaigns

Finally, paid Facebook ads are an extremely powerful marketing tool that can generate a very high number of qualified leads.

One major advantage of paid Facebook ads is that they are highly cost-effective and are priced much lesser than Google Ads, or any other traditional marketing campaigns on paper, media or TV.

As one of the most popular vendors of MCA CRM software for small business, there are several MCA businesses that we know who have earned millions in return after investing on Facebook ads as social media is the best place for finding an awesome return on investments.

Conclusion

Therefore to establish your brand image as one of the best MCA firms in your marketplace, you must opt for social media, since with so many available business owners surfing Facebook on a regular basis, it will not take long for your brand to create its awareness in the marketplace and thereby stand apart from the rest.

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The Need For Using A Scalable And Easy To Use CRM For Rapid Business Growth

The number of startups and small businesses in the US since 1982 (according to U.S. Small Business Administration) has increased by more than 49%. As vendor of easy to use CRM for SMBs we are seeing new businesses starting every other day by aspiring entrepreneurs who want to lead a business and run it own their own. But then again a startup is a completely different game than an expanding medium-scale or large business since with growth come obstacles.  Therefore how do we take our team, and meet these growing demands in small businesses? How do we successfully expand to cherish rapid business growth?

The number of startups and small businesses in the US since 1982 (according to U.S. Small Business Administration) has increased by more than 49%.
As vendor of easy to use CRM for SMBs we are seeing new businesses starting every other day by aspiring entrepreneurs who want to lead a business and run it own their own.

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

But then again a startup is a completely different game than an expanding medium-scale or large business since with growth come obstacles.

Therefore how do we take our team, and meet these growing demands in small businesses? How do we successfully expand to cherish rapid business growth ?

Many small business owners make business growth harder than it is. This is because, they complicate their products and services, over-think their strategies, and worry too much about the stability of their employees.
It is beyond any doubts that these are indeed important issues, but these problems pail out when compared to the one area that contributes most to the success of any business: Sales.

Now sales teams in SMBs that follow a rigorous and methodical sales process on average according to CSO Insights, make more than 33 percent growth in their production and revenue than the sales teams that do not.

Therefore to find rapid growth, small business owners have to invest enough time every day in ‘Sales’ and so businesses that have adopted easy to use sales CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform experience seamless and better growth.

The Importance of Best Small Business CRM Software for SMB

The importance of small business CRM software is the need to address the ever-growing size of the business.

This is because today’s small business is tomorrow’s enterprise, and therefore successful startup owners that have adopted a CRM solution that grows with their business are the ones that realize stellar business growth.

The proof is in the pudding:

According to an infographic published by Bizhumm, easy to use CRM solutions have been known to boost revenue by 41 percent per salesperson, increase lead conversion rate by more than 300 percent while decreasing the cost of sales and marketing by 23 percent.

Therefore to empower sales and grow revenue small businesses need to implement the right resources and business management tools to do it.

Now if you are shopping around for your best CRM for small business , to help in your business growth, you need to accept the fact that an easy to use CRM goes well beyond just record keeping.
This is the reason top performing establishments use their CRM to its fullest potentials for automating tasks, such as marketing and customer support while ensuring that as their number of employees grow so does the capability of their CRM platform to manage it load.

Hence in this article let us explore a few key areas that best small business CRM software solutions help startups and small businesses to grow:

Improves decision making

Easy to use CRM technology provides visibility into vital customer data. Since the more comprehensive and detailed are your reports, the better you will be able to measure sales activities, forecast sales, and track your business performances.
It has been found in certain research that most sales-oriented organizations are 38 percent more likely to use CRM for collecting sales analytics and customer information for getting informed on their ongoing customer interactions and touch-points.

Since without the information gathered from analytics found in your best CRM for small business you will not be able to focus on the big picture solutions for your company or empower your sales, marketing, and support teams to focus on opportunities.

Enhance productivity

With easy to use CRM solutions, your marketing, sales and support reps can seamlessly and safely automate their tasks apart from gaining quick access to customer information as CRM ensures all critical information remains stored in a single place within the CRM database.

Therefore as your business grows, you can significantly boost your brand’s productivity by having a scalable CRM platform that grows along with your prospering business, and also keep all records of your customer’s data which includes all customer history and buyer journey information stored in its database for boosting cross-selling and up-selling activities.

Promotes teamwork       

Growing small businesses and startups requires a scalable easy to use CRM platform in order to make marketing, sales, customer support work in a more aligned manner, since it has been found in research by Aberdeen Group, that companies that have strong marketing and sales alignment achieves more than 20 percent increase in their annual growth rates.

Now if you are using a QuickBooks CRM solution, which even integrates accounting with your best small business CRM software, when it is combined with sales and customer service modules in the CRM, it not only boosts productivity but also increases customer experience and promotes seamless teamwork that is needed for rapid business growth.

Therefore an all-in-one CRM makes it possible to open up lines of communication between your teams.

Improve Calling Services

Easy to use CRM, helps businesses to make outbound calls, receive incoming calls, record calls, create personalized calling scripts, automate voice mails and create many other telephony-based activates, which helps employees using CRM to quickly manage, assign and resolve incidents when these processes are automated.

Therefore, scalability in a CRM becomes a necessity when small businesses have ever-growing data of customer information in their CRM database.

Provide mobile access to data

In the present times, key data no longer can remain confined to the office. Therefore mobile CRM technology provides your team instant access to data which help them to view sales and customer support activities in real time.

This is because, with a complete view of customer history, pricing history and several other types of lead intelligence data which can be seen from any mobile device, best small business CRM software makes it possible to gain access to information that is needed for any growing business.

Conclusion

Therefore, in a gist easy to use CRM software is a scalable business tool that not only provides small businesses with the commitment to sell better than their competitors, but it also enables collaborations across departments that results in providing world-class customer experience which helps to create grounds for new business and aids in finding rapid revenue growth.

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Why Legacy VOC Metrics Fail To Provide The Insights You Need To Succeed

Given its importance, there are several businesses that measure CX (Customer Satisfaction) for their brand, normally through VoC (Voice of the Customer) programs. Now, VoC programs often provide top-line information, such as metrics like NPS (Net Promoter Score) or CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) metrics, which provides an incomplete vision. That means while you can track if these vital scores in your easy to use CRM have gone up or down, it is not just possible to find better insight by looking ahead of them and view why they have altered.

Given its importance, there are several businesses that measure CX (Customer Satisfaction) for their brand, normally through VoC (Voice of the Customer) programs.
Now, VoC programs often provide top-line information, such as metrics like NPS (Net Promoter Score) or CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) metrics, which provides an incomplete vision. That means while you can track if these vital scores in your easy to use CRM have gone up or down, it is not just possible to find better insight by looking ahead of them and view why they have altered.

Collecting customer feedback can increase upselling and cross-selling success rates by 15% to 20% - Gartner Click To Tweet

While, it is possible to conjecture what has caused these changes by correlating these findings with external factors, like if your website has crashed or main distribution center has closed unexpectedly, you will certainly see a drop in metrics that measures your brand’s CX, most satisfaction scores cannot link and explain major variations in the metrics as it cannot link the findings to these individual external changes with certainty.

Therefore using traditional VOC programs with easy to use CRM software lets you see what is happening, but unfortunately not why the metrics that determine your brand’s CX are changing, which decreases your ability to improve the CX and also show encouraging ROI from the VOC programs of your company .

According to Temkin Groups (a customer experience research, consulting, and training firm) even less than 24 percent of businesses feel that they are making necessary changes to their brands based on their VOC programs.

So, how can brands transform their VOC programs?

The answer lies in the fact that modern businesses need to take a more matured move while implementing their VOC and focus on factors which include:

Analyzing all interactions

Just solely relying on VOC feedbacks provides an incomplete picture that can never reflect the reality, as it captures only the data that customers fill in VOC surveys using easy to use CRM that can be skewed to the very upset and very happy customers.

Moreover, focusing just on structured VOC data collected in the CRM database ignores all information available from customer interactions, such as when customers make contact through social media, chat, or emails.

Analyzing at scale

Brands interact with their consumers thousands of times every single day. In the past, the sheer magnitude of data collected in the business software applications which was spread over different channels made it tough to find a complete 360-degree view of the level of the customer’s satisfaction with the brand.

Hence it is most essential that businesses nowadays need to break down silos and capture all their customer-facing communications and interactions in an all-in-one easy to use CRM software if they want to understand and evaluate why customers are acting in a particular way.

Analyzing what customers actually say

Traditional VOC surveys done with legacy CRM software platforms, focused on quantitative metrics and numbers as these were easiest to analyze.

Now reading through qualitative data such as qualitative answers and free texts was a time consuming, often conducted through a manual process which made it difficult to accomplish, especially at scale.

However, in the modern times using easy to use CRM software platforms with integrated Text Analytics and AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology businesses can look at these qualitative data of VOC programs collected in the CRM database, which aids in particularly understanding the emotions of the customers, even within multiple digital channels and across thousands of messages.

This is because; finding out the reasons why customers are behaving in a certain manner is just the first step in improving your customer satisfaction score.

CX involves multiple teams, right from marketing, sales to support and hence businesses needs to deliver the right results to the right team within the company in order to provide them the appropriate insights to manage the brand’s CX, following which they need to close the loop, implement strategies for improvements and thereafter check that they have fixed the problems in CX through further analysis, since this is what that delivers measurable and real ROI from VOC programs using easy to use CRM software.

Conclusion

Therefore, as CX is the number one differentiator between the popularity of brands, rising customer expectations means that customers want to see constant and persistent improvements in the experience they receive from brands, which only by looking behind at CSAT scores can organizations find this deeper insight that brands need to drive rapid business growth.

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Top Reasons to Use Inbound Marketing For Lead Generation of Your SMB

The most challenging task being a marketer is to bring and engage customers in your businesses’ website. Therefore if you want to find success in terms of your business, you must find out better ways to build trust with the audiences visiting your website and thereafter convert them into leads. Hence, in the present time, with the stellar rise in SEO, digital marketing, and social media platforms, companies are progressively using inbound marketing strategies to boost the consistency of their customers and generate more leads from their websites. In other words, inbound marketing nowadays is the best way to attract, engage and delight your potential customers which helps in adding value to your businesses’ productivity. This is the reasons as to why organizations (especially startups and small businesses) in modern times are using various tools to implement their inbound marketing strategies and help them to enhance their business growth.

The most challenging task being a marketer is to bring and engage customers in your businesses’ website.
Therefore if you want to find success in terms of your business, you must find out better ways to build trust with the audiences visiting your website and thereafter convert them into leads using small business CRM software.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

According to Wikipedia:

“Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and branding.”

Hence, in the present time, with the stellar rise in SEO, digital marketing, and social media platforms, companies are progressively using inbound marketing strategies to boost the consistency of their customers and generate more leads from their websites.

Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound practices. Click To Tweet

In other words, inbound marketing nowadays is the best way to attract, engage and delight your potential customers which helps in adding value to your businesses’ productivity.

This is the reasons as to why organizations (especially startups and small businesses) in modern times are using various tools to implement their inbound marketing strategies and help them to enhance their business growth .

Now, before implementing any strategy it most important you should also know about its benefits.

Hence, let us take a look at the various reasons that will help you to understand “Why you need to implement inbound marketing for your business?”

Cost-effective

The primary focus of marketing in this digital era is to drive more traffic to the websites and also save a huge chunk of money.

According to research studies it has been found that content marketing strategy costs 60 percent less as compared to other traditional marketing approaches.

Therefore, marketers, these days use content marketing for boosting their inbound marketing approaches for attracting more customers on their business websites and thereby at a far lesser cost than traditional marketing help generate more marketing qualified leads.

In other words, inbound marketing is really a blessing for small businesses as it helps them to generate leads at an affordable price.

Convert your blog into a valuable resource

If you are not able to generate leads and traffic to your website through your content marketing endeavors and is not aware of the reasons, let us help you out to find the desired outcome.

There are primarily two main reasons that your blogs and contents are not finding enough leads.

Firstly there are no back-link(s) in your blogs and secondly, there is less search potential for your contents.

Therefore, to overcome these two major obstacles you can use inbound marketing approaches to convert your blogs into valuable lead generation resources.

This is because according to studies it can be said that inbound marketing is the best way to boost engagements, increase customer retention rate and thereby scale-up business revenue steadily.

Make better marketing decisions

By using inbound marketing tools in startups and small businesses like CRM for small business , you can easily analyze all your business practices and thereby make better decisions like the number of landing page conversions, email clicks, customer interests and more.

Best small business CRM software, when used for inbound marketing practices also helps in analyzing customer journey at each stage of your sales pipeline and thereby helps SMBs to take effective decisions which result in amplifying revenue growth.

Boost your brand awareness and social media presence

There is no doubt that in this era of digital growth, most target audiences for any business remains active on social media websites.

Therefore, if you are thinking of a marketing methodology to strengthen your social media presence to build stronger relationships with your customers, inbound marketing is the tool that helps to create your brand awareness and increase your social media presence that translates to a growth in your ROI.

According to studies it has been found that in more than 89 percent of businesses uses blogs in 2019, to engage more customers in their social media websites.

This is because; the higher is your website traffic, the more leads you generate for your business.

Aids in creating customer-focused contents

To build trust and acquire the interest of your prospective customers, you need to provide them with real engaging contents, which primarily focuses on the interests and fluctuating demands of your leads and customers.

Inbound marketing when done with easy to use CRM software, helps to streamline all your marketing campaigns and so aids in proving your prospects what they are looking for.

Moreover, when inbound marketing is done with the best small business CRM software it helps SMBs to create customer-centric contents and helps businesses to send messages to the right prospects at the right time.

This is because; once you can create contents that are reliable to your audience you can easily remain ahead of the competition and find rapid business growth.

Conclusion

Therefore in a gist inbound marketing strategy when done in the right manner using a CRM for small business as a tool, it not only helps to increase your website search results and generate more leads but also aids in automating repetitive tasks and therefore deliver world-class service to your prospective leads and customers that aids in creating sustainable long-term growth.

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Practical Ideas for Automating your CRM Workflow to Improve Sales

If your question is: Why automate the workflow? The shortest answer to this is: To maximize your results with minimum efforts. Now, you may be wondering if there is any scope for such effectual automation within your sales team? Yes, there is! Hence, in this article let us outline a few tested and tried ideas for automation that are certain to deliver better results while reducing the workload of your sales teams.

If your question is: Why automate the workflow?
The shortest answer to this is: To maximize your results with minimum efforts.
Now, you may be wondering if there is any scope for such effectual automation (using easy to use CRM) within your sales team?

Yes, there is!

Data accessibility can shorten the sales cycle by 8–14 percent on average - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

Hence, in this article let us outline a few tested and tried ideas for automation that are certain to deliver better results while reducing the workload of your sales teams.

Idea #1

Make sure that your web-based leads are contacted in minutes

Web-generated leads are precious for all businesses. Nevertheless, your sales reps must ensure that web leads are contacted within minutes after they are generated online.

This is because, according to a study published by MIT, it states that if sales reps make contact within 5 minutes after generation of the lead, the lead is 22 times more like to get converted into a hot prospect ready for buying your offering.

However, how can you be assured that your sales team will be capable of following up with every web lead so promptly?

This is where automation in a robust CRM like Salesforce or any other reputed Salesforce Alternative CRM for small business comes into play.

  • As soon as the web-to-form is filled up, the information gets collected in the CRM database.
  • Next, your easy to use CRM taps into your integrated telephony software solutions and prompts your sales reps active on the system and mobile devices.
  • If the sales rep is busy, the CRM system automatically forwards the call to the next able rep and continues to do so, until a free sales rep is capable of making the call to the given number.
  • The sales rep finds all the relevant information about the lead on their CRM system, and therefore armed with that data just need to click to make the call. This makes sure that all calls are contacted when they are hot and that too before the stipulated 5 minutes time.

Idea #2

Automate follow-up calls on email campaigns

Irrespective of whether your email campaign is about a demo, your new product launch, or a meet up, in all cases, it is really tough for leads to open your emails.

Easy to use CRM software with integrated email campaigning functionalities, help the users of the software to view who opened their emails.

Therefore, to ensure that your sales teams make follow up calls to every lead that opens their emails here is how you can automate your CRM to do it.

  • See the email campaigns report in the easy to use CRM
  • Select all the contacts that opened the email.
  • Push all the contacts into the dialing software integrated with the CRM.
  • For hereon let the dialer do its job of persistently and automatically dial every lead in the contact list and connect them to a representative.

Idea #3

Ensure that missed and abandoned calls do not become missed leads

All easy to use CRM software solutions capture incoming lead 24/7.

Now it is natural that you can miss calls during holidays, after your work hours, or when your lines are busy.

However, when you are using a CRM missed calls should not mean missing a valuable lead.

Hence, here is a workflow that you can set up easily to make sure that you never miss doing a follow up on any of your missed calls.

  • Your integrated telephony system can find any phone number that goes unanswered with the numbers in your CRM database.
  • Now if the call is from a fresh lead, you can set up your easy to use CRM system that a new follow up the ticket is automatically generated by the system.
  • An alert on the missed call can be sent by the system to your inbox, and in case there is a voice message that can also get attached to your email.

Idea #4

Send greetings, voice messages, and notifications to all in the contact lists in one go

Do your sales team members need to remind qualified leads, prospects and customers about their subscription renewal dates, approaching last payment due dates and other?

You can easily set a configurable IVR (Interactive Voice Response) message, and create a workflow using automation in your easy to use CRM that lets you broadcast the message to any or all in the contact list within your CRM database with a single click.

Conclusion

Essentially all of these stated ideas depend on a smooth integration between your easy to use CRM and telephone software like RingCentral, NexInteractive Dialer or Twilio Call that are most essential software solutions which can be integrated with Salesforce and all other major Salesforce Alternative CRM solutions like ConvergeHub that are meant for small businesses.

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4 Golden Customer Retention Questions That You Must Ask Today

As owners of businesses, we create services and products that we think our customer needs and we also think that we know exactly what is needed by our customers. For example, as an owner of a fitness studio, one can easily think that its services are all about providing professionals who are busy otherwise, with an easy to way to get their cardio exercises done before and in the spare times after their work. However, in reality, it can be that loyal customers of the fitness studio go to the studio since it offers low impact fitness regimes that best fit older bodies. Now without asking this question all business owners, just like the owner of the fitness studio, will not know if the reason they developed their services are really the cause their customers are accepting their offerings.

In a recent survey done by PlanBeyond on owners of small businesses using easy to use CRM, more than 80 percent of those who participated in the survey felt optimistic about the businesses’ performance in 2019.

46 percent of sales teams report widespread use of CRM systems - Entrepreneur, (2018) Click To Tweet

In this same report, it has also been noted that 51 percent of the small business owners pointed to one critical factor behind this optimism: the presence of a strong existing customer base.
In fact, this motivation was larger than those that cited about the quality of their employees, or their marketing and sales plans, as reasons as to why their business will prosper this year more than it did before.

Now we all know retaining old and existing customers is of much larger importance than acquiring new ones.

Nevertheless, there are very few business owners that proactively seek inputs from their high-paying customers to know if their brand’s services are truly meeting all expectations that the customers demand from their brand.
Not to mention the fact that even fewer ask their customers as to what more their business can do for the customers and cater to their needs.

This is why taking time to ask these four most important questions is critical not to just retain your key customers but to also keep them totally satisfied with your offerings.

The 4 Golden Customer Questions

Question #1

What did motivate you to look for what you purchased from our brand?

As owners of businesses, we create services and products that we think our customer needs and we also think that we know exactly what is needed by our customers.
For example, as an owner of a fitness studio, one can easily think that its services are all about providing professionals who are busy otherwise, with an easy to way to get their cardio exercises done before and in the spare times after their work. However, in reality, it can be that loyal customers of the fitness studio go to the studio since it offers low impact fitness regimes that best fit older bodies.

Now without asking this question all business owners, just like the owner of the fitness studio, will not know if the reason they developed their services are really the cause their customers are accepting their offerings.

This misunderstanding, on the part of the owner, may make them spend more time, money and resources developing and launching additional services and products that are of no interest to the existing customers of the brand or even alienate their best customers which can result in unprecedented customer churn.

Therefore creating a customer survey using an easy to use CRM software , is one of the best ways businesses can understand the requirements of their customers which can help in retaining existing customers by providing them exactly what they need from your business.

Question #2

Why did you choose to purchase from our business?

Let us take the same fitness studio as an example.  It can be natural that there were many other fitness options in that locality, right from large gyms to smaller fitness outlets that cater to 1:1 personal training.
Still then, there must be something unique that led the said fitness studio’s customers to choose them.

Therefore, asking customers to identify the main and important features that make your brand and business stand apart is an ideal way to find what matters to them the most.

This is because, if you are armed with this information, you can easily make sure that your marketing teams can continuously hit on these key value propositions while finding new customers using easy to use CRM for lead generation and nurturing, and not focus your attention on features your business may offer that your customers are not interested in.

Question #3

What experience did you find positive with our business?

When something is working well for your company, make sure you ask your customers what they liked so that you can keep doing it well.

Going back to our fitness studio example, consider that the fitness studio is offering a power-lifting class. Now as an owner of the fitness studio by asking this above-stated question to your loyal customers, you might learn that most customers of your fitness studio appreciate that all the studio classes can be joined by people of different fitness levels and they like that your exercises can be modified to manage pre-existing injuries.

Now by asking this question, as an owner of your studio, you can quickly learn that power-lifting (which you thought about previously) would never be of interest to any of your existing customers but rather it can create misalignment with the services that your customers enjoy today.

Question #4

What can we do to provide you with better customer experience?

No matter how exceptional is your offerings, there are always several ways to do better or provide your consumers with more robust customer experience.

This is the exact reason why asking this question proactively matters since it is an excellent way to make sure that your customers are receiving complete customer satisfaction, as well as find out new opportunities where you can provide and up-sell additional products or services that your customers may want over time.

For example, going back to the fitness studio, let us assume that the studio’s classes begin from 8.30AM; however, its loyal customers frequently asked for early-morning classes. Now, by asking this question, the owner of the studio can learn that investing in early start times will help them to retain their best customers, as well as bring in new customers who want their services but at an earlier hour of the day.

When should you ask these golden questions?

If you are a user of an easy to use CRM, you must know that regularly keeping your pulse on the customer sentiment by evaluating and performing sentiment analysis using information stored in the CRM database is the key to business growth.

Therefore, once you are considering expanding your business, be it in terms of products or services or a physical expansion, and you want to be confident that any new decisions that you take on incremental investment you can ask these questions to your customers that will further delight your customers and attract new batch of loyalists and help your business to increase its bottom line.

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What Are the Hallmarks of an Effective and Successful CRM Solution

The customer is the lifeline of your brand, which in turn makes CRM (Customer Relationship Management) the catalyst for the success of your business. This is because easy to use CRM software solutions mostly have simple to use interfaces that are backed by robust algorithms which makes it easier to run businesses by creating active engagements with your customers. Therefore, here are 6 hallmarks of an effective and great CRM solution for your business growth.

The customer is the lifeline of your brand, which in turn makes CRM (Customer Relationship Management) the catalyst for the success of your business.
This is because easy to use CRM software solutions mostly have simple to use interfaces that are backed by robust algorithms which makes it easier to run businesses by creating active engagements with your customers.

What Are the Hallmarks of an Effective and Successful CRM Solution Click To Tweet

Therefore, here are 6 hallmarks of an effective and great CRM solution for your business growth:

  1. All Functionalities Within One Single Window

Without jumping between windows, your easy to use CRM must have the ability to aid your team members to view every detail of the actions taken by the customers in a single window.

Easy to use CRM is a solution that is capable of capturing all available information about the customers, leads, and prospects from all sources that include call centers, branches, emails, SMS, web integrations and more in order to offer the best possible personalized service to the customers.

Therefore an effective all-in-one 360-degree CRM view of the prospects and customers in the CRM database creates a unified destination for all customer-facing information that eliminates the requirement for hopping between different silo software platforms.

  1. Complex Yet Simple

The success and growth of any company do not hinge on how advanced a technology is that they are using for the success of their business. Rather to say, it depends on how the technology is acting as an enabler to the workforce to make them more productive in their workplace.

Hence right from the start, efficient easy to use CRM should have a simple interface, irrespective of the complexities that are involved in the making and working of the software.

This is because the complexity of the CRM software mostly affects the user’s experience of the solution which can very easily lead to loss of efficiency of the CRM solution even before proper adoption of the software.

  1. Easy Integrations

Irrespective of the legacy software solutions that you use, an easy to use CRM that you choose should be able to retrospectively integrate with your businesses’ core IT infrastructure.

In other words, the features and tools of your CRM, be it an enterprise-level robust CRM solution like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM for startups and small business, should actually integrate seamlessly and optimize the operations in your business, rather than create new investment headaches for your organization.

  1. Guarantees Customer Satisfaction

Now that you have invested in your easy to use CRM software, the solution should be actively beneficial to fulfill the targets of your business and also the expectation of your customers.

In other words, your easy to use CRM solution should create a customer service platform that addresses proactively all the pain-points of the customers.

It must be a solution that can motivate and persuade your support staffs to cater a more professional service to your customer base.

In fact, right SLAs and quicker resolutions along with defined metrics help in rendering delightful and world-class customer experience.

  1. Evaluation and Projections

All business big or small survives under evaluations in terms of their failure and success, upon which companies strategize their very best next moves.

Monitoring tools in an easy to use CRM helps in recording the activities and interactions of customers and employees that relates to their business.

Therefore effective CRM solutions with the aid of this historical data can make digital predictions about demand spikes, market trends, customer sentiments for your brand and more, that can help in shaping a better tomorrow for your company.

  1. Flexible, Scalable And Efficient

Finally, for any entrepreneur, their ultimate aim is to grow in capacity and scale in their business.
Therefore, if you know what is CRM , then what good is a solution if the cost of its upgrade gets in your way?

As the features of any effective CRM are important on a long-term basis, so the easy to use CRM software that you are interested in investing for your business should also expand and be scalable in proportion to your businesses’ growth.

However, this scalability of the software should never compromise the efficiency of the software, as we should always remember that investing in CRM is a long-term commitment that should not be looked through a prism just for bring short term sales and revenue growth.

Conclusion

As we all know a great easy to use CRM translates to greater opportunities in business by providing delightful and happy customer engagements, therefore we suggest all business owners should most essentially consider these six hallmarking factors before finalizing on choosing their CRM system for rapid business growth .

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